Daniel Gordon (Professor of History/Associate Dean, Commonwealth Honors College University of Massachusetts)
Knowledge as a Social Network: From Diderot's Encyclopedia to Wikipedia
The term "sociability" was coined in the Enlightenment to
signify a model of politeness outside of the royal court. But it also
stood for the possibility of producing knowledge collectively and
informally, outside of the royal academies. Some Enlightenment
thinkers, including Diderot and Raynal, envisioned the possibility of de-institutionalizing learning and creating a public intellectual
sphere. This paper will evaluate the structure of the Enlightenment
knowledge network in comparison to two other models--the concept of a
"republic of professors" rooted in Third Republic's vision of the
university's crucial role in a democratic society, and the current
proliferation of collective knowledge creation on the internet
(Wikipedia, open source software, etc.).
