Propædia

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The one-volume Propædia is the first of three parts of the 15th edition of Encyclopædia Britannica, the other two being the 12-volume Micropædia and the 17-volume Macropædia. The Propædia is intended as a topical organization of the Britannica's contents, complementary to the alphabetical organization of the other two parts. Introduced in 1974 with the 15th edition, the Propædia and Micropædia were intended to replace the Index of the 14th edition; however, after widespread criticism, the Britannica restored Index as a two-volume set in 1985. The core of the Propædia is its Outline of Knowledge, which seeks to provide a logical framework for all human knowledge; however, the Propædia also has several appendices listing the staff members, advisors and contributors to all three parts of the Britannica.

Contents 1 The Outline of Knowledge 2 Contributors to the Outline of Knowledge 3 See also 4 References

[edit] The Outline of Knowledge

Analogous to the Britannica itself, the Outline has three types of goals: epistemological, educational and organizational.^[1] In the epistemological arena, it seeks to provide a systematic, strictly hierarchical categorization of all possible human knowledge, a 20th-century analog of the Great Chain of Being and Francis Bacon's outline in Instauratio magna. In the educational arena, the Propædia lays out a course of study for each major discipline, a "roadmap" for a student who wishes to learn a field in its entirety. Finally, the Propædia serves as an expanded Table of Contents for the Micropædia and Macropædia; according to its designer, Mortimer J. Adler, all the articles of the Britannica were commissioned based on the Outline of Knowledge.^[1]

The Outline has ten Parts, each with an introductory essay. The authors of these essays are listed below in the final column of Table 1. The same ten men were responsible for developing the outline for their Part, in consultation and collaboration with a handful of other scholars; in all, 86 men and one woman were involved in developing the Outline of Knowledge (see Table 2 below).

Table 1: The Ten Parts of the Outline of Knowledge in the Propædia

Part	Title	Major subjects	# of Divisions	# of Sections	Total #	Lead author
01Part One	Matter and Energy	Physics, Chemistry, Astronomy	3	2,8,3	13	Nigel Calder
02Part Two	The Earth	Geology, Geography, Oceanography	4	4, 3, 2, 3	12	Peter John Wyllie
03Part Three	Life on Earth	Taxonomy, Molecular and cell biology, Physiology, Neuroscience, Ecology	5	3, 3, 9, 2, 5	22	René Dubos
04Part Four	Human Life	Human evolution, Medicine, Psychology	3	2, 4, 6	12	Loren Eiseley
05Part Five	Human Society	Sociology, Economics, Politics, Law, Education	6	4, 4, 6, 4, 3, 2	23	Harold D. Lasswell
06Part Six	Art	Classification; criticism; various arts	2	3, 9	12	Mark Van Doren
07Part Seven	Technology	History and elements of technology; various technologies	3	2, 5, 8	15	Lord Peter Ritchie Calder
08Part Eight	Religion	General observations; various religions	2	2, 9	11	Wilfred Cantwell Smith
09Part Nine	The History of mankind	History organized by continent and epoch	7	2, 4, 7, 5, 2, 11, 8	39	Jacques Barzun
10Part Ten	The Branches of Knowledge	Logic, Mathematics, Science, Humanities, Philosophy, Library science	6	2, 3, 7, 2, 3, 1	18	Mortimer J. Adler

Each of the Parts is divided into 2-7 Divisions, which are themselves divided into 2-11 Sections. These Sections form the basic categories of knowledge in the schema, and each one is given a special three-part numerical code to encode its place in the Outline's hierarchy. For example, the section "Military Technology" has the code "736" indicating that it is the 6th Section of the 3rd Division ("Major Fields of Technology") of the 7th Part ("Technology"). Forward slashes are used when a Part, Division or Section has more than one digit; for example, the Section "History and Philosophy of Logic" has the code "10/11" indicating that it is the 1st section of the 1st Division ("Logic") of the 10th Part ("The Branches of Knowledge").

