[lit-ideas] The British Boy and His Hoop (Was: "Encyclopaedia Britannica
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 17:59:22 EDT
Thanks to D. Ritchie for his comments on his Monday poem. He writes:
"My current weakness is encyclopedia Britannica. I just bought my third set,
which will allow me perhaps to say a thing or two about the transition from
the eleventh to the thirteenth edition. Or maybe I'll just enjoy the essays."
L. Helm adds:
"By coincidence, I have an Eleventh Edition. And I also have the three
volumes that presumably comprise the additions that along with the Eleventh
make
up the Thirteenth Edition. In fact, those three volumes, entitled
"Thirteenth Edition," led me to believe that there was no integrated
Thirteenth Edition; that is, that the Thirteenth Edition consisted of an
Eleventh Edition plus the three volume addendum. Pray tell, what three
volumes do you have? I was once tempted by an earlier edition, perhaps the
ninth or the tenth but resisted. I do have a 1990 Fifteenth, but I have
never become reconciled to Mortimer Adler's innovations".
Very interesting. Jorge Luis Borges was _fascinated_ with the Encyclopaedia
Britannica. He was once asked (axed) what book he would take to a desert
island and he replied,
"The Encyclopaedia Volume -- 11th edition".
Indeed, his obsession was such that there is an entry for "Encyclopaedia
Britannica" in "A dictionary of Borges, by Hughes and Fishburn (Duckworth --
irritating how things everybody should know become _books_). The entry reads:
"ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA. Borges, attracted to the claim that
encyclopaedias embrace the totality of human knowledge, as the word implies,
owned a set
of the 11th edition in 29 volumes (1910-1911), the last edition to have been
published in Britain [Edinburgh, to be more precise. JLS]. The TENTH edition
(1902-3), said in 'Tloen, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius' to be the original of the
PIRATICAL *Anglo-American Cyclopaedia, is a reprint of the 24 volumes of the
NINTH edition plus 11 supplementary volumes, one containing new maps and one a
comprehensive index to the whole work. The 20 volumes mentioned as circulating
in the USA in about 1824 are probably the SIXTH edition of 1823. In 1824
these were reprinted with six supplementary volumes. Source: Labyrintsh 27
(3),
Ficciones 13."
I agree with L. Helm that 'supplementary volumes' can be a bother. I do own
one set of the E. B.: the 24-volume boring edition.
I write the British Boy and His Hoop, trying to be funny (and failing). The
idea of an encyclopaedia, as every British school boy knows, is a FRENCH
idea, of the Enlightment -- Hence it's natural that it would caught in
Scotland,
rather than London, where they would be more sceptical of comprising the
whole enlightened science in just a set of things.
Now, the etymology suggests that it's a Greek thing, and R. Paul should know
more about this.
Since it's 'paedia', I assume it's from "pais", which is Greek for 'boy' (or
little boy -- They distinguished between 'pais' and 'kuros'. Perhaps 'pais'
was neutral for little boy and little girl, but I think it was a masculine
noun in any case).
Only in a figurative sense can it mean 'educatio' ("education"). The
'cyclo-' thing was possibly a Greek idea derived from the Neo-Platonists, like
Plotinus, and the idea -- Greek -- that the kyklos was the epitome of
perfection
--.
Since I cannot see how a kyklos could attract a boy unless it's a jumping
hoop, I combined the idea in the title. I added, British, because the whole
point of the Edinburgh set was to provide a BRITISH equivalent of what the
FRENCH were attempting in the Continent.
Am I right?
The word 'encyclopaedia' should be restricted to 'general knowledge'. Yet,
Paul Edwards thought it would be a good idea to create a "Philosophical
Encyclopaedia", and so he did. It's pretty good, with good commissioned
articles by
Searle, and others (But I don't like the idea of an article being
'commissioned'). There are now too many encyclopaedias, including a few on
gardening,
and who knows, on Scandinavian fairy-tales.
Cheers,
JL
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