Excerpt from The Organization of Knowledge: An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis The implications of such an endeavor soon make evident the advisability of approaching the problem from an ele mentary level. It would require Inconceivable genius to do today what Aristotle did for the ancient world: organ ize and co-ordinate such diverse fields as physics, meteor ology, psychology, biology, ethics, and logic. These integrated general courses afford one of the few available sources of authoritative information, which at the same time is not so specific and technical as to demand special ized competence for an understanding of the description of scientific method and knowledge. Throughout this experimental Speculation, the assumption has remained dominant that the sciences must themselves be taken as the source of information about their content and method; philosophers and logicians have often been loath to grant this minimum of independence to their collaborators in the field of knowledge. In fact, it is this very independ ence of competence allotted to fields of scientific observa tion that poses the problem of organizing knowledge for action. The degree of competence which we now expect from any expert or specialist precludes the expectation that he will be an expert in more than an extremely limited area. This does not, of course, imply that the expert need confine his interest or attention wholly to the area of his expertness; but it does mean that the extent and complexity of knowledge have now become so great that to ambiv alize is to court the charge of inexpertness, and to gen eralize is to be convicted of the charge. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.