Spanish readings of D'Alembert

Abstract

Jean Le Rond d'Alembert was well known by the Spanish ilustrados as we can see in the library repertoires. In continental Spain or in the New Spain no one can be considered a wise man while he doesn't have his "Mélanges" (1st edition in four volumes in 1759, and 1st edition of volume 5 in 1767). But he is particularly respected, or blamed, as a mathematician and as co-director of the Encyclopedia. His "Système figuré des connaissances humaines" makes the "Discours préliminaire" indispensable, and turns his author, within the field of progressists, into the cartographer of the fields of knowledge and into the founder of the modern knowledge, liberated, at last, of metaphysics.