As we have seen, within the early-modern and Enlightenment preoccupation with systematization, mathematicization, and natural order, the tension between linear, sequential, or temporally-oriented modes of thought or presentation, and synoptic or analytic modes takes on many forms. While they can be offered as alternatives, as when Arnauld and Nicole consider the narrativizing “order of inventionr” alongside the systematizing “order of analysis” in the Logique de Port-Royal, as we move into the eighteenth century there is more often a clear opposition between the two, as when Buffon challenges Linnaeus's “system” in the name of his own “method.” Sometimes they produce significant disruptions in textual continuity and logic, as when d'Alembert tries to integrate “encyclopedic order” and “genealogical order” in the Discours préliminaire of the Encyclopédie. We have seen how Du Châtelet and Condillac, despite what appear to be very different programs, both engage the notion of the “philosophical system” in ways that can be problematic and contradictory, but which are also richly productive.

I have been arguing that to the extent to which systematization can be shown to be heterogeneous and mutable, rather than monolithic, the severe view offered by the radical critique of Enlightenment should be called into question. The work of Denis Diderot is a crucial reference point in this process. Diderot shares with Buffon an intuition of the radical contingency of the connections that we map onto the world; both mistrust totalizing categories and classifications.