Introduction to Part Ten:
Knowledge Become Self-conscious
by Mortimer J. Adler

The words universe and encyclopaedia have an obvious similarity of meaning. Both come from words-in the one case, Latin, in the other, Greek-that mean a totality or all-inclusive whole. Whether the universe is finite or infinite, and however it is constituted or organized, it embraces everything that is. Nothing lies outside it; everything that happens occurs within it. Can one say, with equal assurance, that the encyclopaedia is a similar totality or whole? Perhaps we cannot say that of any actual, historic encyclopaedia. But that is the ideal which all encyclopaedias attempt to embody. It is not just the similarity of the universe and the encyclopaedia as totalities or wholes that interests us, but also how these two wholes are related to each other. One of them, the universe, embraces not only everything that is, but also everything that is knowable. The other, the encyclopaedia, sets for itself the goal of reporting everything that is and can be known about the universe. The ones mirrored or reflected in the other-the macrocosm in the microcosm. The universe includes man-man a moving body, man a living organism, man a social animal, and man not only as a doer and seeker but also as a maker and knower of things. Among the things that man seeks to know and understand is his own knowledge-his abilities, efforts, and achievements in the sphere of knowing itself. Whether or Dot Aristotle was correct in saying that the highest form of intellectual activity is thinking about thinking itself, it is certainly true that "knowledge become self-conscious" is a distinctive characteristic of the human enterprise of knowing. We not only seek to know whatever can be known, but we also, reflexively, turn our knowing back upon itself when we pay attention to how we know what we know, the various ways in which we know, and the divisions or branches of our knowledge. The organization of the encyclopaedia-the way in which the branches of knowledge have been distinguished from one another and related to one another-has changed re arkably from age to age. In antiquity, before there were any real encyclopaedias, learned men envisaged the whole of human knowledge as having a certain structure of related parts or subdivisions. The organization of knowledge in medieval encyclopaedias exhibited quite a different pattern. Later encyclopaedias introduced still other changes in the picture; and that picture has changed in important respects during the last century and is undergoing further changes today. The new Britannica presents us with an outline of knowledge that is radically different in its fundamental framework and its organizational scheme from the outlines that might have been constructed for an ancient encyclopaedia-if there had been any such thing-or a medieval one. The Outline of Knowledge set forth in this Propadia volume is divided into ten parts, each of which is broken down into divisions and sections. Division by division, from Part One through Part Nine, the outline covers what we know about the universe with the help of such sciences as physics, chemistry, astronomy, geology, meteorology, biology, medicine, psychology, anthropology, sociology, political science, economics, and technology. It also covers what we know as a result of systematic study and scholarship in such fields as education, law, the arts, religion, and history. The knowledge of the universe that we possess by means of the disciplines mentioned above is outlined in Parts One through Nine and expounded in the articles to which the outline refers. What about Part Ten-the part to which this essay is an introduction? Where and how does that fit into the picture?
To some extent the answer has already been given. Here in Part Ten we are concerned with "knowledge become self-conscious"-with knowledge about knowledge-with our knowing turned, reflexively, back upon itself. Here it is not the knowable universe we are considering. It is, instead, the world of knowledge itself: its diverse disciplines, modes of inquiry, fields of scholarship or systematic study-in short, as the title of Part Ten indicates, the branches of knowledge. Whereas the other nine parts of the Outline of Knowledge cover what we know about the knowable universe, the outline of Part Ten covers what we know about the sciences or other disciplines whereby we know that which we know. The answer just given is not the whole answer to the question provoked by the special character of Part Ten. What we know about the various sciences and the diverse disciplines that comprise the world of knowledge almost always includes an account of the methods of inquiry, verification or demonstration, and argument employed by scientists or scholars in a particular field of knowledge. While interest in such matters does not exhaustively represent the concerns of logic, the science of logic does provide the underpinnings for our study of the methodology of the other learned disciplines, including history and philosophy as well as the various sciences. What we know about logic itself as a science-its history and, as it were, the philosophy of it-therefore properly belongs in the outline of Part Ten, together with an indication of the scope and content of the science itself. For a somewhat different reason mathematics is also treated here in the same way as logic. The knowledge attained by the mathematician has extraordinarily wide and diverse applicability in other spheres of inquiry and branches of knowledge-in most, if not all, of the natural sciences and in many of the social sciences. Like logic, mathematics belongs here not only for its usefulness in other sciences, but also for its own sake as a science. We are concerned with its content as well as with its method, history, and philosophy. In addition to logic and mathematics, two other disciplines occupy a special place in any consideration of the branches of knowledge. One is history; the other, philosophy. History as a field of study includes more than the history of peoples, of nations, of cultures, and of social institutions. It includes the history of human learning itself, of all the branches of knowledge. It includes not only the history of the natural and social sciences, but also the history of logic, of mathematics, of philosophy, and of history itself as one of the learned disciplines. And, in addition to there being a history of the study of history (i.e., historiography), there is also a logic of history (its methodology) and a philosophy of history. Like history, philosophy is operative in the study of all the other disciplines as well as of itself. Philosophy become self-conscious is concerned with questions about the nature and scope of philosophy, about whether it has a method or methods and a subject matter or subject matters peculiarly its own. Philosophy is also concerned about its own historical development and, in that history, about its changing relationship to other disciplines, especially to religion and to the sciences. As there is a history and a philosophy of history, so there is a philosophy of philosophy and a history of philosophy-a statement which probably cannot be made about any other two disciplines in the entire range of the branches of knowledge. In addition, as each of the other disciplines has a history, so there is a philosophy of each of the other disciplines. We have already noted that there is a philosophy of logic and of mathematics. So, too, there is a philosophy of science in general and of the different sciences in particular; and also a philosophy of education, of law, of art, and of religion.
