Diderot Encyclopedie System
Updated 2026-08-22
INTRODUCTION
English translation pending.
CORE DEFINITION
The system of knowledge organization underlying the Encyclopedie edited by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert between 1751 and 1772. Its tree of knowledge derives from three mental faculties: memory, which yields history; reason, which yields philosophy; and imagination, which yields poetry. The qualification is that the classification is anchored in the knowing subject rather than in objects or academic departments, and the work's internal cross-references turn the entries into a linked network. Its purpose was to circulate rational knowledge to a broad public.
SCAFFOLDING EFFECT
Reduce cognitive load
- Faculties framing: sort a body of knowledge by the mental operation it serves rather than by topic. - Link design: connect entries with cross-references so readers move along relationships instead of alphabet. - Audience test: ask whether the structure serves specialists or a general reader.
Anchor fast decisions
Classifying by faculty rather than by department places each item where the reader's mental operation would seek it, which makes the structure usable without prior training in a discipline. Cross-references then supply the connections that a tree cannot express, so a hierarchical backbone and a network of links work together to support both browsing and targeted lookup.
MINIMUM ACTION
In progress 0/1Practice this model in one real situation:
account_treeGenealogyexpand_more
menu_bookReferencesexpand_more
Source support: Explicit
- en.wikipedia.orghttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclop%C3%A9dieverified
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