Structure
The Philosophical Dictionary is structured in the tradition of Bayle, Diderot and D'Alembert - that is to say, alphabetically ordered. Although this order helps readers more easily find articles, this was not meant to be a dictionary or encyclopaedia in the same totalizing way of D'Alembert's project. Voltaire's writing is neither objective nor varied in opinion; the same arguments are made throughout the Philosophical Dictionary emphasizing the point of his discontent.
Read more about this topic: Dictionnaire Philosophique
Famous quotes containing the word structure:
“There is no such thing as a language, not if a language is anything like what many philosophers and linguists have supposed. There is therefore no such thing to be learned, mastered, or born with. We must give up the idea of a clearly defined shared structure which language-users acquire and then apply to cases.”
—Donald Davidson (b. 1917)
“A committee is organic rather than mechanical in its nature: it is not a structure but a plant. It takes root and grows, it flowers, wilts, and dies, scattering the seed from which other committees will bloom in their turn.”
—C. Northcote Parkinson (1909–1993)
“Who says that fictions only and false hair
Become a verse? Is there in truth no beauty?
Is all good structure in a winding stair?
May no lines pass, except they do their duty
Not to a true, but painted chair?”
—George Herbert (1593–1633)