Encyclopedia | Definition, History, Examples, & Facts (2024)

Historical significance

In the Speculum majus (“The Greater Mirror”; completed 1244), one of the most important of all encyclopaedias, the French medieval scholar Vincent of Beauvais maintained not only that his work should be perused but that the ideas it recorded should be taken to heart and imitated. Alluding to a secondary sense of the word speculum (“mirror”), he implied that his book showed the world what it is and what it should become. This theme, that encyclopaedias can contribute significantly to the improvement of humankind, recurs constantly throughout their long history. A Catalan ecclesiastic and Scholastic philosopher, Ramon Llull, regarded the 13th-century encyclopaedias, together with language and grammar, as instruments for the pursuit of truth. Domenico Bandini, an Italian humanist, planned his Fons memorabilium universi (“The Source of Noteworthy Facts of the Universe”) at the beginning of the 15th century to provide accurate information on any subject to educated men who lacked books and to give edifying lessons to guide them in their lives. Francis Bacon believed that the intellect of the 17th-century individual could be refined by contact with the intellect of the ideal man. Another Englishman, the poet and critic Samuel Taylor Coleridge, was well aware of this point of view and said in his “Preliminary Treatise on Method” (1817) that in the Encyclopædia Metropolitana, which he was proposing to create,

our great objects are to exhibit the Arts and Sciences in their Philosophical harmony; to teach Philosophy in union with Morals; and to sustain Morality by Revealed Religion.

He added that he intended to convey methodically “the pure and unsophisticated knowledge of the past…to aid the progress of the future.” The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge declared in The Penny Cyclopædia (1833–43) that, although most encyclopaedias attempted to form systems of knowledge, their own would in addition endeavour to

give such general views of all great branches of knowledge, as may help to the formation of just ideas on their extent and relative importance, and to point out the best sources of complete information.

In De disciplinis (1531; “On the Disciplines”) the Spanish humanist Juan Luis Vives emphasized the encyclopaedia’s role in the pursuit of truth. In Germany of the early 19th century the encyclopaedia was expected to provide the right or necessary knowledge for good society. Probably the boldest claim was that of Alexander Aitchison, who said that his new Encyclopædia Perthensis (1796–1806) was intended to supersede the use of all other English books of reference.

Greek and Roman concepts

All these ideas were a far cry from the Greek concept, deriving from Plato, that in order to think better it is necessary to know all, and from the Roman attitude of the advisability of acquiring all useful knowledge in order to carry out one’s tasks in life competently. The present concept of the encyclopaedia as an essential starting point from which one can embark on a voyage of discovery, or as a point of basic reference on which one can always rely, dates only to the 18th century.

The prose form has usually been accepted as the only suitable vehicle for the presentation of the text of an encyclopaedia, though L’Image du monde (1245?; “The Image of the World”)—attributed by some to Gautier de Metz, a French poet and priest, and by others to a Flemish theologian, Gossuin—was written in French octosyllabic verse. It has also been generally accepted that an encyclopaedia should adopt a straightforward, factual approach. Even so, the Spanish writer Alfonso de la Torre, in his Visiõ delectable (c. 1484; “Delightful Vision”), adopted the allegorical approach of a child receiving instruction from a series of maidens named Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric, and so on.

The alphabetically arranged encyclopaedia has a history of less than 1,000 years. Most of the encyclopaedias issued before the introduction of printing into Europe had been arranged in a methodical or classified form—that is, ordered systematically by subject. The early compilers of encyclopaedias held, as Coleridge did, that “to call a huge unconnected miscellany of the omne scibile, in an arrangement determined by the accident of initial letters, an encyclopaedia, is the impudent ignorance of your Presbyterian bookmakers!” Today several encyclopaedias still retain the classified form of arrangement.