Other encyclopedias have provided analogous outlines of knowledge. In the Preface to the famous Encyclopédie (published 1751-1766), Diderot provides a roadmap to the knowledge of his time. Inspired by that example, in a letter dated 15 November 1812, Dugald Stewart proposed to Archibald Constable, the owner and publisher of the Britannica, that the supplement to its 5th edition should begin with a series of dissertations that outlined and organized the knowledge of their time. A more modern example is Wikipedia, which uses a system of categories to view the network of interrelations among its subjects;^[2] although similar to the Propædia in purpose and terseness, the Wikipedia category network is not strictly hierarchical. Wikipedia also has portals intended to provide readers with an overview of a topic.^[3]

The Outline was an eight-year project of Mortimer J. Adler, published 32 years after he published a similar effort (The Syntopicon) that attempts to provide an overview of the relationships among the "Great Ideas" in Adler's Great Books series. (The Great Books were also published by the Encyclopædia Britannica Inc.) Adler stresses in his book, A Guidebook to Learning: For a Lifelong Pursuit of Wisdom, that the ten categories should not be taken as hierarchical but as circular.

“	The whole of the Propædia’s synoptic outline of knowledge deserves to be read carefully. It represents a twentieth-century scheme for the organization of knowledge that is more comprehensive than any other and that also accommodates the intellectual heterodoxy of our time.	”
—Mortimer J. Adler, in A Guidebook (pp. 91-2).

[edit] Contributors to the Outline of Knowledge

Table 2: Contributors to the Outline of Knowledge in the Propædia^[4]

