 Although the link it is not often noted, it is useful in this context to remember that Diderot was among the generation of French philosophers that were directly influenced by Nicolas  Malebranche,  whose influence upon French philosophy in the years 1690–1730, the precise years of Diderot’s maturation as a thinker, was immense and insufficiently recognized. This influence was not rooted in Malebranche’s specific doctrines such as occasionalism, but in the model his philosophy offered of how empirical skepticism could be sustained together with scientific, and especially mathematical rationalism. Diderot’s own affection for mathematics was rooted in these Malebranchian currents of French thought, as were his strong convictions about the limits of mathematics as well.