Encyclopedia (knowledge order)

Since the reception of education and science of ancient Greece in Roman literature (approx. 200 BC) there have been attempts to present the knowledge of mankind in an orderly overall representation. Such a universal system was first called an encyclopedia by the humanists around 1490 . The first known printed classification with this title is the Encyclopedia by Johannes Aventinus , which appeared in Ingolstadt in 1517 .

The first draft of the systematic representation (the "disposition") of at least part of the knowledge comes from Pliny the Elder. Ä. in his Naturalis historia from the 1st century. The most famous designs are the Tree of Knowledge in the Middle Ages and the system of knowledge of the Encyclopaedia of 1751. The most recent is probably the most (2007) is the circle of education (Circle of Learning) in the Propaedia the 15th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica of 1994 (vol. 32). In the period of about 2000 years, a large number of partly very different dispositions arose.

Typology

Order of things ( ordo rerum )

• Addition of subsystems: Isidore of Seville
• Image of the world ( Imago mundi ): Honorius Augustodunensis

Conceptual classification

• Disposition according to a taxonomy of beings (hierarchical classification ). Typical representatives:
  • Porphyrios (approx. 234 to approx. 305)
  • Philo of Alexandria († around 40 AD)
  • Topoi as criteria
    • Johann Heinrich Alsted (1588–1638): Disposition according to the ramifying method
    • Laurentius Beyerlinck (1578–1627): macrostructurally arranged alphabetically , longer articles have an internal structure
  • Tree metaphor → tree of knowledge
    • Petrus Hispanus († 1277): Arbor porphyriana
    • Ramon Llull (1232-1316): Arbor scientiae (1295-1296).
• Disposition according to the loci method , in which information is stored with the help of a sophisticated system of terms ( loci ) and sub-terms. This principle goes back to Erasmus of Rotterdam († 1536) ( De duplici copia verborum ac rerum and De ratione studii ac legendi interpretandique auctores ) and was adapted in the 16th century by the reformers Zwingli and Bullinger as well as Rudolf Gwalther , Konrad Pellikan , Peter Martyr Vermigli and Conrad Gessner ( Pandectarum libri ).
• Disposition according to anthropological or epistemological classification
  • Juan Huarte : Examen de ingenios para las Sciencias (1575)
  • Francis Bacon (1561–1626): De dignitate et augmentis scientiarum (1623)
  • Ephraim Chambers († 1740): Cyclopaedia (1728)
  • D'Alembert (1717–1783): System of Knowledge of the Encyclopédie (1751)

Precedence

Disposition according to rank ( nobility ) in the order of being. Typical representatives:

• Pliny the Elder (23–79 AD): Naturalis historia
• Isidore of Seville († 636): Etymologiae
• Arnoldus Saxo : De floribus rerum naturalium (around 1225)
• Thomas Cantimpratensis (1201 – approx. 1270) Liber de natura rerum
• Gerolamo Cardano (1501–1576) De subtilitate (1550)

Classification of the sciences

• Disposition along a division of the sciences ( Ordo artium ).
  • Aristotle (384–322 BC): Metaphysics , Topics
  • Andronikos of Rhodes (approx. 50–70 BC)
  • Seneca († 65 AD)
  • Augustine (354-430): Civitas Dei
  • Boëthius (around 480-524)
  • Hugo von St. Viktor († February 11, 1141): Didascalicon
  • Radulfus de Longo Campo († after 1213)
  • Brunetto Latini (approx. 1220–1294): Livres du Tresor
  • Johannes Aventinus (1477-1534): Encyclopedia
• Disposition in the form of a curriculum : Artes liberales or Septem Artes
  • Varro (116-27 BC): Disciplinarum libri IX
  • Cassiodorus (around 485 – around 580): De artibus ac disciplinis liberalium litterarum
  • Isidore of Seville († 636): Etymologiae
  • Martianus Capella (5th century): De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii
  • Honorius Augustodunensis (approx. 1080 – approx. 1137): De animae exsilio et patria
  • Gregor Reisch (approx. 1470–1525): Margarita Philosophica
• Disposition of individual sciences
  • Encyclopedia of Jurisprudence 1870/1904

chronology

• Disposition along a cosmogony. Typical representative: Bernardus Silvestris (fl. 1145/52) De mundi universitate
• Disposition along the (calendar) course of the year. Typical representatives: Johannes Coler (1566–1639): Calendarium oeconomicum & perpetuum (1591); Franz Philipp Florinus : General wise and right-wise Hauß = Vatter (1705)
• Disposition based on a biography or in any other narrative form. Typical representatives: Wolfram von Eschenbach : Parzival ; Georg Rollehagen : Froschmeuseler (1595); François Rabelais (1494-1553); Charles Sorel (1602–1674): La Solitude et l'Amour Philosophiqve de Cleomède (1640), La Science Vniverselle