All of this, however, does not exhaust the content of philosophy, any more than the history of all the branches of knowledge exhausts the content of history, or any more than the application of logic and mathematics to other disciplines exhausts their content as disciplines with knowledge to offer. But in the case of philosophy, as not in the case of logic and mathematics, it is sometimes questioned whether it can rightly claim to offer us knowledge of the universe as well as knowledge about knowledge itself and an understanding of the various branches of knowledge. That question, together with the question of how the knowledge that philosophers claim to have stands in relation to other forms of knowledge, constitutes what is, perhaps, the most fundamental problem dealt with by philosophers when they philosophize about philosophy itself. Whether or not the knowledge they claim to have is comparable in its validity to the knowledge achieved in other spheres of inquiry, philosophy, like science, covers a wide range of subject matters and involves a large number of distinct subdivisions, each with its own problems and controversies (e.g., metaphysics, philosophy of nature, epistemology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of man, ethics, political philosophy, and aesthetics). Concerning the whole range of disciplines that are represented in an exhaustive inventory of the branches of knowledge, three questions stand out as the most challenging. Of these, the first two have been debated over and over
again-in earlier epochs as well as in our own century, and in the context of organizations of knowledge quite different from that which prevails or is acceptable today. One is the question about whether the various brands of knowledge can or should be arranged in a hierarchal order, in an ascending scale from lower to higher, or from less to more fundamental. In antiquity they were so arranged; as, for example, in Aristotle's ordering of the speculative sciences, beginning with physics and rising through mathematics to metaphysics as the science of first principles ciples and ultimate causes; and in his characterization to politics as the architectonic or controlling discipline in the sphere of practical knowledge, directive of human action So, too, in the Middle Ages, a hierarchical organization prevailed, in which theology was regarded as queen of the sciences, philosophy as its handmaiden, with all the other disciplines contributing their portions of knowledge for the greater glory of God and for the better understanding of man's destiny under Divine Providence. If, in accordae with the prevailing view today, a hierarchical order is reojected, is there any other order to replace it, and in term; of what criteria or principles can such an alternative be constructed? Is there, as the introductory essay in this volume suggests, a circle of learning instead of a hierarchy of the branches of knowledge-a circle in which no point is either a beginning or an end, and lines can be drawn from any point to any other? The second question, to which different answers have been given at different times and to which conflicting answers are still being given today, asks about the coherence of the world of knowledge as a whole. Do all its constituent parts-its various component disciplines or branches of knowledge-adhere together harmoniously, each somehow complementing the other? Or, on the contrary, is the world of knowledge torn asunder by irremediable conflicts-by territorial disputes, by conflicting claims to sovereignty, by assertions and denials of legitimacy? Underlying whatever answers may be given to these questions, a deeper difference of opinion may exist concerning the unity of truth itself. If, for example, there is some truth in science and some truth in philosophy or in religion, must these diverse approximations of whatever truth man can possess be consistent with one another? Or, on the contrary, can there be some truth in science and some in philosophy or in religion, even though the truth of the one stands in sharp conflict to the truth of the other? Can there be, in short a multiplicity of truths, each of which deserves that name, but each of which must be kept out of contact with the others, by being isolated in logic-tight compartments? Unlike the two preceding questions, the third is one that has come to the forefront only recently. It concerns what many contemporary commentators regard as an unfortunate rift in the realm of knowledge-the chasm between the sciences, on the one hand, and the humanities, on the other. In the long history of the latter term, different disciplines have been grouped together on the side of the humanities and in contradistinction to the sciences, To day, the humanities group is generally thought to include language and literature, the fine arts, history, philosophy, and religion. It is assumed that there are fundamental difference, in method or approach and in criteria of validity, between thehumanistic disciplines, on the one hand, and the sciences, both natural and social, on the other. Of course there are, but they are not entirely clear. By reference to methodology or to criteria of validity, certain of the disciplines (idled humanistic closely resemble those called scientific. For example, mathematicians and logicians do their work by sitting still and thinking, not by undertaking experiments or by going out into the field to collect data or do research. Philosophy is like them in this respect; but mathematics and logic are usually regarded as sciences, whereas philosophy is gr uped with the humanities. Furthermore, the criteria of validity thought to be applicable to philosophy do not operate as criteria for judging the excellence of literature or of other fine arts, yet all three are classified as humanities. Supposing that some line can be clearly drawn to divide the human ties from the sciences, the problem that agitates those who contemplate the world of learning is whether it is one world or two-whether the rift or chasm that separates the sciences from the humanities involves an iron curtain that prevents communication between them. It is not within the purpose or the province of this essay to provide an answer to that question. Nevertheless, an answer would appear to be suggested by the conception of the encyclopaedia as a totality, as an organized whole. That conception would seem to favour the view that, in the circle of learning, there are no impenetrable barriers to communication or unbridgeable breaks in continuity. Underlying it is the faith that the whole world of k owledge is a single universe of discourse.