In a review of Manuel Lima’s The Book Of Trees: Visualizing Branches Of Knowledge, Jonathon Keats considers the enduring popularity of the tree diagram:
Trees were symbolically important for most ancient cultures, often worshipped and frequently present in art. Their association with immortality and their branching structure made them natural scaffolds for
genealogies, showing, for example, the lineage of Christ and of royalty. They visually established pedigree and, equally crucial in medieval societies, helped to control inbreeding by showing how closely people were related to a potential spouse.
Yet, as Lima’s book shows, the greatest impact of trees was in the realm of taxonomy, as visual representations of abstract religious and scientific concepts. Religion illuminated the way, with 13th-century scribes drawing trees to show relationships between scriptural texts, to aid memory and encourage exegesis – the practice of critical interpretation of texts common in monasteries. According to Lima, these tree illustrations supported “combinatorial invention and creativity.” His idea of exegesis is overly modern (monasteries were not tech start-ups) but it’s easy to see how visualization nurtured more systematic thinking. And, in turn, more systematic thinking nurtured more elaborate visualization.
(Image from John Amos Comenius’ Centrum Securitatis, 1625,via Wikimedia Commons)
The Dish 