Name	Date of birth	Date of death	Part of Outline	Description	Index
Mortimer J. Adler	1902	2001	All Parts	Editor	1
Charles Van Doren	1926		All Parts	Associate editor; Editorial Vice President of Encyclopædia Britannica Inc. (1973-1982)	2
William J. Gorman		1982	All Parts	Associate editor; Senior Fellow of the Institute for Philosophical Research	3
A. G. W. Cameron			Matter and Energy	Professor of Astronomy, Harvard University	4
Farrington Daniels	1889	1972	Matter and Energy	Professor of Chemistry, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison	5
Morton Hamermesh			Matter and Energy	Professor of Physics, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis (1975-1986)	6
Vincent E. Parker			Matter and Energy	Emeritus Professor of Physics, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona; Dean, School of Science (1967-1977)	7
Richard J. Chorley	1927	2002	The Earth	Professor of Geography, University of Cambridge; Fellow of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge	8
William Stelling von Arx			The Earth	Senior Scientist, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (1968-1978)	9
Peter John Wyllie			The Earth	Professor of Geology and Chairman, Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, California Institute of Technology	10
N. J. Berrill			Life on Earth	Strathcone Professor of Zoology, McGill University (1946-1965)	11
V. G. Dethier		1993	Life on Earth	Gilbert L. Woodside Professor of Zoology, University of Massachusetts at Amherst (1975-1993)	12
Louis S. Goodman			Life on Earth	Distinguished Professor of Pharmacology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City	13
Garrett Hardin	1915	2003	Life on Earth	Emeritus Professor of Human Ecology, University of California, Santa Barbara	14
Ernst Walter Mayr	1904	2005	Life on Earth	Alexander Agassiz Professor Emeritus of Zoology, Harvard University	15
John Alexander Moore			Life on Earth	Emeritus Professor of Biology, University of California, Riverside	16
Theodore T. Puck			Life on Earth	Professor of Biology, Biophysics and Genetics; Distinguished Professor of Medicine, University of Colorado, Health Sciences Center; Director, Eleanor Roosevelt Institute for Cancer Research	17
Birgit Vennesland			Life on Earth	Head, Vennesland Research Laboratory, Max Planck Society (1970-1981); Director, Max Planck Institute for Cell Physiology, Berlin (1968-1970)	18
Paul B. Weisz			Life on Earth	Professor of Biology, Brown University	19
Ralph H. Wetmore			Life on Earth	Emeritus Professor of Botany, Harvard University	20
Emil H. White			Life on Earth	D. Mead Johnson Professor of Chemistry, Johns Hopkins University	21
Wilfrid Edward Le Gros Clark	1895	1971	Human Life	Professor of Anatomy, University of Oxford	22
Russell S. Fisher		1985	Human Life	Chief Medical Examiner, State of Maryland; Professor of Forensic Pathology, University of Maryland Medical School, Baltimore	23
F. Clark Howell			Human Life	Professor of Antropology, University of California, Berkeley	24
Gregory A. Kimble			Human Life	Emeritus Professor of Psychology, Duke University	25
Erich Klinghammer			Human Life	Associate Professor of Psychology, Purdue University	26
Warren Sturgis McCulloch	1899	1969	Human Life	Staff member, Research Laboratory of Electronics, MIT (1952-1969)	27
William J. McGuire			Human Life	Professor of Psychology, Yale University	28
Peter Medawar	1915	1987	Human Life	Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, 1960; Jodrell Professor of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy, University College London (1951-1962); Director, National Institute, Mill Hill, London (1962-1971); Scientific staff member, Medical Research Council, England (1971-1984)	29
William J. Baumol	1922		Human Society	Professor of Economics, New York University; Emeritus Professor of Economics, Princeton University	30
Daniel Bell	1919		Human Society	Henry Ford II Professor Emeritus of Social Science, Harvard University	31
Guiliano H. Bonfante			Human Society	Former Professor of Linguistics, University of Turin	32
Kenneth E. Boulding	1910	1993	Human Society	Distinguished Professor of Economics, University of Colorado, Boulder	33
Lewis A. Coser	1913	2003	Human Society	Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Sociology, SUNY, Stony Brook	34
Sigmund Diamond			Human Society	Giddings Professor Emeritus of Sociology, Columbia University	35
Carl J. Friedrich	1901	1984	Human Society	Eaton Professor of the Science of Government, Harvard University (1955-1971)	36
Paul Mundy			Human Society	Professor of Sociology and Chairman, Department of Criminal Justice, Loyola University Chicago	37
Kenyon E. Poole		1988	Human Society	Professor of Economics, Northwestern University	38
C. Herman Pritchett			Human Society	Emeritus Professor of Political Science, University of California, Santa Barbara and University of Chicago	39
Sol Tax	1907	1995	Human Society	Professor of Anthropology, University of Chicago (1948-1976); Director, Center for the Study of Man, Smithsonian Institution	40
Charles Raymond Whittlesey			Human Society	Emeritus Professor of Finance and Economics, University of Pennsylvania	41
Rudolf Arnheim	1904		Art	Emeritus professor of Psychology of Art, Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard University	42
Robert Jesse Charleston		1994	Art	Keeper, Department of Ceramics, Victoria and Albert Museum (1963-1976)	43
Clifton Fadiman	1904	1999	Art	Member, Board of Editors, Encyclopædia Britannica	44
Francis Fergusson	1904	1986	Art	Professor of Comparative Literature, Rutgers University (1953-1969); Professor of Comparative Literature, Princeton University (1973-1981)	45
John Gloag		1981	Art	Novelist and writer on architecture and industrial design	46
