ABSTRACT
Before and since Diderot and D’Alembert sat down over coffee during theeighteenth-century Enlightenment in Paris’ Café Procope to create theEncyclopédie, scholars of all types have debated how people achieve “true” knowledge. A recurring question for philosophers and scientists alike is how people can and do gain a complete understanding of the world and all its components. That is, whether done through passionate exchanges in erudite salons, empirical observations in public gathering spaces, trolling Google’s internet webpages, or the like, the objective was and is to discover how people achieve an accurate, reliable, and fixed knowledge of the outside world. Inherent in such musings is the notion there is an objective reality or concrete, singular way in which to comprehend the world. And with enough effort, people can come to know it.
