BOULANGER, NICOLAS-ANTOINE. - Born in 1722, died in 1759. A Swiss who lived in France due to his career as a military and civil engineer. Settled in Paris, he became closely associated with the group of Enlightenment thinkers led by d’Holbach; he contributed to the *Encyclopédie* (writing entries on *corvées*, *langue hébraïque*, etc.), admired by the *philosophes* for his synthetic ability and singular erudition.
He was indeed familiar with and studied ancient religious forms and traditions, as well as linguistic phenomena, as interconnected phenomena on which he intended to construct a “general mythology of the human race.” He sought to identify, within this indefinite variety, constant elements, and, according to his rationalistic framework, a natural fact generating dogma: the Flood. Against the cyclical “revolutions of nature,” he opposed the idea of progress: this was the central theme of his thought, preserved by his friends at a critical moment in the Enlightenment offensive.