Word: syntopticon
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Three Parts. The solution was provided by Britannica Editor and Author Mortimer Adler, founder-president of the Institute for Philosophical Research, a man who has never been intimidated by the 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...
While everyone interested in liberal education would wish the great ideas to be the main "toptics" of conversation across the land, grammarians would be happier if TIME had not misspelled the word last week. The key to the great ideas is the Syntopicon, not the Syntopticon...
...national consciousness as a University of Chicago philosophy of law professor and a protégé of former Chicago Chancellor Robert Hutchins (who still holds the title of editor of the Great Books). In 1943 Adler scraped up a $60,000 grant to begin work on his Syntopticon index for the Great Books. The Syntopticon unabashedly categorizes the "102 Great Ideas of Western Civilization" (from Angel and Animal to Wisdom and the World ) and refers the reader to everything of note that the great authors have said about them...
Eggheads Are Not Enough. Before he was through, it cost Adler nine years and $1,000,000 (mostly wheedled out of Benton) to put the Syntopticon together. With heavy publicity mailings to industrialists-often followed up by whirlwind visits from Adler-Britannica managed to sell 1,863 Great Books sets in 1952. But in 1953 sales plummeted...
Learn Now, Pay Later. To reach the butcher and baker, Harden set about building an indefatigable, door-to-door sales force. Operating out of Los Angeles, Harden set up a course at which new salesmen learned how to use the Syntopticon and to pronounce the names of the authors (reading them is not required...
| 1 |