Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Encyclopedias

Episode Date: December 17, 2023

Ever since humans began writing down information, there has been a desire to compile all known information into one single source.  For over two thousand years, people have attempted to compile all of the knowledge of their era and civilization.  Some of these attempts were little more than lists, and others were mind-bogglingly comprehensive.  Learn more about the history of encyclopedias and the attempts to compile human knowledge on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Sponsors BetterHelp Visit BetterHelp.com/everywhere today to get 10% off your first month ButcherBox Sign up today at butcherbox.com/daily and use code daily to choose your free steak for a year and get $20 off."  Subscribe to the podcast!  https://link.chtbl.com/EverythingEverywhere?sid=ShowNotes -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Charles Daniel Associate Producers: Peter Bennett & Cameron Kieffer   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Update your podcast app at newpodcastapps.com Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/everythingeverywheredaily Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ever since human beings began writing down information, there's been a desire to compile all known knowledge into one single source. For over 2,000 years, people have been trying to amass all the knowledge of their era and civilization. And some of these attempts were little more than lists, and others were mind-bogglingly comprehensive. Learn more about the history of encyclopedias, and the attempts to compile human knowledge on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. In the Internet age, it might seem like encyclopedias are a thing of the past, and in a certain respect they are. But as we'll see, the ideas behind encyclopedias are as alive today as they've ever been. Before I get into the history of encyclopedias, I should first explain what an encyclopedia is and where the word came from.

An encyclopedia is a comprehensive reference work that contains information on a wide range of subjects, or on numerous aspects of a particular subject such as art, medicine, or law. It's typically organized alphabetically or thematically and is designed to provide concise and authoritative knowledge. to its readers. The word encyclopedia comes from the Greek words Zayekyklios Pidea. The word Zayekyllios can mean circular, general, or comprehensive. And Pidea refers to education, or more generally, the entire process of educating someone. At first, the term encyclopedia didn't refer to a document or a set of documents. It referred to simply a well-rounded education.

The first attempt at trying to compile information occurred soon after the advent of of writing. These early attempts weren't encyclopedias, as we would think of them today. They were often nothing more than lists of practical knowledge. The Babylonian Orohubulu was a collection of 24 clay tablets, which is known as a lexical list. Lexical lists were a type of cuneiform document used in ancient Mesopotamia for educational purposes. They were essentially lists of words and phrases, organized thematically or by some other system, and were used to teach scribes various aspects of the Uniform Writing System and the Samarian and Acadian languages. Ancient Egyptian papyrus have been discovered that were compilations of knowledge in certain disciplines.

The Eber's papyrus is a compilation of Egyptian medical knowledge. The Rind Papyrus is a compilation of mathematical knowledge, and the Egyptian Book of the Dead is a collection of religious knowledge. However, these ancient examples are not attempts at universal knowledge, only knowledge within a given field. One of the earliest known attempts at compiling universal knowledge was the work Nine Books of Disciplines by the Roman scholar Marcus Terturnius Varro. The work hasn't survived to the modern era, but it did serve as a basis for future encyclopedias. The first attempt that we know of to compile knowledge across a wide range of disciplines

was created by the Roman Pliny the Elder. He wrote a work titled Naturalist Historia, or Natural History. Naturalist Historia is the largest surviving work that we have from the Roman Empire. Written in the first century, sometime around the year 78, it consists of 37 books, each dealing with a different subject. The topics of the books include astronomy, mathematics, geography, anthropology, human physiology, zoology, botany, agriculture, mining, mineralogy, sculpture, and art. Naturalist Historia became one of the most important documents in the ancient world and later

saw a revival in popularity during the Renaissance, and it's one of the best documents we have to know about life during the Roman Empire. There weren't a lot of attempts at creating a universal collection of knowledge in the centuries that followed. Still, there were several attempts to create a universal compendium of knowledge following the rise of Christianity. In the 7th century, Isidore of Seville created a work in Latin known as the etymology, often referred to in English as the origins. It was based on naturalist historicalist history. and other works, and as 448 chapters over 20 volumes. Around the year 830, a monk by the name of Rabanus Maras compiled an extensive work known as

D-Universo, which was based on Isidore's previous work. And you'll notice a trend that each encyclopedic work is based heavily on the works that came before it. The most widely read encyclopedia in the Middle Ages in Europe was probably De Propropriata Tibus Rerum, or on the property of things. It was written by Bartholomeus Anglicus, a French monk in the year 1240. Another French monk, Vincent of Beauvais, published an extremely ambitious work in the year 1260.

