 Diderot was a thoroughgoing naturalist and empirical scientist, but this did not mean that he neglected the aesthetic dimension of human knowing, or the artifice of representation itself that makes possible language, communication, and human knowledge. In his Encyclopédie entry on cabinets of natural history and their philosophical implications (“Cabinets d’histoire naturelle”), he reflects explicitly on the challenge for our finite intellects to seek to know infinite Nature as a whole, and recommends the construction of artificial environments such as these cabinets in order to study “parts of Nature”. At times, his vision of aesthetics is simply a kind of extension of his naturalism into other domains, arguing like Spinoza that our subjective notions of beauty and ugliness have no place in nature properly understood (in the article “Laideur”; also Salon de 1763; DPV XIII: 373–374), and argues for a naturalist poetics (“Encyclopédie”; DPV VII: 234). Yet he also held that aesthetics should not be reduced to crudely naturalistic concepts, reflecting at length on the subjective issues of aesthetic perception and judgment and the role of performance, including that found in visual art, literature, theater, and scientific experiments, in the production of perceived truths.