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The encyclopedia, like the wheel, is a simple yet very effective tool. And just as the wheel has played an instrumental role in human material progress over the centuries, the encyclopedia has proved to be an important vehicle for intellectual advancement.
Works, at first encyclopedic in spirit and content and later in form have existed throughout the world almost since the development of the written word. Before the name itself had been created, men were trying to capture within the confines of written pages the context and organization of the knowledge at their disposal as they understood it. Every serious intentioned encyclopedia has been a reflection of the quantity and quality of the scholarship of it’s time and the degree to which it was disseminated among men.
The basic purpose of any general enclopedia, either printed or online is to organize and summarize the most significant factual and theoretical knowledge available and ultimately to make the knowledge accessible (both physically and intellectually) to non-specialists. Francois Guizot called the famous 18th century French Encyclopedie a ‘vast intellectual bazar where the results of all the works of the human spirit are offered to whosoever stops to satisfy his curiosity’ a description that might apply to any great encyclopedia, ancient or modern. Encyclopedias in short, aim to encompass and codify all that is worth knowing. In point of fact, the word ‘encyclopedia’ came from Greek Enky-klios paideia which translates variously as ‘circle of knowledge’ ‘circle of learning’ ‘complete system of learning’ and ‘well rounded education’ The encyclopedia is an indispensable as well as inevitable tool of human development.
Encyclopedias have numerous uses, chief among which are to inform, to analyze and to provide a frame of reference. General encyclopedias are thought of first and foremost as sources of facts and they do offer basic factual information on literally thousands of subjects. Of equal importance, however are encyclopedia’s comprehensive summaries of essential and often complex ideas from the constantly expanding store of universal knowledge. The successful encyclopedia will render (each) subject comprehensible to the literate lay person without sacrificing accuracy to over simplification, which is not always an easy task.
Encyclopedias are a logical place to begin investigating any unfamiliar topic. By furnishing a succinct overview of the topic, the encyclopedia is able to orient the reader quickly and effectively. Likewise, encyclopedias normally provide practical information on everyday concerns like plumbing, gardening, medical problems and games and hobbies, bibliographies, or lists of selected materials for further information or study on a particular topic and great variety of visual aids such as photographs, drawings, art reproductions, instructional diagrams, charts and maps.
Indeed, no other published work or online venture attempts as much or offers more than a general encyclopedia. It is no wonder that alongwith dictionaries, encyclopedias are our most frequently consulted reference sources either online - in internet, in printed pages or in digital storage form. However by virtue of their monumental goal-nothing short of embracing the world’s most useful or important knowledge-even the most meticulously prepared encyclopedias leave something to be desired. Whatever their imperfection, general encyclopedias can serve as a gateway to understanding the most profound or intricate knowledge human beings have yet produced.
Historical Development
Encyclopedias historically reflect the attitudes, needs and capabilities of the society that produces them. For instance, most contemporary encyclopedists agree that recency of material is essential to a successful set. Likewise most agree that the visual illustrations are a vital part of any quality production. In earlier times, however, quite different standards prevailed. For good technical reasons, graphics have only recently come to be regarded as an integral part of the encyclopedic treatment. Similarly, the emphasis on up-to-dateness has become crucial only since the onset of the modern communication revolution. While the fundamental mission of the encyclopedia as an all embracing source of knowledge has remained constant through the ages, the encyclopedia’s style, format, contents and intended audience have changed over the years in response to new social, political and technical conditions.
The earliest encyclopedias, laboriously copied by hand, evolved in classical times as means of classifying and systematizing what was then a comparatively small but growing body of knowledge accessible only to the learned few. For instance, Pliny the Elder’s Historia Naturalis (A.D.77), the most influential of the Roman encyclo-pedias and sometimes cited as the first known encyclopedia, organized ancient scientific scholarship into 37 books com-prising some 2,500 chapters on such subjects as botany, geography, medicine, mineralogy, physiology and zoology. Later, during the early Christian and medieval periods, church scholars and clerics compiled encyclopedias in an effort to interpret and codify existing knowledge in accordance with ecclesiastical doctrine.
Mass printing fuelled the Renaissance, a period marked by a return to classical learning as well as the introduction of modern science. With the coming of the Industrial Revolution and resulting secularization of western society, encyclopedias, now machine printed, became a prime means for keeping abreast of the new social and technical knowledge bubbling up everywhere in Europe. John Harris’s Lexicon Technicum (1704), the first alphabetically arranged encyclopedia in English language and Ephraim Chamber’s prestigious Cyclopedia (1728) exemplified this trend in England. In France, outstanding examples are Pierre Bayle’s Dictionnaire Historique et. Critique (1679) which divided it’s contents into factual accounts and ‘remarks’ (or opinions), and justly celebrated Encyclopedie (1751-1772) a massive undertaking edited by the philosopher Denis Diderot and mathematician Jean le Rond Alembert. The Encyclopedie had an exhilarating effect on the intellectual and revolutionary thought of the day.
