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10 - Classifying the Sciences

from Part II - Disciplines

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

Roy Porter
Affiliation:
Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, University College London
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Summary

Since Plato and Aristotle, philosophers of the Western tradition have placed a premium on the organization of knowledge. When knowledge is ordered, subdivided, and controlled we speak of trees, fields, maps, and bodies – metaphors suggesting definite structures and relationships. When knowledge is regarded as chaotic, overwhelming, or undifferentiated, we speak of labyrinths, mazes, or oceans – still perhaps implying that an order exists but acknowledging that it is not yet visible. The ancient philosophers endorsed the first, and positive, side of this dichotomy in two related ways: first, by privileging logically demonstrable, or at least systematically organized, bodies of knowledge as scientia or science, distinguishing them from other forms of knowledge, such as opinion, craft, or technical skills (techne); second, by seeking to demonstrate how the various sciences are related, in some rational manner, to one another in an overarching classification of knowledge. These maps or charts indicated appropriate paths of education and learning. Schemes of this kind were produced by the scholastic thinkers of the Middle Ages and they informed, and were themselves reinforced by, the pedagogy and curricula of the universities through to the Renaissance and beyond. To travel one of these paths was to master the “encyclopedy,” the circle of sciences.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2003

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  • Classifying the Sciences
  • Edited by Roy Porter, Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, University College London
  • Book: The Cambridge History of Science
  • Online publication: 28 March 2008
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521572439.011
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  • Classifying the Sciences
  • Edited by Roy Porter, Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, University College London
  • Book: The Cambridge History of Science
  • Online publication: 28 March 2008
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521572439.011
Available formats
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  • Classifying the Sciences
  • Edited by Roy Porter, Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, University College London
  • Book: The Cambridge History of Science
  • Online publication: 28 March 2008
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521572439.011
Available formats
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