Title: Encyclopaedic visions
Description: "The eighteenth-century English dictionaries of arts and sciences claimed to contain all knowledge that a person of education should possess. These early encyclopaedias responded to the explosion of information by reducing knowledge to essentials, stressing the need for a coherent account of the sciences, and for some time excluding biography and history. 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 specialisation of science. He discusses dilemmas involved in the quest for knowledge to be both organised and readily available, examining assumptions about the organisation, communication and control of knowledge in these works. Elegantly illustrated and accessibly written, Encyclopaedic Visions provides a major contribution to Enlightenment studies, the history of science and the history of ideas in general."--BOOK JACKET.
Subjects: Early works to 1800, Encyclopedias, Encyclopedias and dictionaries, Enlightenment, History, History and criticism, Intellectual life, Learning and scholarship, Science, Science and civilization, Encyclopedias and dictionaries, history and criticism, Science, history, Great britain, intellectual life
Places: England
Time periods: 18th century