McClintock's Essay

< Back to table of contents

Toward a Place for Study in a World of Instruction

Robbie McClintock

Institute for Learning Technologies
Teachers College — Columbia University
December 2000


 

Section 8 — An Encyclopedia of Study
¶ 79
 		 I wonder if it would be possible to adapt encyclopedias and other works of reference so that they would be more helpful in self-set study. The word "encyclopedia" originally meant the complete curriculum, the full circle of studies, a meaning that it held up to the age of print when writers and publishers began to apply it to books that dealt inclusively with all subjects of knowledge — the reader's university. Such books had been written before the spread of printing; perhaps the most representative was the Speculum majus by Vincent of Beauvais (1190-1264) who divided his work into four parts, which treated nature, theology, morals, and history. [ 66 ] This functional organization of the encyclopedia -- in which the different types of knowledge, however they were conceived, were set forth, each in its integrity — characterized early encyclopedias. The practice of arranging encyclopedia articles alphabetically was an eighteenth-century innovation which gained much prestige when it was used in the great French Encyclopedia edited by Diderot. Yet in developing their Encyclopedia, Diderot and his colleagues had clear ideas about the system of knowledge; they almost used a functional organization dividing knowledge into the sciences, the liberal arts, and the mechanical arts; and they chose the alphabetical arrangement, not for its intellectual superiority, but for its reputed convenience for readers. [ 67 ]
 
¶ 80
 		 Alphabetic encyclopedias are by no means the only possibility, and for purposes of study, this form has several drawbacks. The most serious is that it fragments knowledge. And fragmentation holds the reader in a dependent state with respect to the diverse, authoritative contributors to the great collective work. With feelings of dependence, people develop the habit of going to the encyclopedia for instructive information about things they do not know well; but they will at the same time find it hard to study the alphabetic encyclopedia and to derive from it a full understanding of a connected circle of subjects, a clear conception of the varieties of knowledge, their principles, interrelationships, and applications. To be sure, by means of cross references one can get from Charlemagne to Alcuin and onward, from topic to topic. And further, articles on the basic disciplines (provided that one knows their names) give an overview of their principles; but the way these principles are to be worked out and applied in substantive fullness is rarely displayed. In short, the alphabetic encyclopedia tends to instruct, especially on isolated particulars, and is difficult to study. It is no accident that this format came into vogue as the world of instruction began to flourish.
 
¶ 81
 		 Alternatives are available. One of the most interesting is the Encyclopédie de la Pléiade which is perhaps the greatest encyclopedic innovation since the work of Diderot. The Encyclopédie de la Pléiade has been designed for study, "to permit the modern man to grapple lucidly with the problems that confront him in furnishing himself with a complete and synthetic view of contemporary science while at the same time recalling to himself the road that humanity has to date traversed." [ 68 ] The encyclopedia is divided into two series, the methodological and the historical, some fifteen volumes on particular subjects, each between 1,000 and 2,000 pages long, have been published in each series. The great value of such a format is that it encourages the thoughtful study of large subjects, of coherent systems of principles; it helps people form a conceptual framework by which they can intelligently relate one thing to another. Yet that is not the end of its value. Contrary to the assertion of the Encyclopedia Britannica, the Pléiade is in some ways more useful for reference than is an alphabetical encyclopedia: to be sure it takes a little more thought to decide to look up Beethoven in the volume on Histoire de la Musique, instead of in that section devoted to Beethoven, but that inconvenience is more than made up for when one decides to relate Beethoven to Mozart, for one can do it simply by turning back a few pages, rather than by scuttling after another ten-pound tome.
 
¶ 82
 		 Such innovations in encyclopedias are by no means the only possibilities for orienting serious academic Publications to the interest of the independent student. The extensive Que sais-je series published by the Presses Universitaires de France is an admirable example of a leading academic press commissioning important scholars to write lucid introductions to their specialties that will thereafter be aggressively marketed to "non-students" of every type. Yet the example of the Encyclopédie de la Pléiade seems particularly pertinent in the English speaking world, for the staid university presses of Oxford, Cambridge, and Harvard are not likely to follow Paris and plunge into systematic popularization, while it would seem that one of the American encyclopedia publishers might well adopt the Pléiade pattern. In format, the Encyclopedia Britannica, the Encyclopedia Americana, the World Book, and so on are remarkably similar products, which are made competitive by being subtly adapted to embody various sales pitches specially directed at particular, large-scale markets. It would be a major step towards recreating the world of study if one of these publishers would dedicate their resources to offering the largest market of all, men studying, a choice and not an echo.
 

 

 

 

Endnotes
Note 66 Emile Mâle uses the Mirrors of Vincent of Beauvais as the basis for his analysis of Gothic iconography in The Gothic Image, op. cit., n. 29, passim. It is an excellent introduction to Vincent's encyclopedic conception. [Back]
Note 67 For the systematic conceptions behind the French Encyclopedia, see Jean Le Rond D'Alembert. Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedia of Diderot, trans. Richard N. Schwab. New York: The Library of Liberal Arts, 1963. Some of that Encyclopedia's more interesting articles can be found in N. S. Hoyt and T. Cassirer, eds. and trans. Encyclopedia, Selections. New York: The Library of Liberal Arts, 1965. There is a good article on the history of encyclopedias in the 11th edition of Encyclopedia Britannica. [Back]
Note 68 Catalogue of Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, No. 56, Spring, 1970, p. 16. The format of the encyclopedia itself conduces to study, not reference, as the volumes are easily portable and light enough to hold comfortably while reading. I am pursuing comparisons like these further in a project on "Patterns of Popularization: a comparison of how encyclopedias and popular books in French, German, and English offer access to knowledge and culture," which I am doing in The Institute of Philosophy and Politics of Education. [Back]