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.
When the church hears the cry of the oppressed it cannot but denounce the social structures that give rise to and perpetuate the misery from which the cry arises.
There is no subjection so perfect as that which keeps the appearance of freedom.
To go beyond samsara and nirvana, we will need _x000D_ the two wings of emptiness and compassion. _x000D_ From now on, let us use these two wings _x000D_ to fly fearlessly into the sky of the life to come.
I believe, to be sure, that any man who reaches Heaven will find that what he abandoned (even in plucking out his right eye) has not been lost: that the kernel of what he was really seeking even in his most depraved wishes will be there, beyond expectation, waiting for him in 'the High Countries'.
I have now come to a stage of realization in which I see that God is walking in every human form and manifesting Himself alike through the sage and the sinner, the virtuous and the vicious. Therefore when I meet different people I say to myself, βGod in the form of the saint, God in the form of the sinner, God in the form of the righteous, God in the form of the unrighteous.
One may not reach the dawn save by the path of the night.
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