Compassing a Bricolage

understanding of the explained object. Nevertheless, this judgment is only pertinent for inert objects and not for the explanation of professions that involve physical – in movement – gestures which is the very essence of craft and know-how. Therefore, a craftsman telling how to build a brick wall does not convey the same knowledge as a plate illustrating it; during the translation process from words and physical movements to still images something is lost by means of graphic representation: the tacit dimension.

Epilogue

Compassing a Bricolage

The Architecture, Masonry plate tries to depict a hidden dimension of knowledge, the tacit dimension, the knowledge which is embedded in the making of things. The plate tries to enlighten the masonry craft showing its know-how but eventually fails to acknowledge that there are actions involved that cannot be spelled out and presented. Polanyi and Ryle propose that the containment of knowledge goes well beyond our possibilities of telling and presenting things “We can know more than we can tell”26. The Encyclopaedia27 (1765) is the praise of the Enlightenment’s ideology and the domination of the scientific rational knowledge over the practical, tradition tainted knowledge. The substitution of the body with the intellect in the establishment and transmission of knowledge, in other words the intellectualisation of knowledge operated in the Encyclopaedia28 (1765) reveals that the tacit dimension is lost in the process of the translation from making to writing. The multiple interpretations of signs on the scale of time alter the transmission of the true and original knowledge. Besides, the artist’s abstraction while creating the tableau vivant differs from the

reader’s abstraction, each of them interpreting it according to their respective past experiences. Moreover, in the process of substitution of the sign for the object itself appears a décalage: the tacit dimension of knowledge.

The uncertainty of the Encyclopaedia of Arts and Crafts29 (1765) being a dictionary and an encyclopaedia reflects Diderot’s ambiguous position after his release from prison. It shows his will to spread the Enlightenment’s ideas by denouncing obscurantism and clericalism, and the threat of being censored or banned. His project can be seen as a concession to the Enlightenment thinking and a way that brings him back to grace; but Diderot is doing it with a heavy heart and confused feelings as he would like to publish a radical work without being censured. This can be seen in his encyclopaedic project that one

26. Polanyi, The Tacit Dimension, 4. 27. d’Alembert, Encyclopaedia, or a Systematic Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Crafts. 28. d’Alembert, Encyclopaedia, or a Systematic Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Crafts. 29. d’Alembert, Encyclopaedia, or a Systematic Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Crafts.