Word: syntopicon
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Baedeker of Thought. The instrument: a two-volume, 2,500-page concordance of the Great Ideas in the Great Books. When it is published later this year, as the "Syntopicon," or index, of the first full set of the Great Books ever printed, Philosopher Adler will have due cause to claim that he and his colleagues have completed the first Baedeker to 30 centuries of Western thought...
Actually the Syntopicon (a name coined by Adler from the Greek words for synthesis and topics) was less a vision than an afterthought. It was conceived one day in 1943 when Adler and Chicago President Robert Hutchins were discussing their plans for publishing the 443 Great Books in a 54-volume set.* Suddenly Hutchins remarked, "We will have published the Great Books. You prepare an index of the ideas contained." It took Adler a while to learn what a job he had taken...
Finally, this month, seven years and almost a million dollars later (with the money advanced by the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which will join Chicago in publishing the 54 volumes with index), the Syntopicon was ready. From 443 Great Books by 74 authors, Adler & Co. had plucked 102 Great Ideas, with 3,000 sub-ideas. The Great Ideas ranged from God, with the most references (7,065), to Induction, with the least (284), from Angel to World to Eternity to Temperance...