There has never been any general agreement on the way in which the contents of an encyclopaedia should be arranged. In Roman times the approach was usually practical, with everyday topics such as astronomy and geography coming first, while the fine arts were relegated to the end of the work. The Roman statesman and writer Cassiodorus, however, in his 6th-century Institutiones, began with the Scriptures and the church and gave only brief attention to such subjects as arithmetic and geometry. St. Isidore of Sevilla, educated in the Classical tradition, redressed the balance in the next century in his Etymologiarum sive originum libri XX (“Twenty Books on Origins [or Etymologies]”), commonly called Etymologiae, giving pride of place to the liberal arts and medicine, the Bible and the church coming later but still preceding such subjects as agriculture and warfare, shipping and furniture. The earliest recorded Arabic encyclopaedia, compiled by the 9th-century Arab philologist and historian Ibn Qutaybah, had a completely different approach, beginning with power, war, and nobility and ending with food and women. A later Persian encyclopaedia, compiled in 975–997 by the Persian scholar and statesman al-Khwārizmī, started with jurisprudence and scholastic philosophy, the more practical matters of medicine, geometry, and mechanics being relegated to a second group labelled “foreign knowledge.” The general trend in classification in the Middle Ages is exemplified by Vincent of Beauvais’s Speculum majus, which was arranged in three sections: “Naturale”—God, the creation, humankind; “Doctrinale”—language, ethics, crafts, medicine; “Historiale”—world history. The encyclopaedists were, however, still uncertain of the logical sequence of subjects; although there were many who started with theological matters, there were just as many who preferred to put practical topics first.

Content arrangement

A turning point came with Francis Bacon’s plan for his uncompleted Instauratio magna (1620; “Great Instauration”), in which he eschewed the endless controversies in favour of a three-section structure, including “External Nature” (covering such topics as astronomy, meteorology, geography, and species of minerals, vegetables, and animals), “Man” (covering anatomy, physiology, structure and powers, and actions), and “Man’s Action on Nature” (including medicine, chemistry, the visual arts, the senses, the emotions, the intellectual faculties, architecture, transport, printing, agriculture, navigation, arithmetic, and numerous other subjects).

In his plan Bacon had achieved more than a thoroughly scientific and acceptable arrangement of the contents of an encyclopaedia; he had ensured that the encyclopaedists would have a comprehensive outline of the scope of human knowledge that would operate as a checklist to prevent the omission of whole fields of human thought and endeavour. Bacon so profoundly altered the editorial policy of encyclopaedists that even 130 years later Diderot gratefully acknowledged his debt in the prospectus (1750) of the Encyclopédie. Because every later encyclopaedia was influenced by Diderot’s work, the guidance of Bacon still plays its part today.

Coleridge, who was very much impressed by Bacon’s scheme, in 1817 drew up a rather different table of arrangement for the Encyclopædia Metropolitana. It comprised five main classes: Pure Sciences—Formal (philology, logic, mathematics) and Real (metaphysics, morals, theology); Mixed and Applied Sciences—Mixed (mechanics, hydrostatics, pneumatics, optics, astronomy) and Applied (experimental philosophy, the fine arts, the useful arts, natural history, application of natural history); Biographical and Historical, chronologically arranged; and Miscellaneous and Lexicographical, which included a gazetteer and a philosophical and etymological lexicon. The fifth class was to be an analytical index.

Although Coleridge’s classification was altered by the publisher, and although the Metropolitana was an impressive failure, the ideas for it had a lasting influence. Even though nearly all encyclopaedias today are arranged alphabetically, the classifications of Bacon and Coleridge still enable editors to plan their work with regard to an assumed hierarchy of the various branches of human knowledge.

The concept of alphabetical order was well known to both the Greeks and Romans, but the latter made little use of it. Neither the Greeks nor the Romans employed it for encyclopaedia arrangement, with the exception of Sextus Pompeius Festus in his 2nd-century De verborum significatu (“On the Meaning of Words”). St. Isidore’s encyclopaedia was classified, but it included an alphabetically arranged etymological dictionary. The 10th- or 11th-century encyclopaedic dictionary known as Suidas was the first such work to be completely arranged alphabetically, but it had no influence on succeeding encyclopaedias, although glossaries, when included, were so arranged. Bandini’s Fons memorabilium universi (“The Source of Noteworthy Facts of the Universe”), though classified, used separate alphabetical orders for more than a quarter of its sections, and the Italian Domenico Nani Mirabelli’s Polyanthea nova (1503; “The New Polyanthea”) was arranged in one alphabetical sequence. These were rare exceptions, however; the real breakthrough came only with the considerable number of encyclopaedic Latin-language dictionaries that appeared in the early 16th century, the best known of which is a series of publications by the French printer Charles Estienne (see Robert I Estienne). The last of the great Latin-language encyclopaedias arranged in alphabetical order was Encyclopædia (1630) by the German Protestant theologian and philosopher Johann Heinrich Alsted. The publication of Le Grand Dictionnaire historique (1674; “The Great Historical Dictionary”) of Louis Moréri, a French Roman Catholic priest and scholar, confirmed public preference both for the vernacular and the alphabetically arranged encyclopaedia; this choice was emphasized by the success of the posthumous Dictionnaire universel (1690) by the French lexicographer Antoine Furetière.

