Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Catalogs, Inventories and Propaedias

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Logic and the Organization of Information

  • 1108 Accesses

Abstract

Charles Sanders Peirce’s distinction between types and tokens is drawn. A brief account is given of the relevant parts of the works of Plato and Aristotle leading to a presentation of the Ontological Square, of higher order properties or ‘metaproperties’, and of basic Aristotelian classification. Francis Bacon’s suggestions on Trees of Knowledge are contrasted with Aristotelian classification, and this leads to a discussion of the organization of encyclopaedias, in particular the conflict between alphabetical and thematic organization. The label ‘propaedia’ is adopted from its original use with Mortimer Adler and the 15th edition of the Encyclopedia Brittanica and it is used to denote topic-linked Directed Acyclic Graphs. These are a generalization of Trees of Knowledge, and they are a suitable structure to underpin topic tagging or annotation.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Adler MJ (1986) A guidebook to learning: for a lifelong pursuit of wisdom. Macmillan, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Auchter D (1999) The evolution of the encyclopaedia britannica: from the macropaedia to britannica online. Ref Serv Rev 27(3):291–299

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bäck AT (2000) Aristotle’s theory of predication. Brill Academic Publishers, Leiden

    Google Scholar 

  • Bacon F (1605) The advancement of learning. http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5500. Accessed 10 Oct 2010

  • Bacon F (1620) The great instauration. http://www.constitution.org/bacon/instauration.htm. Accessed 10 Oct 2010

  • Berg J (1982) Aristotle’s theory of definition. ATTI del Convegno Internazionale di Storia della Logica, San Gimignano, 4–8 Dec 1982, CLUEB, Bologna, 1983, pp 19–30

    Google Scholar 

  • Bradshaw LE (1981) Ephraim chambers’ cyclopedia. In: Kafker F (ed) Notable encyclopedias of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: nine predecessors of the Encyclopédie. The voltaire foundation, Oxford, pp 123–137

    Google Scholar 

  • Coleridge ST (1827) General introduction or preliminary treatise on method. In: Smedley E, Rose HJ, Henry R (eds) Encyclopaedia metropolitana; or, universal dictionary of knowledge, on an original plan: comprising the twofold advantage of a philosophical and an alphabetical arrangement., 26 vols. Fellowes B, Rivington J et al. 1827-45, vol 1, pp 1–43

    Google Scholar 

  • Cutter CA (1904) Rules for a dictionary catalog, 4th edn. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington

    Google Scholar 

  • d’Alembert JLR (1751) Preliminary discourse. Scholarly publishing office of the university of michigan library, 2009. Web Transactions of discourse préliminaire, Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, vol 1. Paris. http://quod.lib.umich.edu/d/did/. Accessed 2 Feb 2010

  • Diderot D (1765) Salon de . Essai sur la peinture. http://books.google.com/books?id=qJVAAAAAYAAJ. Accessed 10 Oct 2010

  • Gnoli C, Bosch M, Mazzocchi F (2007) A new relationship for multidisciplinary knowledge organization systems: dependence. In: Alvite-Díez M-L, Rodríguez-Bravo B (eds) Interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity in the organization of scientific knowledge. Universidad de León, Secretariado de Publicaciones, León, Spain, proceedings of the Eighth ISKO-Spain Conference 18-20 April 2007, pp 399–409. http://hdl.handle.net/10760/9558

  • Gnoli C (2008a) Categories and facets in integrative levels. Axiomathes 18(2):177–192

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gnoli C, Merli G, Pavan G, Bernuzzi E, Priano M (2008) Freely faceted classification for a web-based bibliographic archive. Paper presented at the repositories of knowledge in digital spaces: accessibility, sustainability, semantic interoperability: 11th German ISKO conference, Konstanz, 20–22 Feb 2008

    Google Scholar 

  • Grenon P (2003) BFO in a nutshell: a bi-categorial axiomatization for BFO and comparison with DOLCE. IFOMIS report 06 Dec 2003

    Google Scholar 

  • Grenon P, Smith B (2004) SNAP and SPAN: towards dynamic spatial ontology. Spatial Cognition Comput 4(1):69–104

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hjørland B (2008a) Core classification theory: a reply to Szostak. J Doc 64(3):333–342

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ifomis (2009) Basic formal ontology (BFO). http://www.ifomis.org/bfo. Accessed 10 Oct 2010

  • Kaiser JO (1911) Systematic indexing. Pitman, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Koestler A (1959) The sleepwalkers. Penguin, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Lenat DB (1996) From 2001 to 2001: common sense and the mind of HAL

    Google Scholar 

  • Lowe EJ (2006) The four category ontology. a metaphysical foundation for natural science. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Masolo C, Borgo S, Gangemi A, Guarino N, Oltramari A (2001) Wonderweb deliverable D18. http://wonderweb.semanticweb.org/deliverables/documents/D18.pdf.

