Encyclopaedic Visions: Scientific Dictionaries and Enlightenment Culture

Front Cover
Cambridge University Press, Mar 29, 2001 - History - 336 pages
The eighteenth-century English dictionaries of arts and sciences claimed to contain all knowledge that a person of education should possess. Richard Yeo places these scientific dictionaries in a rich cultural framework of debate that includes the classification of knowledge, the tradition of commonplaces, the Republic of Letters, the Enlightenment public sphere, copyright issues, and the specialization of science. He examines assumptions about the organization, communication, and control of knowledge in these works. Elegantly illustrated and clearly written, Encyclopaedic Visions provides a major contribution to Enlightenment studies, the history of science, and the history of ideas in general.
 

Contents

Encyclopaedias in the Republic of Letters
35
Scientific dictionaries and compleat knowledge
59
Containing knowledge
78
From commonplace books to encyclopaedias ΙΟΙ
101
Ephraim Chambers
120
Communicating the arts and sciences
145
The Encyclopaedia Britannica and the Scottish
170
Copyright and public knowledge
195
Why dedicate an encyclopaedia to a king?
222
ΙΟ Editors and experts
246
Conclusion
277
Bibliography
284
Index
323
Copyright

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