Richard Griffith		1969	Art	Curator, Museum of Modern Art Film Library (1951-1965); Lecturer on Motion Pictures, Wesleyan University (1967-1969)	47
Richard Hoggart	1918		Art	Professor of English, University of Birmingham (1962-1973); Warden, Goldsmiths' College, University of London (1976-1984)	48
Edward Lockspeiser		1973	Art	Officier d'Académie, Paris; Writer and broadcaster on music.	49
Roy McMullen		1984	Art	Author, critic, and art historian	50
Leonard B. Meyer	1918		Art	Benjamin Franklin Professor of Music and Humanities, University of Pennsylvania	51
Michael Morrow		1994	Art	Music editor, Encyclopædia Britannica; Director, Musica Reservata, London	52
Beaumont Newhall	1908	1993	Art	Director, Eastman Kodak House (1958-1971); Visiting Professor of Art, University of New Mexico (1971-1984)	53
Herbert Read	1893	1968	Art	Watson Gordon Professor of Fine Art, University of Edinburgh (1931-1933); editor, The Burlington Magazine (1933-1939); Charles Eliot Norton professor of Poetry, Harvard University (1953-1954)	54
Richard Roud		1989	Art	Program Director, London (1959-1963) and New York (1963-1987) Film Festivals; Film critic, The Guardian (1963-1969)	55
George Savage		1982	Art	Art consultant; author of Porcelain Through the Ages, Pottery Through the Ages, and other works	56
Wolfgang Stechow		1974	Art	Professor of Fine Arts, Oberlin College (1940-1963)	57
Joshua C. Taylor		1981	Art	William Rainey Harper Professor of Humanities and Professor of Art, University of Chicago (1963-1974); Director, National Collection of Fine Arts, Smithsonian Institution	58
Everard M. Upjohn		1978	Art	Professor of Fine Arts, Columbia University (1951-1970)	59
Pierre Verlet			Art	Chief Curator, Cluny Museum (1945-1965); Chief Curator, National Museum of Sèvres Porcelain (1945-1965); Chief Curator of Art Objects from the Middle Ages to the Modern Period, Louvre Museum (1945-1965)	60
René Wellek	1903	1995	Art	Sterling Professor of Comparative Literature, Yale University (1952-1972)	61
Glynne William Gladstone Wickham			Art	Emeritus Professor of Drama, University of Bristol; Dean, Faculty of Arts (1970-1972)	62
Raymond (Henry) Williams		1988	Art	Professor of Drama, University of Cambridge (1974-1983); Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge (1961-1988)	63
Paul S. Wingert		1974	Art	Professor of Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University	64
Bruno Zevi	1918	2000	Art	Professor of Architectural History, University of Rome (1963-1979)	65
Konstantinos Apostolos Doxiadis		1975	Technology	Chairman, Doxiadis Associates International; Chairman, Board of Directors, Doxiadis Associates, Inc.; Washington D.C. Chairman, Board of Directors, Athens Technological Organization; President, Athens Center of Ekistics	66
Eugene S. Ferguson	1916	2004	Technology	Emeritus Professor of History, University of Delaware; Curator of Technology, Hagley Museum, Greenville Delaware	67
Melvin Kranzberg	1917	1995	Technology	Callaway Professor of the History of Technology, Georgia Institute of Technology (1972-1988)	68
Harvey G. Mehlhouse			Technology	Vice President, Western Electric Company, New York City (1965-1969); President (1969-1971); Chairman of the Board (1971-1972)	69
Robert Smith Woodbury		1983	Technology	Professor of the History of Technology, MIT	70
Arthur Llewellyn Basham	1914	1986	Religion	Professor of Asian Civilizations, Australian National University	71
James T. Burtchaell			Religion	Professor of Theology, University of Notre Dame; Provost (1970-1977)	72
J. V. Langmead Casserley		1978	Religion	Professor of Apologetics, Seabury-Western Theological Seminary	73
Ichiro Hori		1974	Religion	Professor of the History of Religions, Seijo University and Kokugakuin University	74
Jaroslav Jan Pelikan			Religion	Sterling Professor of History, Yale University; President, American Academy of Arts and Sciences	75
Jakob Josef Petuchowski		1991	Religion	Sol and Arlene Bronstein Professor of Judeo-Christian Studies, Hebrew Union College, Jewish Institute of Religion, Cincinnati (1981-1991)	76
Jacques Barzun	1907		The History of Mankind	University Professor Emeritus, Columbia University; Dean of Faculties and Provost (1958-1967)	77
Otto Allen Bird			The Branches of Knowledge	Emeritus Professor of Arts and Letters, University of Notre Dame	78
Wing-Tsit Chan	1901	1994	The Branches of Knowledge	Professor of Chinese Philosophy and Culture, Dartmouth College (1942-1966); Anna R. D. Gillespie Professor of Philosophy, Chatham College (1966-1982)	79
William H. Dray			The Branches of Knowledge	Emeritus Professor of Philosophy and of History, University of Ottawa	80
Norwood Hanson		1967	The Branches of Knowledge	Professor of Philosophy, Yale University (1963-1967)	81
J. H. Hexter	1910	1996	The Branches of Knowledge	Charles L. Stillé Professor of History, Yale University (1967-1978); Distinguished Historian in residence, Washington University (1978-1986)	82
Ernan V. McMullin			The Branches of Knowledge	Professor of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame	83
Karl Menger	1902	1985	The Branches of Knowledge	Professor of Mathematics, Illinois Institute of Technology (1946-1971)	84
Arthur Norman Prior		1969	The Branches of Knowledge	Fellow, Balliol College, University of Oxford; Professor of Philosophy, Manchester University (1959-1966)	85
Nicholas Rescher	1928		The Branches of Knowledge	University Professor of Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh; editor, American Philosophical Quarterly	86
Seymour Schuster			The Branches of Knowledge	Professor of Mathematics, Carleton College	87

[edit] See also

• Encyclopædia Britannica
• Micropædia, Macropædia
• History of the Encyclopædia Britannica

[edit] References