Everything about Encyclopedic totally explained
An
encyclopedia (or ) is a comprehensive written
compendium that contains
information on either all branches of
knowledge or a particular branch of knowledge. Encyclopedias are divided into
articles with one article on each subject covered. The articles on subjects in an encyclopedia are usually accessed alphabetically by article name and can be contained in one volume or many volumes, depending on the amount of material included.
General
Etymology, Spelling
The word 'encyclopedia' comes from the
Classical Greek "ἐγκύκλιος παιδεία" (pronounced "enkyklios paideia"), literally, a "[well-]rounded education", meaning "general knowledge". Though the notion of a compendium of knowledge dates back thousands of years, the term was first used in the title of a book in 1541 by
Joachimus Fortius Ringelbergius,
Lucubrationes vel potius absolutissima kyklopaideia (Basel, 1541). The word
encyclopaedia was first used as a noun in the title of his book by the Croatian
encyclopedist Pavao Skalić in his
Encyclopaedia seu orbis disciplinarum tam sacrarum quam prophanarum epistemon (Encyclopaedia, or Knowledge of the World of Disciplines, Basel, 1559). One of the oldest vernacular uses was by
François Rabelais in his
Pantagruel in 1532.
Several encyclopedias have names that include the suffix
-p(a)edia, for example, Banglapedia (on matters relevant for Bengal).
In British usage, the spellings
encyclopedia and
encyclopaedia are both current; in American usage, only the former is commonly used. The spelling
encyclopædia—with the
æ ligature—was frequently used in the 19th century and is increasingly rare, although it's retained in product titles such as
Encyclopædia Britannica and others. The
Oxford English Dictionary (1989) records
encyclopædia and
encyclopedia as equal alternatives (in that order), and notes the
æ would be obsolete except that it's preserved in works that have Latin titles.
Webster's Third New International Dictionary (1997–2002) features
encyclopedia as the main headword and
encyclopaedia as a minor variant. In addition,
cyclopedia and
cyclopaedia are now rarely-used shortened forms of the word originating in the 17th century.
Characteristics
The encyclopedia as we recognize it today was developed from the
dictionary in the 18th century. A dictionary primarily focuses on
words and their
definitions, and typically provides limited
information,, or background for the word defined. While it may offer a definition, it may leave the reader still lacking in
understanding the meaning or significance of a term, and how the term relates to a broader field of knowledge.
To address those needs, an encyclopedia treats each subject in more depth and conveys the most relevant accumulated knowledge on that subject or
discipline, given the overall length of the particular work. An encyclopedia also often includes many
maps and
illustrations, as well as
bibliography and
statistics. Historically, both encyclopedias and dictionaries have been researched and written by well-educated, well-informed content experts.
Four major elements define an encyclopedia: its subject matter, its scope, its method of organization, and its method of production.
- Encyclopedias can be general, containing articles on topics in every field (the English-language Encyclopædia Britannica and German Brockhaus are well-known examples). General encyclopedias often contain guides on how to do a variety of things, as well as embedded dictionaries and gazetteers. There are also encyclopedias that cover a wide variety of topics but from a particular cultural, ethnic, or national perspective, such as the Great Soviet Encyclopedia or Encyclopaedia Judaica.
- Works of encyclopedic scope aim to convey the important accumulated knowledge for their subject domain, such as an encyclopedia of medicine, philosophy, or law. Works vary in the breadth of material and the depth of discussion, depending on the target audience. (For example, the Medical Encyclopedia
produced by A.D.A.M., Inc. for the U.S. National Institutes of Health.)
- Some systematic method of organization is essential to making an encyclopedia usable as a work of reference. There have historically been two main methods of organizing printed encyclopedias: the alphabetical method (consisting of a number of separate articles, organised in alphabetical order), or organization by hierarchical categories. The former method is today the most common by far, especially for general works. The fluidity of electronic media, however, allows new possibilities for multiple methods of organization of the same content. Further, electronic media offer previously unimaginable capabilities for search, indexing and cross reference. The epigraph from Horace on the title page of the 18th century Encyclopédie suggests the importance of the structure of an encyclopedia: "What grace may be added to commonplace matters by the power of order and connection."
