Worlds of Knowledge

by

Lauren Roberts

encyclopaedia, -pedia: A work containing information on all branches of knowledge, usually arranged alphabetically . . . A work containing exhaustive information on some one art or branch of knowledge, arranged systematically.

The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary

“A written compendium of knowledge.” It has a nice ring, doesn’t it? It’s a lovely definition of an encyclopedia, which derives from the Greek words enkyklios paideia or “in a circle of instruction.” The encyclopedia or cyclopedia (British: Encyclopædia / Cyclopædia) is something I don’t think I’ve looked at since high school. Yet I retain an odd affection for these volumes, and when I came across this Pears Cyclopædia bookmark on eBay I was intrigued.

Four major elements define an encyclopedia: (1) subject matter; (2) scope; (3) method of organization; (4) method of production. They can be general; they can be general but within the viewpoint of a cultural, ethnic or national perspective.  (The Great Soviet Encyclopedia or Encyclopedia Judaica are examples of the latter.). They can even be narrow in subject—law, philosophy, medicine—but possess considerable depth. The third element has two choices: alphabetical (the most common today) or hierarchical.

Encyclopedias have a confusing beginning. My research shows a lot of disagreement which is based, I suspect, on what one really terms an encyclopedia in the early days. A number of references insisted that Plato, Aristotle and Pliny the Elder were the originators of the format given their attempts to write comprehensively about all human knowledge. (The latter, who lived during the fist century CE wrote a 37-volume work titled  Naturalis Historia or Natural History, which was an account of the known natural world at that time.)

But credit for collecting the world’s knowledge together in one place may have began with the famous Library of Alexandria when Ptolemy III of Egypt determined to build the world’s largest library. All visitors to the city were required to surrender their books and scrolls which were then copied. The originals were placed in the library and the copies returned to the visitors.  It is estimated that at its peak the library owned between 400,000 and 700,000 scrolls, a global treasure chest of Western knowledge.

Over in China, Cheng-Zu, third emperor of the Ming Dynasty, commissioned the compilation of the Yongle Encyclopedia in 1403. Two thousand  scholars incorporated 8,000 texts from ancient times to their present that included subjects such as agriculture, art, astronomy, drama, geology, history, literature, medicine, natural sciences, religion and technology. It was competed in 1408. Though the original edition has been lost, it was comprised of 917,480 pages bound into 11,095 books. A printed edition was intended, but the overwhelming size made that idea prohibitive. Instead, one manuscript copy was made in 1567, which was fortunate since the original was lost. Only about 400 of the original number of books remain in existence today.

During the Middle Ages, early Muslim compilations of knowledge included al-Hawi (The Virtuous Life), a nine-volume medical “encyclopedia” by Abu Bakr al-Razi that was composed of his working notebooks compiled after his death. The book is significant for containing the earliest monograph on smallpox. It was translated into Latin in 1279.  

Another important Muslim work was that of Ibn Sina, a physician, philosopher and scientist. He wrote a total of 450 books, but his most famous is 14-volume Canon of Medicine also known as the Qanun. It became a standard medical text in Western Europe for seven centuries. It classifies and describes diseases and outlines their assumed causes as well as various medicines. Though later Europeans disagreed, it corrected noted that tuberculosis was contagious.  These and other important writers had considerable influence on research and editing methodology not only because of their knowledge but because, in part due to the Islamic practice of requiring isnad or verifiable citations in written work.

But credit for today’s  format belongs  to  English physician and philosopher Sir Thomas Browne who employed this word to describe his work, Pseudodoxia Epidemica (Vulgar Errors) as early as 1646.  He structured it on the Renaissance schemata, the so-called “scale of creation,” where  various elements and species ascended a hierarchical ladder from mineral to cosmological worlds., that is from the minor to the major. His compendium went through five revised and augmented editions between 1646 and 1672 and was translated into French, Dutch, German, even Latin.

                   

Building on Browne’s work, John Harris, more often credited with the development of the format, used it in 1704 in his Lexicon Technicum. Though it is an encyclopedia of sorts, it could also be termed an encyclopedic dictionary in that it contains explanations of the terms used in the arts and sciences but of the arts and sciences themselves. 

One of the most influential encyclopedias as the Cyclopædia or Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, published by Ephraim Chambers in 1728. Other than the fact that he was apprenticed as a young man to a globe-maker, little is known about him. The Cyclopædia consisted of two folio-sized volumes available by subscription only. Its subtitle gives an idea of how Chambers viewed his work:

Cyclopaedia, or, An universal dictionary of arts and sciences: containing the definitions of the terms, and accounts of the things signify'd thereby, in the several arts, both liberal and mechanical, and the several sciences, human and divine: the figures, kinds, properties, productions, preparations, and uses, of things natural and artificial; the rise, progress, and state of things ecclesiastical, civil, military, and commercial: with the several systems, sects, opinions, &c; among philosophers, divines, mathematicians, physicians, antiquaries, criticks, &c: The whole intended as a course of ancient and modern learning.