All abstract sciences are nothing but the study of relations between signs.
Interpretation
Diderot emphasizes that abstract sciences focus on understanding the connections and meanings between signs rather than the signs themselves.
In this quote, Denis Diderot suggests that abstract sciences, such as mathematics or logic, are fundamentally about interpreting and analyzing the relationships between symbols and concepts. He implies that understanding these relationships provides insight into the underlying principles of knowledge and reality, rather than treating the symbols in isolation.
In practice
In a lecture on the philosophy of science, one might use this quote to illustrate the importance of understanding the connections in abstract thinking.
The arbitrary rule of a just and enlightened prince is always bad. His virtues are the most dangerous and the surest form of seduction: they lull a people imperceptibly into the habit of loving, respecting, and serving his successor, whoever that successor may be, no matter how wicked or stupid.
This root [the potato], no matter how much you prepare it, is tasteless and floury. It cannot pass for an agreeable food, but it supplies a food sufficiently abundant and sufficiently healthy for men who ask only to sustain themselves. The potato is criticized with reason for being windy, but what matters windiness for the vigorous organisms of peasants and laborers?
Do you see this egg? With this you can topple every theological theory, every church or temple in the world.
There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge... observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination.
In order to get as much fame as one's father one has to much more able than he.
What is a monster? A being whose survival is incompatible with the existing order.
I'm craving more soul, I'm craving more truth, I'm craving more socially - just people that are aware of what's going on in the world.
Man is a creation of desire, not a creation of need.
I don't think you can measure wealth in dollars and cents. I really don't believe that at all because there are some things that money cannot buy. One of them is health. And the other is security in your relationships and friends.
Of course there are people who think of 'heaven' as a kind of pie-in-the-sky dream of an afterlife to make the thought of dying less awful. No doubt that's a problem as old as the human race.
I abhor crime novels in which the main character can behave however he or she pleases, or do things that normal people do not do, without those actions having social consequences.
Wherever goodness lay, it did not lie in ritual, unthinking obeisance before a deity but rather, perhaps, in the slow clumsy, error-strewn working out of an individual or collective path.
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