 Given this background, Diderot’s interactions with the life sciences of his time can be understood, obviously, as the activity of an educated individual with a strong interest in the implications for philosophy of new scientific discoveries and conceptual schemas, whether from medicine, biology, or natural history. But his articulation of all of these in a materialist project does not belong to or open onto an episode amongst others in the history of science. That is, his articulation of a unique kind of philosophical materialism is indeed in “dialogue with” or “influenced by” the sciences of his time, particularly the life sciences (which included chemistry for Diderot), but it is also a speculative project; materialism in Diderot’s time, like in ours, was not a monolithic concept (Springborg and Wunderlich [eds] 2016).