Tree of knowledge
The Tree of Knowledge is a classic epistemological classification system that the botanical semantics is borrowed. It goes back to the Platonic Dihairesis , on which both the Aristotelian categories and the isagogue of Porphyry of Tire are based. The translator and commentator Boëthius first visualized the system as a tree in the 6th century, and Petrus Hispanus introduced it to the history of science around 1240 under the name Porphyry Tree ( Arbor porphyriana ).
Similar structures are based on several late antique and medieval encyclopedias , such as Ramon Llull's Arbor scientiae (1295) or the Theatrum humanae vitae Theodor Zwingers , 1565. The metaphor, which was also adopted by Francis Bacon (1561–1626), was last used by Diderot in the encyclopedia , whereby the limits of their usefulness were revealed.
The tree of science called Descartes "the great book of the world", the totality of knowledge and sciences .
Before the tree metaphor, knowledge was understood as arranging it in a circle , see Seven Liberal Arts .
The tree as a disposition metaphor
a) Arbor porphyrii in Purchotius' Institutiones philosophicae I, 1730 (detail a)
b) Arbor porphyrii probably from a Boethius translation (detail b)
c) Tree from Ramon Llull's Ars generalis ultima , written around 1305 , published after 1500 (detail c)
d) Ramon Llull's 16-part Arbor scientiae (approx. 1295) in a woodcut from 1505 (detail d)
e) Denis Diderot 1751: System of human knowledge shown in figures. Endpaper, vol. 1 of the Encyclopédie
(detail e, 313k , or German translation, 300k )
f) The same system, represented in tree form, reaches the limit of usability
(etching from 1769, 985 × 635 mm, endpaper, vol. 1 des Register for the Encyclopédie, 1780) (Detail f)
Arbor porphyriana
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The arbor porphyriana (also arbor porphyrii, Árbor de Porfirio, tree of Porphyrios or conceptual pyramid ) is a metaphor introduced into the history of science by the scholastic Petrus Hispanus around 1240.
It is based on a classification method that Porphyrios of Tire (* approx. 233 AD ; † approx. 303) had presented in his Isagoge (an introduction to Aristotle's writing on categories ). Since Porphyrios' system combines five basic philosophical concepts ( predicables ), it is also known as Quinque voces (five concepts; of the five sounds). The scheme of the tree of Porphyrios enables the subordination of generic and species terms into which real genera and species can be classified. The ten possible relationships between the five predicables correspond to the ten categories established by Aristotle, cf. Fig.
The highest genus (the summum genus ) of such a tree is the category. It determines the highest degree of abstraction . In contrast to the levels below, the highest genus cannot be a species of another. A lowest species ( infima species ), in contrast to levels above it, can no longer be subdivided further. It is an individual term . All levels in between are both species of the next higher level and genus ( proximum genus ) of the next lower level.
The term “ term pyramid” refers to the gradation of terms between top and bottom. Since the respective “highest genre” always summarizes many types or sub-terms, the wealth of content of the terms increases from top to bottom. Conversely, from bottom to top, terms that are more and more extensive , cf. → Extension and Intension . However, it remains unclear whether the tip of such a concept pyramid should not lead to the most general and comprehensive of all concepts, such as being or the one, or whether there is an interweaving (συμπλοκή) of a plurality of top generic concepts , as Plato advocated ("upper closure problem" ).
Arbor scientiae
Arbor scientiae is an encyclopedia by the Catalan Ramon Llull (Raimundus Lullus), in which, as in many advanced medieval encyclopedias, the tree allegory is used to systematize the sciences : L'arbre de ciència was written in Catalan around 1295 , but not until 1482 published - in Latin .
In the Arbor scientiae the (partial) trees represent fourteen areas of being ( elements , botany , animals , sensory perception , imagination , morality , social theory ...), which are illustrated by two further trees, examples (Exempla) and proverbs (Bonmots) .
| Llulls sixteen trees (picture) : | Each tree has seven parts: | |
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9. Arbor caelestialis (D)
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In the Ars generalis ultima , written around 1305 , Llull takes up the tree structure of the Arbor porphyrii again (Fig. C) in order to expand it and develop his logical apparatus .
The scheme of human knowledge in the "Encyclopédie"
With the Systême figuré des connoissances humaines (German translation, image) , Denis Diderot structures his encyclopédie as the last significant encyclopedia using a “tree of knowledge” in the style of Francis Bacon . Diderot deviates from this in several significant places; his encyclopedia thus introduces an epistemological change of direction that transformed the topography of all human knowledge ( Darnton ).
criticism
In modern times , the classic system of order has been fundamentally questioned:
- Ludwig Wittgenstein argued for the impossibility of a hierarchical classification of certain categories and introduced the concept of family resemblance as an alternative .
- In The Order of Things (1974), the philosopher Michel Foucault questions any system of categories because they are bound by space and time ; in his archeology of knowledge he shows that every system of categories appears arbitrary as soon as it is viewed from an outside perspective (cf. taxonomy ).
- Deleuze and Guattari , who introduced the rhizome as a knowledge metaphor , voiced further postmodern criticism .
- The network is also mentioned in this context.
See also
- Tree of knowledge
- Ramism
- Decision tree , dendrogram
- Encyclopedia (knowledge order)
- Individual science - universal science
- Epistemology
literature
- Hans M. Baumgartner: Arbor porphyriana, porphyry tree . In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages (LexMA). Volume 1, Artemis & Winkler, Munich / Zurich 1980, ISBN 3-7608-8901-8 , column 889 f.
- Robert Darnton : The Business of Enlightenment. A Publishing History of the Encyclopédie, 1775-1800. HUP, Cambridge (Mass.) / London 1979 (German, abbreviated: Shining shops. The distribution of Diderot's encyclopedia or: How do you sell knowledge for a profit? Wagenbach, Berlin 1993).
- Manuel Lima : The Book of Trees: Visualizing Branches of Knowledge . Foreword by Ben Shneiderman . Princeton Architectural Press, New York 2014, ISBN 978-1-616-89218-0 .
- Fernando Domínguez Reboiras u. a. (Ed.): Arbor scientiae, The Tree of Knowledge by Ramon Lull: Files of the International Congress on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Raimundus Lullus Institute of the University of Freiburg i. Br. (Subsidia Lvlliana; 1). Turnhout, Brepols 2002, ISBN 2-503-51215-1 .
- Alexandre Saint-Yves d'Alveydre: L'Archéomètre. 1903.
- Steffen Siegel: Knowledge that grows on trees. The tree diagram as an epistemological symbol of things in the 16th century . In: Early Modern Info 15 (2004), pp. 42–55.
- Steffen Siegel: Tabula. Figures of the order around 1600 . Academy, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-05-004563-4
- Steffen Siegel: In the forest of knowledge. Visible orders of the encyclopedia on the threshold between culture and nature . In: Christoph Markschies et al. (Ed.): Atlas of world views . Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-05-004521-4 , pp. 280-293.