- As modern multimedia and the information age have evolved, they've had an ever-increasing effect on the collection, verification, summation, and presentation of information of all kinds. Projects such as Everything2, Encarta, h2g2 and Wikipedia are examples of new forms of the encyclopedia as information retrieval becomes simpler.
Some works titled "dictionaries" are actually similar to encyclopedias, especially those concerned with a particular field (such as the
Dictionary of the Middle Ages, the
Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, and
Black's Law Dictionary). The
Macquarie Dictionary, Australia's national dictionary, became an
encyclopedic dictionary after its first edition in recognition of the use of proper nouns in common communication, and the words derived from such proper nouns.
History
Pliny the Elder
One of the first encyclopedic works to have survived to modern times is the
Naturalis Historia of
Pliny the Elder, a
Roman statesman living in the first century AD. He compiled a work of 37 chapters covering natural history, art and architecture, medicine, geography, geology and all aspects of the world about him. He stated in the preface that he'd compiled 20,000 facts from 2000 different works by 100 authors, and added many others from his own experience. The work was published in 77 AD, although he probably never finished proofing the work before his untimely death in the eruption of
Vesuvius in 79 AD.
The scheme of his great work is vast and comprehensive, being nothing short of an compendium of learning and of art so far as they're connected with nature, or draw their materials from nature. He admits that
» My subject is a barren one - the world of nature, or in other words life; and that subject in its least elevated department, and employing either rustic terms or foreign, nay barbarian words that actually have to be introduced with an apology. Moreover, the path isn't a beaten highway of authorship, nor one in which the mind is eager to range: there isn't one of us who has made the same venture, nor yet one Greek who has tackled single-handed all departments of the subject.
And he admits the problems of writing such a work:
» It is a difficult task to give novelty to what is old, authority to what is new, brilliance to the common-place, light to the obscure, attraction to the stale, credibility to the doubtful, but nature to all things and all her properties to nature.
Although there were earlier works of a similar nature, by
Marcus Terentius Varro for example, his was the only one to survive the
Dark ages. It became very popular in the Roman world, and survived, with many copies being made and distributed in the western world. It was one of the first classical manuscripts to be printed in 1469, and has remained popular ever since as a source of information on the
Roman world, and especially
Roman art,
Roman technology and
Roman engineering. It is also a recognised source for
medicine,
Roman art,
mineralogy,
zoology,
botany,
geology and many other topics not discussed by other classical authors. Among many interesting entries are those for the
elephant and the
murex snail, the much sought-after source of
Tyrian purple dye.
Although his work has been criticized for the lack of candour in checking the "facts", some of his text has been confirmed by recent research, like the spectacular remains of Roman
gold mines in Spain, especially at
Las Medulas, which Pliny probably saw in operation while a
Procurator there a few years before he compiled the encyclopedia. Although many of the
mining methods are now redundant, such as
hushing and
fire-setting, it's Pliny who recorded them for posterity, so helping us understand their importance in a modern context. Pliny makes clear in the preface to the work that he'd checked his facts by reading and comparing the works of others, as well as referring to them by name. Many such books are now
lost works and are remembered by his references, much like the lost sources mentioned in the work of
Vitruvius a century earlier.
Middle ages
Saint Isidore of Seville, one of the greatest scholars of the early Middle Ages, is widely recognized as being the author of the first known encyclopaedia of the Middle Ages, the
Etymologiae (around 630), in which he compiled all learning available at his time, both ancient and modern, forming a huge piece of knowledge of 448 chapters in 20 volumes, which is very valuable not only for its significance, but also because of the quotes and fragments of texts by other authors that would have been lost hadn't been thanks to Saint Isidore.