From time to time important attempts have been made to reestablish the idea of the superiority of the classified encyclopaedia. Coleridge saw the encyclopaedia as a vehicle for enabling individuals to think methodically. He felt that his philosophical arrangement would “present the circle of knowledge in its harmony” and give a “unity of design and of elucidation.” He did agree that his appended gazetteer and English dictionary would best be arranged alphabetically for ease of reference. By then, however, alphabetical arrangement had too strong a hold, and it was not until 1935 that a new major classified encyclopaedia began to appear—the Encyclopédie française (“French Encyclopaedia”), founded by Anatole de Monzie. The Dutch Eerste nederlandse systematisch ingerichte encyclopædie (1946–52; “First Dutch Systematic and Comprehensive Encyclopaedia”) had a classification that was in almost reverse order of that of the Encyclopédie française; both works were established on a philosophical concept of the order and main divisions of knowledge influenced by both Bacon and Coleridge. The Spanish Enciclopedia labor (1955–60) and the Oxford Junior Encyclopædia (1948–56) followed systems of arrangement that were closer to the French than to the Dutch example.

From earliest times it had been held that the trivium (grammar, logic, rhetoric) and the quadrivium (geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, music) were essential ingredients in any encyclopaedia. Even as late as 1435 Alfonso de la Torre began his Visiõ delectable in almost that exact order, and only when he had laid these foundations did he proceed to the problems of science, philosophy, theology, law, and politics. Thus, the seven liberal arts were regarded by the early encyclopaedists as the very mathematics of human knowledge, without a knowledge of which it would be foolish to proceed. This idea survived to a certain extent in Coleridge’s classification; he stated that grammar and logic provide the rules of speech and reasoning, while mathematics presents truths that are applicable to external existence.

When Louis Shores became editor in chief of Collier’s Encyclopedia in 1962, he said that he considered the encyclopaedia to be “one of the few generalizing influences in a world of overspecialization. It serves to recall that knowledge has unity.” This echoes the view of the English novelist H.G. Wells, that the encyclopaedia should not be “a miscellany, but a concentration, a clarification, and a synthesis.” The Austrian sociologist Otto Neurath in the same year suggested that a proposed new international encyclopaedia of unified science should be constructed like an onion, the different layers enclosing the “heart”—comprising in this case the foundations of the unity of science. Even a brief survey of encyclopaedia publishing during the second half of the 20th century is enough to make clear that, as the trivium and quadrivium and the topically classified encyclopaedias that they influenced receded further and further into history, there arose a number of modern encyclopaedists concerned with the importance of making a restatement of the unity of knowledge and of the consequent interdependence of its parts. Though most encyclopaedists were willing to accept the essential reference-book function of encyclopaedias and the role of an alphabetical organization in carrying out that function, they became increasingly disturbed about the emphasis on the fragmentation of knowledge that such a function and such an organization encouraged. A number looked for ways of enhancing the educational function of encyclopaedias by reclaiming for them some of the values of the classified or topical organizations of earlier history.

Notable among the results of such activities was the 15th edition of Encyclopædia Britannica (1974), which was designed in large part to enhance the role of an encyclopaedia in education and understanding without detracting from its role as a reference book. Its three parts (Propædia, or Outline of Knowledge; Micropædia, or Ready Reference and Index; and Macropædia, or Knowledge in Depth) represented an effort to design an entire set on the understanding that there is a circle of learning and that an encyclopaedia’s short informational articles on the details of matter within that circle as well as its long articles on general topics must all be planned and prepared in such a way as to reflect their relation to one another and to the whole of knowledge. The Propædia specifically was a reader’s version of the circle of learning on which the set had been based and was organized in such a way that a reader might reassemble in meaningful ways material that the accident of alphabetization had dispersed.