Tree of knowledge (philosophy)
{{Short description|Metaphor used in philosophical analogies}}
{{for|the binary tree in computer science|Cartesian tree}}
The tree of knowledge or tree of philosophy is a metaphor presented by the French philosopher René Descartes in the preface to the French translation of his work Principles of Philosophy. He describes the relations among the different parts of philosophy (including natural philosophy) in a tree structure. The tree's roots are metaphysics, its trunk is physics, and its branches are all other "sciences" (including humanities), the principal of which are medicine, mechanics and morals.{{cite web |last1=Hatfield |first1=Gary |title=René Descartes |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes/ |website=The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University |date=2018}}{{cite web |last1=Skirry |first1=Justin |title=Descartes, Rene |url=https://iep.utm.edu/descarte/ |website=Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy}}
This image is often assumed to show Descartes' break with the past and with the categorization of knowledge of the schools.{{cite journal |last1=Ariew |first1=Roger |title=Descartes and the tree of knowledge |journal=Synthese |date=1 July 1992 |volume=92 |issue=1 |pages=101–116 |doi=10.1007/BF00413744 |s2cid=46962659 |url=https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00413744?noAccess=true |language=en |issn=1573-0964|url-access=subscription }}
Description
Descartes is often regarded as the first thinker to emphasize the use of reason to develop the natural sciences.
{{cite book |last=Grosholz |first=Emily |title=Cartesian method and the problem of reduction |author-link=Emily Grosholz |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2EtAVLU1eIAC&pg=PA1 |isbn=978-0-19-824250-5 |year=1991 |publisher=Oxford University Press |quote=But contemporary debate has tended to...understand [Cartesian method] merely as the 'method of doubt'...I want to define Descartes' method in broader terms...to trace its impact on the domains of mathematics and physics as well as metaphysics.}} For him, philosophy was a thinking system that embodied all knowledge, as he related in a letter to a French translator:{{cite web |last=Descartes |first=René |translator-last=Veitch |translator-first=John |translator-link=John Veitch (poet)| url=http://www.classicallibrary.org/descartes/principles/preface.htm |title=Letter of the Author to the French Translator of the Principles of Philosophy serving for a preface |access-date= 6 December 2011}}
{{blockquote|Thus, all Philosophy is like a tree, of which Metaphysics is the root, Physics the trunk, and all the other sciences the branches that grow out of this trunk, which are reduced to three principals, namely, Medicine, Mechanics, and Ethics. By the science of Morals, I understand the highest and most perfect which, presupposing an entire knowledge of the other sciences, is the last degree of wisdom.}}
See also
References
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External links
- {{cite web |last1=Parvizian |first1=Saja |title=Descartes: Ethics |url=https://iep.utm.edu/desc-eth/ |website=Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy}}
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Category:Concepts in epistemology
Category:Concepts in metaphysics