Bartholomeus Anglicus'
De proprietatibus rerum (1240) was the most widely read and quoted encyclopedia in the
High Middle Ages while
Vincent of Beauvais's
Speculum Majus (1260) was the most ambitious encyclopedia in the late-medieval period at over 3 million words. were engaged in their
Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Purity. Notable works include
Abu Bakr al-Razi's encyclopedia of science, the
Mutazilite Al-Kindi's prolific output of 270 books, and
Ibn Sina's medical encyclopedia, which was a standard reference work for centuries. Also notable are works of
universal history (or sociology) from
Asharites,
al-Tabri,
al-Masudi,
Tabari's
History of the Prophets and Kings,
Ibn Rustah,
al-Athir, and
Ibn Khaldun, whose
Muqadimmah contains cautions regarding trust in written records that remain wholly applicable today. These scholars had an incalculable influence on methods of research and editing, due in part to the Islamic practice of
isnad which emphasized fidelity to written record, checking sources, and skeptical inquiry.
By preserving Latin and Greek texts which would otherwise have been lost, they helped to rekindle the search for knowledge and methods of natural philosophy which would blaze again during the
Renaissance.
China
The enormous encyclopedic work in
China of the
Four Great Books of Song, compiled by the 11th century during the early
Song Dynasty (960–1279), was a massive literary undertaking for the time. The last encyclopedia of the four, the
Prime Tortoise of the Record Bureau, amounted to 9.4 million
Chinese characters in 1000 written volumes. There were many great encyclopedists throughout Chinese history, including the scientist and statesman
Shen Kuo (1031–1095) with his
Dream Pool Essays of 1088, the statesman, inventor, and agronomist
Wang Zhen (active 1290–1333) with his
Nong Shu of 1313, and the written
Tiangong Kaiwu of
Song Yingxing (1587–1666), the latter of whom was termed the "
Diderot of China" by British historian
Joseph Needham.
The
Chinese emperor Yongle of the
Ming Dynasty oversaw the compilation of the
Yongle Encyclopedia, one of the largest encyclopedias in history, which was completed in 1408 and comprised over 11,000 handwritten volumes, 370 million Chinese characters, of which only about 400 remain today. In the succeeding dynasty, emperor
Qianlong of the
Qing Dynasty personally composed 40,000 poems as part of a 4.7 million page library in 4 divisions, including thousands of essays, called the
Siku Quanshu which is probably the largest collection of books in the world. It is instructive to compare his title for this knowledge,
Watching the waves in a Sacred Sea to a Western-style title for all knowledge. Encyclopedic works, both in imitation of Chinese encyclopedias and as independent works of their own origin, have been known to exist in Japan since the ninth century CE.
These works were all hand copied and thus rarely available, beyond wealthy patrons or monastic men of learning: they were expensive, and usually written for those extending knowledge rather than those using it.
The term encyclopaedia was coined by 15th century humanists who misread copies of their texts of
Pliny and
Quintilian, and combined the two
Greek words "
enkuklios paideia" into one word.
The English physician and philosopher, Sir
Thomas Browne, specifically employed the word
encyclopaedia as early as 1646 in the preface to the reader to describe his
Pseudodoxia Epidemica or
Vulgar Errors, a series of refutations of common errors of his age. Browne structured his encyclopaedia upon the time-honoured schemata of the Renaissance, the so-called 'scale of creation' which ascends a hierarchical ladder via the mineral, vegetable, animal, human, planetary and cosmological worlds. Browne's compendium went through no less than five editions, each revised and augmented, the last edition appearing in 1672.
Pseudodoxia Epidemica found itself upon the bookshelves of many educated European readers for throughout the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries it was translated, for many years it wasn't thought compatible with the French and Dutcheze, into the
French,
Dutch and
German languages as well as
Latin.
John Harris is often credited with introducing the now-familiar alphabetic format in 1704 with his English
Lexicon Technicum: Or, An Universal English Dictionary of Arts and Sciences: Explaining not only the Terms of Art, but the Arts Themselves -- to give its full title. Organized alphabetically, its content does indeed contain explanation not merely of the terms used in the arts and sciences, but of the arts and sciences themselves.
Sir Isaac Newton contributed his only published work on chemistry to the second volume of 1710. Its emphasis was on science -- and conformably to the broad 18th-century understanding of the term 'science', its content extends beyond what would be called science or technology today, and includes topics from the humanities and fine arts, for example a substantial number from law, commerce, music, and heraldry. At about 1200 pages, its scope can be considered as more that of an encyclopedic dictionary than a true encyclopedia. Harris himself considered it a dictionary; the work is one of the first technical dictionaries in any language.
