(h) No one can provide a global description of the whole rhizome; not only because the rhizome is multidimensionaly compli-cated, but also because its structure changes through the time; moreover, in a structure in which every node can be connected with every other node, there is also the possibility of contradictory inferences: if p, then any possible consequence of p is possible, including the one that, instead of leading to new consequences, leads again to p, so that it is true at the same time both that if p, then q and that ifp, then non-q.
(i) A structure that cannot be described globally can only be described as a potential sum of local descriptions,
(j) In a structure without outside, the describers can look at it only by the inside; as Rosenstiehl (1971, 1980) suggests, a labyrinth of this kind is a myopic algorythm; at every node of it no one can have the global vision of all its possibilities but only the local vision of the closest ones: every local description of the net is a hypothesis, subject to falsification, about its further course; in a rhizome blindness is the only way of seeing (locally), and thinking means to grope one’s way. This is the type of labyrinth we are interested in. This repre-sents a model (a Model Q) for an encyclopedia as a regulative semiotic hypothesis.
A midway solution between the tree and the rhizome was the one proposed by the Encyclopedists of the Enlightenment. Trying to trans-form the tree into a map, the eighteenth-century encyclopedia, the Encyclopedie of Diderot and of d’Alembert, made in fact the rhizome thinkable.
In respect to its hierarchical structure, the eighteenth-century ency-clopedia was not necessarily different from a tree. What does make it distinct is, in the first place, the hypothetical nature of the tree: it does not reproduce a presumed structure of the world, but presents itself as the most economic solution with which to confront and resolve a particu-lar problem of the reunification of knowledge. In the second place, the encyclopedist knows that the tree organizes, yet impoverishes, its con-tent, and he hopes to determine as precisely as he can the intermediary paths between the various nodes of the tree so that little by little it is transformed into a geographical chart or a map.
D’Alembert, in his preliminary discourse on the Encyclopedie, fur-nished information about the criteria for the organization of the work. In one respect, he develops the metaphor of the tree; in another, he puts it into question, speaking instead of a word map and a labyrinth:
The general system of the sciences and arts is a kind of labyrinth, a tortu-ous road which the spirit faces without knowing too much about the path to be followed. But this disorder (however philosophical it be for the mind) would disfig-ure, or at least would entirely degrade an encyclopedic tree in which it would be represented. Our system of knowledge is ultimately made up of different branches, many of which have a simple meeting place and since in departing from this point it is not possible to simultaneously embark on all the roads, the determination of the choice is up to the nature of the individ-ual spirit. . . . However, the same thing does not occur in the encyclopedic order of our knowledge which consists in reuniting this knowledge in the smallest possible space and in placing the philosopher above this vast labyrinth in a very elevated point of perspective which would enable him to view with a single glance his object of speculation and those operations which he can perform on those objects to distinguish the general branches of human knowledge and the points dividing it and uniting it and even to detect at times the secret paths which unite it.
It is a kind of world map which must show the principal countries, their position and their reciprocal dependencies. It must show the road in a straight line which goes from one point to another; a road often interrupted by a thousand obstacles which might only be noticed in each country by travelers and its inhabitants and which could only be shown in very detailed maps. These partial maps will be the different articles of the encyclopedia and the tree or the figurative system will be its world map. Yet like overall maps of the world on which we live, the objects are more or less adjacent to one another and they present different perspectives according to the point of view of the geographer com-posing the map. In a similar way, the form of the encyclopedic tree will depend on the perspective we impose on it to examine the cultural uni-verse. One can therefore imagine as many different systems of human knowledge as there are cartographical projections.
D’Alembert says with great clarity that what an encyclopedia repre-sents has no center. The encyclopedia is a pseudotree, which assumes the aspect of a local map, in order to represent, always transitorily and locally, what in fact is not representable because it is a rhizome—-an inconceivable globality.
The universe of semiosis, that is, the universe of human culture, must be conceived as structured like a labyrinth of the third type:
(a) It is structured according to a network of interpretants.
(b) It is virtually infinite because it takes into account multiple interpretations realized by differ-ent cultures: a given expression can be interpreted as many times, and in as many ways, as it has been actually interpreted in a given cultural framework; it is infinite because every discourse about the encyclopedia casts in doubts the previous structure of the encyclopedia itself,
(c) It does not register only ‘truths’ but, rather, what has been said about the truth or what has been believed to be true as well as what has been relieved to be false or imaginary or legendary, provided that a given culture had elaborated some discourse about some subject matter; the encyclopedia does not register only the ‘historical’ truth that Napoleon died on Saint Helena but also the ‘literary’ truth that Juliet died in Verona.
(d) Such a semantic encyclopedia is never accomplished and exists only as a regulative idea; it is only on the basis of such a regulative idea that one is able actually to isolate a given portion of the social encyclo-pedia so far as it appears useful in order to interpret certain portions of actual discourses (and texts),
(e) Such a notion of encyclopedia does not deny the existence of structured knowledge; it only suggests that such a knowledge cannot be recognized and organized as a global system; it provides only ‘local’ and transitory systems of knowledge, which can be contradicted by alternative and equally ‘local’ cultural organizations; every attempt to recognize these local organizations as unique and ‘global’— ignoring their partiality—produces an ideological bias.
The Porphyrian tree tried to tame the labyrinth. It did not succeed because it could not, but many contemporary theories of language are still trying to revive this impossible dream.
2.3.6. The dictionary as a tool
After having demonstrated that the theoretical idea of a semantic repre-sentation in the format of a dictionary is untenable, we should, however, remind ourselves that dictionary-like representations can be used as suit-able tools.
The system of hyperonyms provided by a dictionary represents a way to save ‘definitional energies’. When one says that a rose is a flower, one does not suggest that ‘flower’ is a primitive that cannot be interpreted; one simply assumes that, for the sake of economy, in that specific con-text, all the properties that are commonly assigned to flowers should not be challenged. Otherwise, one would say a rose is a flower, but. . . .
In the example of husband and wife provided above (2.3.4), the hus-band knows that there is no absolute and unique representation of man, but—exactly because of this —he is obliged to figure out an ad hoc dictionary-like local representation in order to ensure the good standing of that conversational interaction. In Chapter 3 of this book we shall see that, in order to generate and to interpret metaphors, according to the model proposed, one must rely also on dictionary-like representations. D’Alembert has suggested that, in order to make up a flesh-and-body encyclopedia, one certainly knows that each of its items can be included in different classes according to the description under which it is con-sidered, but at the end (and even though transitorily) an item must be included in a given class, thus ‘freezing’ its representation in the format of a provisional dictionary.
When Putnam lists ‘liquid’ among the semantic markers of water, he uses that hyperonym because he assumes that, in order to provide a definition of water, he is not interested in challenging all the properties that are usually assigned to liquids. It is by virtue of this shorthand decision that he can exclude from the stereotypical properties of water those of being physically perceptible, wet, and subject to evaporation; he as-sumes that these are all properties that we assign to liquids without chal-lenging them — until the moment that a sudden change in the scientific paradigm will oblige our culture to cast in doubt the very notion of liq-uid. The function of hyperonyms in a lexical system depends exactly on the epistemological decisions that govern the life of a culture. We can make up dictionary-like representation in order to save definitional energies in any context in which certain ‘central’ assumptions of a cul-tural system are taken for granted. We presuppose a local dictionary every time we want to recognize and to circumscribe an area of