It was known as Specula Mayus or the Great Mirror. He worked on it for 29 years and it's divided into three parts, the mirror of nature, the mirror of doctrine, and the mirror of history. The total length of the work was over three million words. And to put that into perspective, the total number of the number of the number of the number of of words that I've written for the scripts for this podcast in three and a half years is probably only a little over two million words. The Specula Mayas was translated into several languages and was the basis for several other encyclopedias. Europe wasn't the only place that was

developing universal encyclopedias of knowledge. Muslim scholars created their own compendiums of knowledge. In the year 960, a secret society of Islamic philosophers in Basra, located in modern Iraq, published the Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Purity. The physician Ibn Sina published the canon of medicine in the early 11th century, and it was used as a medical encyclopedia for centuries. There were many Islamic scholars such as El Tabiri, Ibn Rustah, El Atir, and Ibn Caldun, who set exemplary examples for research, scholarship, and diligence. Over in India, the Syria Buvalia was an epic work by a Jainist monk named Komun Dhanu Muni that was written in the 19th. century. It consists of over 600,000 verses, was written in code, and covers topics including

mathematics, chemistry, physics, astronomy, medicine, and history. However, maybe the greatest encyclopedias of the pre-modern era came out of China. What China had going for it was a highly organized system of scholars known as Mandarin's. If you remember back to my episode on the subject, Mandarin's had to pass an extremely rigorous exam to get admitted. During the Song Dynasty in the 11th the four great books of song were published. This was an enormous undertaking that was the combined effort of thousands of scholars. And if you notice, most of the non-Chinese encyclopedias that I've mentioned were written by either a single individual or a very small group of people. The four great books of song consisted of 9.4 million Chinese characters written in 1,000 volumes.

However, this was dwarfed by the Yonggal Encyclopedia, which was compiled. under the Yongkul emperor of the Ming Dynasty in 1408. The entire work consisted of 22,937 chapters in 11,095 volumes. It was the largest encyclopedia in the world until the creation of Wikipedia. Today, fewer than 400 volumes of the original 11,095 exist. Most of the volumes were lost during the Opium War, which I covered in a previous episode, and the Boxer Rebellion. All of these encyclopedias had one thing in common. Very few copies were made, and they were only

available to a very small number of people. Even the spread of the printing press didn't result in the wide-scale distribution of encyclopedias. There were simply too many volumes that had to be printed, and that couldn't be done affordably. The publication of encyclopedias designed for general use didn't occur until the 18th century. The first encyclopedia created for general consumption was the cyclopedia, or a universal dictionary of arts and sciences, which was published in 1728 by the British encyclopedist Epirium Chambers. This is widely considered to be the first modern encyclopedia. It was in alphabetical order, had multiple contributors, and consisted of two volumes. This was followed by the encyclopedia in France in 1751, which was largely inspired by

Chambers Encyclopedia. One of the most popular encyclopedias for a period of almost 200,000, 50 years was the Encyclopedia Britannica, which was first published in 1768. It was published as a response to the French encyclopedie. The first edition was released in weekly installments as pamphlets from 1768 to 1771, and it had just three volumes. Approximately 3,000 sets were sold at a price of 12 pounds sterlings each, which was a lot of money back in 1771. Adjusted for inflation, it would be over 23,000. thousand pounds today. The 19th century turned out to be a golden era for encyclopedias.