Ephraim Chambers published his
Cyclopaedia in 1728. It included a broad scope of subjects, used an alphabetic arrangement, relied on many different contributors and included the innovation of cross-referencing other sections within articles. Chambers has been referred to as the father of the modern encyclopedia for this two-volume work.
A French translation of Chambers' work inspired the
Encyclopédie, perhaps the most famous early encyclopedia, notable for its scope, the quality of some contributions, and its political and cultural impact in the years leading up to the
French revolution. The
Encyclopédie was edited by
Jean le Rond d'Alembert and
Denis Diderot and published in 17 volumes of articles, issued from 1751 to 1765, and 11 volumes of illustrations, issued from 1762 to 1772. Five volumes of supplementary material and a two volume index, supervised by other editors, were issued from 1776 to 1780 by
Charles Joseph Panckoucke.
The
Encyclopédie represented the essence of the
French Enlightenment. The prospectus stated an ambitious goal: the
Encyclopédie was to be a systematic analysis of the "order and interrelations of human knowledge." Diderot, in his
Encyclopédie article of the same name, went further: "to collect all the knowledge that now lies scattered over the face of the earth, to make known its general structure to the men among we live, and to transmit it to those who will come after us," to make men not only wiser but also "more virtuous and more happy."
Realizing the inherent problems with the model of knowledge he'd created, Diderot's view of his own success in writing the
Encyclopédie were far from ecstatic. Diderot envisioned the perfect encyclopedia as more than the sum of its parts. In his own article on the encyclopedia, Diderot also wrote, "Were an analytical dictionary of the sciences and arts nothing more than a methodical combination of their elements, I'd still ask whom it behooves to fabricate good elements." Diderot viewed the ideal encyclopedia as an index of connections. He realized that all knowledge could never be amassed in one work, but he hoped the relations among subjects could be.
The
Encyclopédie in turn inspired the venerable
Encyclopædia Britannica, which had a modest beginning in Scotland: the first edition, issued between 1768 and 1771, had just three hastily completed volumes - A-B, C-L, and M-Z - with a total of 2,391 pages. By 1797, when the third edition was completed, it had been expanded to 18 volumes addressing a full range of topics, with articles contributed by a range of authorities on their subjects.
The
German-language Conversations-Lexikon was published at
Leipzig from 1796 to 1808, in 6 volumes. Paralleling other 18th century encyclopedias, its scope was expanded beyond that of earlier publications, in an effort at comprehensiveness. It was, however, intended not for scholarly use but to provide results of research and discovery in a simple and popular form without extensive detail. This format, a contrast to the
Encyclopædia Britannica, was widely imitated by later 19th century encyclopedias in Britain, the United States, France, Spain, Italy and other countries. Of the influential late-18th century and early-19th century encyclopedias, the
Conversations-Lexikon is perhaps most similar in form to today's encyclopedias.
The early years of the 19th century saw a flowering of encyclopedia publishing in the United Kingdom, Europe and America. In England
Rees's Cyclopaedia (1802–1819) contains an enormous amount in information about the industrial and scientific revolutions of the time. A feature of these publications is the high-quality illustrations made by engravers like
Wilson Lowry of art work supplied by specialist draftsmen like
John Farey, Jr. Encyclopaedias were published in
Scotland, as a result of the
Scottish Enlightenment, for education there was of a higher standard than in the rest of the
United Kingdom.
The 17-volume
Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle and its supplements were published in
France from 1866 to 1890.
Encyclopædia Britannica appeared in various editions throughout the century, and the growth of
popular education and the
Mechanics Institutes, spearheaded by the
Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge led to the production of the
Penny Cyclopaedia, as its title suggests issued in weekly numbers at a penny each like a
newspaper.
In the early 20th century, the
Encyclopædia Britannica reached its eleventh edition, and inexpensive encyclopedias such as
Harmsworth's Encyclopaedia and
Everyman's Encyclopaedia were common.
20th century
In the United States, the 1950s and 1960s saw the introduction of several large popular encyclopedias, often sold on installment plans. The best known of these were
World Book and
Funk and Wagnalls.
