All-Around Education

That's the etymology of "encyclopedia."  The Atlantic is running an article about the habit of creating these works, starting with Pliny.

5 comments:

douglas said...

When I was a kid, one of my favorite ways to kill time was to pull out a volume of our World Book Encyclopedia and browse through it. Picked up a lot of information that way. Also furthered my focus on learning all I could about everything. A specialist I'm not, which made architecture a good choice, but also, there's some weakness in being a generalist in a culture that places perhaps inordinate value on specialization.

Grim said...

Mine too! I must have read that whole thing several times. It was endlessly fascinating to a boy.

douglas said...

Ah,I knew I liked you, Grim. Kindred spirits and all.
Now the kids have available to them a vastly more broad source of information, but don't seem to get as much of worth out of it.

Texan99 said...

I worked on the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica at Project Gutenberg for a long while shortly after I joined, and only regretted that the project was so far along when I got there.

douglas said...

Tex, I fully understand!

Must have been a kick to see where our knowledge changed dramatically, and where it hadn't.