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.
For they, the philosophers, were considered teachers of right living, which is far more excellent, since to speak well belongs only to a few, but to live well belongs to all.
And so man, as existing transcendence abounding in and surpassing toward possibilities, is a creature of distance. Only through the primordial distances he establishes toward all being in his transcendence does a true nearness to things flourish in him.
I am happy to report that in the war between reality and romance, reality is not the stronger.
But nothing is more insidious than the evolution of wishes from mere fancies, and of wants from mere wishes.
To be sure, the response of faith to revelation, which God grants to the creature he chooses and moves with his love, occurs in such a way that it is truly the creature that provides the response, with its own nature and its natural powers of love.
Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves ... politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves... The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country.
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