The second half of the 20th century also saw the publication of several encyclopedias that were notable for synthesizing important topics in specific fields, often by means of new works authored by significant researchers. Such encyclopedias included
The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (first published in 1967 and now in its second edition), and
Elsevier's Handbooks In Economics (External Link) series. Encyclopedias of at least one volume in size exist for most if not all
Academic disciplines, including, typically, such narrow topics such as
bioethics and
African American history.
By the late 20th century, encyclopedias were being published on
CD-ROMs for use with personal computers.
Microsoft's
Encarta was a landmark example, as it had no print version. Articles were supplemented with video and audio files as well as numerous high-quality images. Similar encyclopedias were also being published
online, and made available by subscription.
Traditional encyclopedias are written by a number of employed text
writers, usually people with an
academic degree, and distributed as
proprietary content.
Encyclopedias are essentially derivative from what has gone before, and particularly in the 19th century,
copyright infringement was common among encyclopedia editors. However, modern encyclopedias are not merely larger compendia, including all that came before them. To make space for modern topics, valuable material of historic use regularly had to be discarded, at least before the advent of digital encyclopedias. Moreover, the opinions and world views of a particular generation can be observed in the encyclopedic writing of the time. For these reasons, old encyclopedias are a useful source of historical information, especially for a record of changes in science and technology.
As of 2007, old encyclopedias whose
copyright has expired, such as the 1911 edition of Britannica, are also the only
free content encyclopedias released in print form. (In English; works such as the
Great Soviet Encyclopedia which were created in the public domain exist as free content encyclopedias in other languages.)
Free encyclopedia
The concept of a new free encyclopedia began with the
Interpedia proposal on
Usenet in 1993, which outlined an Internet-based
online encyclopedia to which anyone could submit content and that would be freely accessible.
Early projects in this vein included
Everything2 and
Open Site.
In 1999,
Richard Stallman proposed the
GNUPedia, an online encyclopedia which, similar to the
GNU operating system, would be a "generic" resource.
The concept was very similar to Interpedia, but more in line with Stallman's
GNU philosophy.
It wasn't until
Nupedia and later
Wikipedia that a stable and thriving free encyclopedia project was able to be established on the Internet.
The English Wikipedia became the world's largest encyclopedia in 2004 at the 300,000 article stage and by late 2005, Wikipedia had produced over two million articles in more than 80 languages with content licensed under the
copyleft GNU Free Documentation License.
As of July 2007, Wikipedia has over 2.0 million articles in English and well over 8 million combined in over 250 languages.
21st century
The encyclopedia's hierarchical structure and evolving nature is particularly adaptable to a
disk-based or on-line
computer format, and all major printed multi-subject encyclopedias had moved to this method of delivery by the end of the 20th century. Disk-based (typically
DVD-ROM or
CD-ROM format) publications have the advantage of being cheaply produced and easily portable. Additionally, they can include
media which are impossible to store in the printed format, such as
animations,
audio, and
video.
Hyperlinking between conceptually related items is also a significant benefit. On-line encyclopedias, like
Wikipedia, offer the additional advantage of being (potentially) dynamic: new information can be presented almost immediately, rather than waiting for the next release of a static format (as with a disk- or paper-based publication). Many printed encyclopedias traditionally published annual supplemental volumes ("yearbooks") to update events between editions, as a partial solution to the problem of staying up-to-date, but this of course required the reader to check both the main volumes and the supplemental volume(s). Some disk-based encyclopedias offer subscription-based access to online updates, which are then integrated with the content already on the user's hard disk in a manner not possible with a printed encyclopedia.
Information in a printed encyclopedia necessarily needs some form of hierarchical structure. Traditionally, the method employed is to present the information ordered alphabetically by the article title. However with the advent of dynamic electronic formats the need to impose a pre-determined structure is less necessary. Nonetheless, most electronic encyclopedias still offer a range of organizational strategies for the articles, such as by subject area or alphabetically.
CD-ROM and INTERNET-based encyclopedias also offer greater search abilities than printed versions. While the printed versions rely on indexes to assist in searching for topics, computer accessible versions allow searching through article text for keywords or phrases.
Further Information
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