| Title: | Observations on Bacon's division of the sciences |
| Original Title: | Observations sur la Division des Sciences du Chancelier Bacon |
| Volume and Page: | Vol. 1 (1751), p. li-lii |
| Author: | Denis Diderot (biography) |
| Translator: | Richard N. Schwab; Walter E. Rex |
| Original Version (ARTFL): | Link |
| Source: | Jean le Rond d'Alembert, Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedia of Diderot, trans. Richard N. Schwab with the collaboration of Walter E. Rex (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 159-164. Used with permission. |
| Rights/Permissions: |
This text is protected by copyright and may be linked to without seeking permission. Please see http://quod.lib.umich.edu/d/did/terms.html for information on reproduction. |
| URL: | http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.did2222.0001.085 |
| Citation (MLA): | Diderot, Denis. "Observations on Bacon's division of the sciences." The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d'Alembert Collaborative Translation Project. Translated by Richard N. Schwab and Walter E. Rex. Ann Arbor: Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library, 2009. Web. [fill in today's date in the form 18 Apr. 2009 and remove square brackets]. <http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.did2222.0001.085>. Trans. of "Observations sur la Division des Sciences du Chancelier Bacon," Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, vol. 1. Paris, 1751. |
| Citation (Chicago): | Diderot, Denis. "Observations on Bacon's division of the sciences." The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d'Alembert Collaborative Translation Project. Translated by Richard N. Schwab and Walter E. Rex. Ann Arbor: Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.did2222.0001.085 (accessed [fill in today's date in the form April 18, 2009 and remove square brackets]). Originally published as "Observations sur la Division des Sciences du Chancelier Bacon," Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, 1:li-lii (Paris, 1751). |
I. We have confessed in several places in the Prospectus that our principal obligation for our encyclopedic tree was to Chancellor Bacon. The eulogy of this great man which was read in the Prospectus appears even to have contributed to making known the works of the English philosopher to several persons. Thus, after an avowal so formal, it ought not to be permitted either to accuse us of plagiarism or to try to make us suspected of it.
II. However, this avowal does not preclude a great number of things, especially in the philosophic branch, which we in no way owe to Bacon. It is easy for the reader to evaluate these things. But in order to understand the relation and the difference between the two trees, one must see whether the arrangements are the same. In their material all encyclopedic trees necessarily resemble one another; only the order and arrangement of the branches can differentiate them. One finds virtually the same names of the sciences in the tree of Chambers as in ours; yet nothing could be more different.
III. It is not a question here of the reasons that we have had for following an order other than the one Bacon followed. We have given some of them; it would take too long to explain the others in detail, especially in a matter where the arbitrary could not be completely excluded. Be that as it may, it is for the philosophers, that is for a very small number of people, to judge us on this point.
IV. Some divisions, such as those of mathematics into pure and mixed mathematics, that we have in common with Bacon, are found everywhere, and consequently belong to everyone. Our division of medicine is from Boerhaave, as was announced in the Prospectus.
V. Finally, since we have made some changes in the tree of the Prospectus, those who would like to compare that tree with Bacon's should pay attention to these changes.
VI. These are the principles with which one should begin in order to make a somewhat equitable and philosophic comparison of the two trees.
General System of Human Knowledge According to Chancellor Bacon
General division of human science into History, Poetry, and Philosophy, according to the three faculties of the understanding: memory, imagination, reason.
Bacon observes that this division can also apply to theology. In one part of the Prospectus this latter idea was followed. But it was abandoned afterward because it appeared more ingenious than solid.
I.
Division of history into natural and civil. Natural history is divided into history of the productions of nature, the history of the deviations in nature, the history of the uses of nature or of the arts.
Second division of natural history, drawn from its end and from its use, into history proper and reasoned history.
Division of productions of nature into history of celestial things, of meteors, of the air, of the land, and sea, of the elements, of the particular species of individual beings.
Divisions of civil history into ecclesiastical, literary, and civil history proper.
First division of civil history proper into memoirs, antiquities, and complete history.
Division of complete history into chronicles, lives, and relations [narrations].
Division of the history of the times into general and particular.
Other division of history of the times into annals and journals.
Second division of civil history into pure and mixed.
Division of ecclesiastical history into particular ecclesiastical history, history of prophecies, which contains the prophecy and the accomplishment, and history of what Bacon calls Nemesis or Providence, that is to say, of the accord which is sometimes noticed between the revealed will of God and his secret will.