The 70-volume French Encyclopedie initiated as a translation of Chamber’s Cyclo-pedia but ultimately a very different work, is especially notable in the history of encyclopedia making for two reasons. First, the set extended coverage to the industrial trades and mechanical arts, heretofore considered inferior in the encyclopedic scheme of knowledge to the fine arts, religion and philosophy and the natural sciences. Thus the Encyclopedie, which commanded the respect of savants everywhere, established the precedent for including the useful arts and other practical subjects within the purview of a general encyclopedia. Second, the Encyclopedie was a product of a society of scholars that included some of the most distinguished thinkers of eighteenth century France, including Voltaire, Rousseau, Targot, Montesquieu, Quesnay and Condorcet alongwith editors Diderot and ‘Alembert’ Prior to the Encyclopedie such works had been prepared by one person or at most, several collaborators.
In retrospect, these developments seem entirely natural and logical. The Enlightenment, a time of great political and scientific format, witnessed major breakthroughs in medicine and technology, the emergence of the modern social and behavioural sciences, an awakening of working class consciousness and a massive yearning for a more egalitarian society. By the eighteenth century, the volume of essential knowledge had grown so large that no single individual, no matter how diligent or brilliant, could hope to master it all. In sum, Diderot’s Encyclopedie, like all encyclopedias of conse-quence before or since, mirrored the intellectual conditions and aspiration of the people and times that created it.
During the nineteenth century, general encyclopedias took on most of the chara-cteristics we associate with encyclopedias today. Their content and organisation increasingly reflected the general growth of democratic ideals and institutions, particularly the movement toward universal public education and the concurrent need for easily accessible, readily digestible bits of information for the general public including masses of school children.
The general encyclopedia could not remain the preserve of sages, or clerics or social philosophers. A famous German encyclopedist Friedrich Arnold Brockhaus (for the first time) treated knowledge in short, fact packed, up-to-date, accurate, popularly written articles. Emphasis on popular knowledge and information, simplification of complex subject matter, attention to factual accuracy, use of specific entries and a concern with up-to-dateness, all features of today’s encyclopedias are direct legacies of Konversations - Lexicon, familiarly known as Brockhaus.
No encyclopedia history is complete without lavish mention of the pioneering encyclopedists of China. Contribution of this country, a country of extremely rich cultural and social heritage, is distinctive and covers a much larger period than that of the West. The Chinese have produced encyclopedias for approximately 2000 years, but traditionally they differ from modern Western encyclo-pedias. The first known Chinese encyclopedia, the Huang-lan (Emperor’s Mirror) was prepared by order of the emperor in about AD 220. What was probably the largest encyclopedia ever compiled, the Yung-lo ta-tien (Great Handbook) was issued at the beginning of the 15th century. But the most important event was publication of the small but profusely illustrated, San tsai t’u-Hui, compiled by Wang Ch’i and his son Wang Su-i. Lu Erh-K uei’s Tz’u-Y’ uan with a supplement issued in 1931 was the first really modern Chinese encyclopedia and set the style for nearly all works of this nature. Efforts to produce large, comprehensive works in China is always on. In China, there have been numerous publi-cations which can be termed as encyclopedias. In other parts of the world, also, attempts have been made since long to produce encyclo-pedias of different types.
Encyclopedias in the 21st Century
In response to the intellectual character and the informational needs of the times, twentyfirst-century encyclopedists have adhered rather strictly to a well defined set of quali-tative standards that they believe produces the most utilitarian encyclopedias for the greatest number of potential users. The polemical articles Diderot and Alembert did in the Encyclopedie are inconceivable and can not be considered for publication by any responsible encyclopedia editor of twentyfirst century. Simply because, it is now agreed that the principal function of a general encyclopedia is to codify established knowledge as accurately and impartially as possible.
The practice of commissioning distingui-shed contributors is now standard operating procedure in the encyclopedia business. (However Wikipedia, now freely available on internet has done away with this practice, which makes it unreliable to certain extent). General agreement also exists that a good encyclopedia should provide selected biblio-graphies and that at least the multivolume sets should have a separate index comple-mented by cross references throughout the text. Moreover encyclopedias today tend towards short articles and specific entries which lend themselves to quick retrieval with the standard alphabetical arrangement. Another common characteristics of present day encyclopedias is simplicity of style and emphasis on straightforward and usually bland prose. Photographs, instructional drawings and other visual aids frequently accompany the printed or electronic text. There is also a strong tendency to include much popular and practical materials on sports, hobbies, celebrities and newsworthy personalities, how-to-do it topics and the like.
Editorial procedures and norms for contemporary encyclopedias have become firmly fixed. Recognized subject authorities are likely to be commissioned to write or authe-nticate articles, thereby ensuring a reasonable degree of accuracy and objectivity. Permanent editorial staffs, sometimes quite large, are maintained to produce general articles, perform routine updating needs, monitor areas where knowledge changes rapidly, assign topics to contributors and edit commissioned articles for such specifications as length, style and readability. The large encyclopedias are normally kept current by means of continuous revision, a fairly recent but now securely entrenched technique. Keeping internet generated or digitally produced encyclopedias current is relatively an easy job, compared to the printed ones.
Obviously, general encyclopedias today differ markedly from those of earlier times. Whereas once the emphasis was on long, scholarly treatises, present day encyclopedias are devoted largely to popular treatment of that knowledge and information deemed most useful and essential. Oriya encyclopedia Jnanmandal is no exception.
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