  • McArthur T (1986) Worlds of reference: lexicography, learning and language from the clay tablet to the computer. Cambridge University Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Olson HA (2004) The ubiquitous hierarchy: an army to overcome the threat of a mob. Library Trends 52(3):604–616

    MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  • Ong WJ (1958) Ramus, method, and the decay of dialogue: from the art of discourse to the art of reason. Harvard University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Peirce CS (1906) Prolegomena to an apology for pragmaticism. In: Hartshorne C, Weiss P (eds) Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, vol 4. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, pp 530–572

    Google Scholar 

  • Piper R (2009) Extinct animals: an encyclopaedia of species that have disappeared during human history. Greenwood Press, Westport. doi:10.1336/0313349878

  • Plato (360 BCE-a) (2010) Phaedo. http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/phaedo.html. Accessed 10 Oct 2010

  • Plato (360 BCE-b) (2010) The republic. http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.html. Accessed 10 Oct 2010

  • Plato (360 BCE-c) (2010) Sophist. http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/sophist.html. Accessed 10 Oct 2010

  • Plato (370 BCE) (2010) Parminides. http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/parmenides.html. Accessed 10 Oct 2010

  • Reid T (1785) abstraction. In: Bennett JF (ed) Essays on the intellectual powers of man (redacted text)

    Google Scholar 

  • Russell B (1912) The problems of philosophy. Home University Library

    Google Scholar 

  • Russell B (1943) An outline of intellectual rubbish: a hilarious catalogue of organized and individual stupidity. Haldeman-Julius, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Schneider L (2009) The logic of the ontological square. Stud Logica 91(1):25–51. doi:10.1007/s11225-009-9165-6

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Selinger S (1976) Review: encyclopedic guides to the study of ideas: a review article. Library Q 46(4):440–447

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Smith B (2004) The logic of biological classification and the foundations of biomedical ontology. In: Westerståhl D (ed) Invited papers from the 10th international conference in logic methodology and philosophy of science. Elsevier North Holland, Oviedo 2003

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith B (2005) Against fantology. In: Reicher ME, Marek JC (eds) Experience and analysis. HPT and OBV, Wien, pp 153–170

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith R (2009) Aristotle’s logic. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2009/entries/aristotle-logic/%3E. Accessed 10 Oct 2010

  • Studtmann P (2008) Aristotle’s categories. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/aristotle-categories. Accessed 10 Oct 2010

  • Szostak R et al. (2007) The León manifesto. http://www.iskoi.org/ilc/leon.htm. Accessed 21 May 2011

  • Taylor AG (2007) An introduction to functional requirements for bibliographic records. In: Taylor AG (ed) FRBR: what it is and how it will affect our retrieval tools. Libraries Unlimited

    Google Scholar 

  • Weinberger D (2007) Everything is miscellaneous. Times Books, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Wetzel L (2006) Types and tokens. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/types-tokens/. Accessed 10 Oct 2010

  • Whitely S (1992) The circle of learning: encyclopaedia brittanica. In: Rettig J (ed) Distinguished classics of reference publishing. The Oryx Press, Phoenix, pp 77–88

    Google Scholar 

  • Wright A (2007) Glut: mastering information throughout the ages. Joseph Henry Press, Washington

    Google Scholar 

  • Yeo RR (1991) Reading encyclopedias: science and the organization of knowledge in british dictionaries of arts and sciences, 1730-1850. ISIS 82(1):24–49

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  • Yeo RR (1996) Ephraim chambers’s cyclopaedia (1728) and the tradition of commonplaces. J Hist Idea 57(1):157–175

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Information Resources and Library Science, The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

    Martin Frické

Authors
  1. Martin Frické
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2012 Springer Science+Business Media New York

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Frické, M. (2012). Catalogs, Inventories and Propaedias. In: Logic and the Organization of Information. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-3088-9_3

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-3088-9_3

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4614-3087-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-3088-9

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation