Word: encyclopaedia
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...invent the Encyclopaedia Britannica today, would you do it the same way? That was the question posed in 1957 to members of the Board of Editors of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Now-17 years and $32 million later-the editors have disclosed their answer: No. The new 15th edition, which was unveiled at a press conference in Manhattan this week, is heralded as "the first new idea in encyclopaedia making in 200 years...
...task of organizing and compiling the total of human knowledge. His 1952 Syntopticon, an index to EB's 54-volume Great Books of the Western World, catalogued everything of note the authors had to say about the 102 Great Ideas of Western Civilization. Adler divided the encyclopaedia into three separate parts, which he named with the pseudoclassic neologisms: the Propaedia, Macropaedia and Micropaedia (meaning before, great and little learning)-and called the complete 30-volume set Britannica...
...part of Britannica 3 (estimated price: $550) is the Propaedia, a one-volume "outline of the whole of human knowledge" that serves as a framework and guide for the material in the other 29 volumes. The concept of the Propaedia stems from the Greek words that constitute the term encyclopaedia: the whole circle (or complete system) of learning. Adler describes the content of the Propaedia as a "circle of learning" that is divided, pie-like, into ten major segments: matter and energy, the earth, life on earth, human life, human society, art, technology, religion, the history of mankind, the branches...
...plowed through 200,000 words of text a week. Goetz once struggled home with a briefcase full of articles on analgesics, Scipio, polymorphic biology, Canute the Great, Ethiopian culture and someone named 'Umar al-Hajj, "whoever the hell that was. * "- Curiously, neither editor claims to be a walking encyclopaedia. "To be a good editor, you've got to have a mind like a sieve," insists Preece. Adds Goetz: "I can talk for two minutes on any subject under the sun, but the third minute is usually a disaster...
...made Britannica 3 possible was onetime University of Chicago vice president (1937-45) and U.S. Senator (1949-53) William Benton, Encyclopaedia Britannica's majority stockholder and publisher for 30 years. Despite his pride in the current, 14th edition (first published in 1929), he supported his editors' decision to produce a totally new encyclopaedia and agreed to finance the venture. Benton was not on hand for the unveiling; he died last March, two weeks before his 73rd birthday. But in Britannica 3, he has a monument as impressive as any man could want...