Division of the part of history which is concerned with the notable sayings of men into letters and apophthegms.
II.
Division of Poetry into narrative, dramatic, and parabolic.
III.
General division of science into sacred theology and philosophy.
Division of philosophy into science of God, science of nature, science of man.
Primary philosophy or science of axioms, which extends to all the branches of philosophy. Other branch of that primary philosophy, which treats transcendent qualities of beings, little, much, like, different, being, non-being, etc.
Science of angels and of spirits, continuation of the science of God, or natural theology.
Division of the science of nature or natural philosophy into speculative and practical.
Division of speculative science of nature into particular physics and metaphysics; the first having for its object the efficient cause and matter; and metaphysics, the final cause and form.
Division of physics into science of the principles of things, science of the formation of things or of the world, and science of the variety of things.
Division of science of the variety of things into science of concrete things and science of abstract things.
Division of science of concrete things into the same branches as natural history.
Division of the science of abstractions into the science of particular properties of bodies, such as density, lightness, weight, elasticity, softness, etc., and science of movements, of which Chancellor Bacon makes a rather long enumeration conforming to the ideas of the scholastics.
Branches of speculative philosophy, which consist in natural problems and in the sentiments of ancient philosophers.
Division of metaphysics into science of forms and science of final causes.
Division of practical science of nature into mechanics and natural magic.
Branches of the practical science of nature, which consist in the enumeration of human, natural or artificial riches that men enjoy and that they have enjoyed, and the catalogue of Polychrestes.
Considerable branch of natural philosophy, speculative as well as practical, called mathematics. Division of mathematics into pure and mixed. Division of pure mathematics into geometry and arithmetic. Division of mixed mathematics into perspective, music, astronomy, cosmology, architecture, science of machines, and several others.
Division of the science of man into science of man proper and civil science.
Division of science of man into science of the human body and science of the human soul.
Division of the science of the human body into medicine, cosmetics, athletics, and science of pleasures of the senses.
Division of medicine into three parts, art of preserving health, art of curing sicknesses, art of prolonging life. Painting, music, etc., branch of the science of pleasures.
Division of the science of the soul into science of the divine afflatus whence came the reasonable soul, and the science of the irrational soul, which we have in common with the brutes and is produced from the clay of the earth.
Another division of the science of the soul into science of the substance of the soul, science of its faculties, and science of the usage and of the object of its faculties: from this last result artificial and natural divination, etc.
Division of faculties of the sensitive soul into movement and feeling.
Division of the science of the use and the object of the faculties of the soul into logic and ethics.
Division of logic into art of inventing, of judging, of remembering, and of communicating.
Division of the art of inventing into invention of sciences or of arts, and invention of arguments.
Division of the art of judging into judgment by induction and judgment by syllogism.
Division of the art of syllogism into analysis and principles for distinguishing easily the true from the false.
Science of analogy, branch of the art of judging.
Division of the art of remembering into science of that which can aid the memory, and science of the memory itself.
Division of the science of memory into prenotion and emblem.
Division of the science of communicating into science of the instrument of discourse, science of the method of discourse, and science of the ornaments of discourse, or rhetoric.
Division of the science of the instrument of discourse into general science of signs and into grammar, which is divided into science of language and science of writing.
Division of science of signs into hieroglyphics and gestures, and into real characters.
Second division of grammar into literary and philosophic.
Art of versification and prosody, branches of the science of language.
Art of deciphering, branch of the art of writing.
Criticism and pedagogy, branches of the art of communicating.
Division of ethics into science of the object which the soul should have for itself, that is to say of ethical good, and science of the improvement of the soul. The author makes many divisions in this subject which it is useless to recount.
Division of civil science into science of conversation, science of business, and science of the state. We omit its divisions.
The author finishes by some reflection on the use of sacred theology, which he does not divide into any branches.
Such is the tree of Chancellor Bacon in its natural order and without either dismemberment or mutilation. It can be seen that the category of logic is the one where we have followed him most closely, even though we have believed it necessary to make several changes. For the rest, we repeat that it is for the philosophers to judge us on those changes that we have made. Our other readers no doubt will take little part in this question, which was, however, necessary to clarify; and they will only remember the formal avowal that we have made in the Prospectus of having our principal obligation for our tree to Chancellor Bacon; an avowal which ought to reconcile to us any impartial and disinterested judge.