Encyclopedism - The Circle Of Learning, Encyclopedic Collections, Alphabetical Encyclopedias, Bibliography

Encyclopedism is not restricted to the history of encyclopedias as we now know them. Certainly, since the eighteenth century, this identification has been the dominant one; however, the term encyclopedism is best seen as a heuristic device that can legitimately be applied to other intellectual projects. Three main forms of encyclopedism can be discerned: first, the classical Greek and Roman notion of a circle of learning that an educated person should pursue; second, various schemes aimed at comprehensive collection and classification of an intellectual field or an aspect of the world; and third, the aim of condensing and summarizing knowledge from a wide range of subjects in a set of volumes, variously called compendium, dictionary, or encyclopedia.