Multiple publishing companies produced encyclopedias. Encyclopedias grew in size, increasing the number of volumes as well as increasing the number of illustrations. In addition to growing in size, they also dropped a little bit in price, making them more affordable to a wider audience. The penny cyclopedia was a 27-volume encyclopedia that was sold in weekly installments of one penny from 1833 to 1843. Likewise, Chambers Encyclopedia was sold over a 10-year period from 1859 to 1868 in 520

installments. Each installment costs three half-pence, and the total size of the end product was 8,320 pages with over 27,000 articles from over 100 authors. The 19th century also saw the spread of encyclopedias into more languages. beyond French, English, and German. In the 20th century, costs continued to drop, but encyclopedias still weren't something that every family had. The business model for many encyclopedias changed,

from issues being published in installments to payments being made in installments. In the 1950s and 60s, new encyclopedias came into existence like the World Book Encyclopedia, which door-to-door salesmen sold. 90% of encyclopedia sales in the United States in the 1960s were sold door-to-door. Encyclopedias were sold as an aspirational item, a way for a family to improve their

lot in life by having an educational resource in their home. There was, of course, a major problem. Encyclopedias couldn't be easily updated and didn't reflect changes in world affairs and advancements in science and technology. Most major encyclopedias would issue annual updates, but at the end of the day, every year your encyclopedia set became more and more out of date. Computers radically changed everything. You could publish an enormous amount of digital content with full-color images, sound, and video. The first major digital encyclopedia was Microsoft's Encarta, which was released on CD-ROM in 1993. I actually purchased one of the original Encardas back then, and I honestly thought it was the greatest thing in the world.

While CD-ROM could distribute data cheaply and efficiently, you still couldn't update it. With the advent of the internet, it became possible to have an encyclopedia that could be accessed by everyone in the world and could be updated instantly. Grawleyer's Encyclopedia had a version that was available on CompuServe in 1993. Several Encyclopedia companies created online versions of their product, but it was much more difficult to monetize compared to selling print volumes. Older encyclopedias, like the 11th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, published in 1911, were in the public domain and were, placed online. In the early days of the internet, people on Usenet set out to create a free online encyclopedia called Interpedia. It was an encyclopedia that anybody could contribute to as well as read. Interpedia never really took off, as did subsequent online encyclopedia,

such as Newpedia. The online encyclopedia that finally caught on was Wikipedia. The English-language version of Wikipedia was launched in 2001. The word Wikipedia is a combination of the Hawaiian word wiki, which means quick, and the Greek word pidea. Wikipedia took a while to gain momentum, but by 2004 it had become the largest published encyclopedia in the world with 300,000 articles. And in 2007, it passed two million articles, making it the largest encyclopedia in history, passing the Chinese Yongell Encyclopedia. As of the time I am recording this, there are are 6,758,548 articles on the English-language version of Wikipedia. Internet encyclopedias have devastated the print encyclopedia market. For example, the

Encyclopedia Britannica ceased printing in 2012 after 244 years. Currently, the only English encyclopedia still in print is the World Book Encyclopedia, which, as you can guess, doesn't sell nearly as many copies as it once did. Today, most sales are to libraries, but there's still a small number of people who buy them for their homes. The 2023 edition costs $1,199. From ancient Babylonian lexicalists to modern websites like Wikipedia, encyclopedias reflect humanities' enduring quest for knowledge and understanding. Many eras and cultures have created their own compilations of human knowledge, and these traditions have been passed down to us today, making encyclopedias a testament to the collective intellectual journey

of humanity. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Peter Bennett and Cameron Kiefer. Today's review comes from listener Jacob Floyd 43 over on Spotify. He writes, after listening to this episode, I'm thrilled to announce my membership in the Arkansas Completionist Club. Thank you for more than six months of amazing podcasts for me to listen to while I'm at work. Well, thanks, Jacob.

I'm glad to have been able to keep you company while you working. One more step towards establishing a chapter of the completionist club in all 50 states. Remember, if you lead to review or send me a boostogram, you too can have it read on the show.