 Diderot’s determinism is also his way of extending core empiricist tenets such as nihil est in intellectu quod non fuerit in sensu (there is nothing in the mind that was not first in our sense), which acquires a determinist dimension: “there is only one operation in man, sensing. This operation is … never free” (OH; DPV XXIV: 300; cf. PC; DPV XX: 85) and