Abstract
Michel Delon : Global knowledge and discrete form. This article analyses in conjunction a crisis of knowledge and a crisis of form at the end of the 18th C. Delisle de Sales's De la philosophie de la Nature and Rétif de la Bretonne's La philosophie de M. Nicolas exhibit similar tensions. The ambition to provide an encyclopaedic inventory of the universe conflicts with a desire to sum up experience in a single formula ; on the one hand, an itemised catalogue and on the other, the condensed maxim. In other words, relativity as against absolute truth. This contradiction was that of a period which saw the clash between materialism and a spiritual revival, and the separation between scientific and literary activity.
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