The Bible

• The whole Bible as a grid for the spread of knowledge. Typical representatives: Johann Jakob Scheuchzer (1672-1733): Jobi Physica Sacra or Job's science, compared with those calculated today , Physica Sacra. Nature = science of those in salvation. Writes occurring natural things
• Disposition based on the six-day work . Typical representatives: Ambrosius (around 340–397): Exameron ; Gregory of Montesacro, Vincent of Beauvais († 1264): Speculum naturale ; Johann Arndt (1555–1621): True Christianity (1605)
• Disposition along the history of salvation . Typical representative: Vincent de Beauvais (around 1200–1264)
• Disposition according to the Decalogue . Typical representative: Andreas Hondorf (approx. 1530–1572): Promptuarium Exemplorum

geography

• Disposition as a world map or along a travel description. Typical representative: Sir John Mandeville († 1372)
• Disposition in the context of a utopian design or a robinsonade: designs of perfect knowledge stores. Typical representatives: Francis Bacon (1561–1626): Instauratio magna - design of a method for the discovery of all discoveries; Nova Atlantis (House of Salomonis); Tommaso Campanella (1568–1639): La Città del Sole (1602/3; 1623) - design of a utopian city as an image of the cosmos; Joachim Heinrich Campe (1746–1818): Robinson the Younger, for the pleasant and useful entertainment of children (1779/80); Johann David Wyss (1743-1818): The Swiss Robinson or the shipwrecked Swiss preacher and his family. An instructive book for children and children-friends about town and country

Further dispositions

• Disposition according to the catechism
  • Antoine d'Averoult: Fleurs des exemples (1603)
• Disposition according to living environments
  • Johann Amos Comenius (1592–1670): Orbis sensualium pictus (1658)
• Encyclopedic knowledge clothed in an allegory
  • Martianus Capella (around 410/439): De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii
  • Heinrich von Mügeln : The Meide Wreath (around 1360)
• Disposition based on an ideal case from the subject area to be presented
  • Bartolus de Saxoferrato (1313–1357, authorship doubtful): Processus Sathanæ contra genus humanum
  • Jacobus de Theramo (1350 / 51-1417): Litigatio Christi cum Belial sive Consolatio peccatorum
  • Ulrich Tengler (1447–1511): lay mirror
  • Jakob Ayrer the Younger (1569–1625): Historical processus juris (1597)
• Circular disposition
  • Encyclopædia Britannica : Circle of Learning in Propaedia, 15th edition (1994; Vol. 32)

literature

General

• Michel Foucault : The order of things . 1966 (German last Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2003)
• Christel Meier : Encyclopedic Ordo and Social Space: Models of the Functionality of a Universal Form of Literature . In: The Encyclopedia in Change from the High Middle Ages to the Early Modern Age , ed. by Christel Meier, Munich 1996, pp. 511-532
• Paul Michel: How the material is presented in encyclopedias . In: Popular encyclopedias: From the selection, order and transmission of knowledge (commemorative publication for Rudolf Schenda). Zurich: Chronos-Verlag, 2002, pp. 35–83
• Steffen Siegel: Tabula. Figures of the order around 1600 , Berlin: Akademie-Verlag 2009. ISBN 978-3-05-004563-4
• Helmut Zedelmaier: Bibliotheca universalis and bibliotheca selecta: the problem of the order of learned knowledge in the early modern period . Cologne [u. a.]: Böhlau 1992 (Archive for Cultural History: Supplement; 33)
• Theo Stammen, Wolfgang EJ Weber (Ed.): Knowledge assurance, knowledge organization and knowledge processing: the European model of encyclopedias . (Institute for European Cultural History at the University of Augsburg: Colloquia Augustana; Volume 18). Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2004. ISBN 3-05-003776-8 .

To individual works

• Birds, Herfried: Secondary orders of knowledge in the "book of nature" by Konrad von Megenberg . In: Franz M. Eybl u. a. (Ed.): Encyclopedias of the Early Modern Age , Tübingen: Niemeyer 1995, pp. 43–63

See also

• History and development of the encyclopedia

Individual evidence

1. ^ Franz Josef Worstbrock : Arnoldus Saxo. In: Author's Lexicon , I, Sp. 485–488.