thumb|Natural History, written by [[Pliny the Elder in the first century, was the first book to be called an encyclopedia. It was highly regarded in the Middle Ages. This profusely illustrated manuscript was produced in the 13th century.]]
Encyclopedism is an outlook that aims to include a wide range of knowledge in a single work. The term covers both encyclopedias themselves and related genres in which comprehensiveness is a notable feature. The word encyclopedia is a Latinization of the Greek enkýklios paideía, which means all-around education. The encyclopedia is "one of the few generalizing influences in a world of overspecialization. It serves to recall that knowledge has unity," according to Louis Shores, editor of Collier's Encyclopedia. It should not be "a miscellany, but a concentration, a clarification, and a synthesis", according to British writer H. G. Wells.
Besides comprehensiveness, encyclopedic writing is distinguished by its lack of a specific audience or practical application. The author explains facts concisely for the benefit of a reader who will then use the information in a way that the writer does not try to anticipate. Early examples of encyclopedic writing include discussions of agriculture and craft by Roman writers such as Pliny the Elder and Varro – discussions presumably not intended as practical advice to farmers or craftsmen.
The vast majority of classical learning was lost during the Dark Ages. This enhanced the status of encyclopedic works which survived, including those of Aristotle and Pliny. With the development of printing in the 15th century, the range of knowledge available to readers expanded greatly. Encyclopedic writing became both a practical necessity and a clearly distinguished genre. Renaissance encyclopedists were keenly aware of how much classical learning had been lost. They hoped to recover and record knowledge and were anxious to prevent further loss.
In their modern form, encyclopedias consist of alphabetized articles written by teams of specialists. This format was developed in the 18th century by expanding the technical dictionary to include non-technical topics. The Encyclopédie (1751–1772), edited by Diderot and D'Alembert, was a model for many later works. Like Renaissance encyclopedists, Diderot worried about the possible destruction of civilization and selected knowledge he hoped would survive.
Etymology
thumb|In 1517, Bavarian [[Johannes Aventinus wrote the first book that used the word "encyclopedia" in the title.]]
The word "encyclopedia" is a Latinization of the Greek enkýklios paideía. The Greek phrase refers to the education that a well-round student should receive. Latin writer Quintilian uses it to refer to the subjects a student of oratory should be familiar with before beginning an apprenticeship. It translates literally as "in (en) the circle (kýklios) of knowledge (paideía)." The earliest citation for "encyclopedia" given in Oxford English Dictionary refers to the Greek curriculum and is dated 1531.
The use of the term to refer to a genre of literature was prompted by a line that Pliny used in the preface of Natural History: "My object is to treat of all those things which the Greeks include in the Encyclopædia [tē̂s enkyklíou paideías], which, however, are either not generally known or are rendered dubious from our ingenious conceits." Pliny writes the relevant phrase using Greek letters. Latin printers of incunabula lacked the typeface to render it. Some printers substituted encyclopædia or another Latin phrase. Others just left a blank space. This led to the misunderstanding that Pliny had called his work an encyclopedia.
In the Renaissance, writers who wanted their work compared to that of Pliny used the word. In 1517, Bavarian Johannes Aventinus wrote Encyclopedia orbisqve doctrinarum, a Latin reference work. Ringelberg's Cyclopedia was published in 1541 and Paul Scalich's Encyclopedia in 1559. Both of these reference works were written in Latin. The French Encyclopédistes popularized the word in the 18th century.
History
thumb|In the 4th century BC, [[Aristotle wrote on a broad range of topics and explained how knowledge can be classified.]]
Aristotle
The Greek writer and teacher Aristotle (384–322 BC) had much to say on a broad range of subjects, including biology, anatomy, psychology, physics, meteorology, zoology, poetics, rhetoric, logic, epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and political thought. He was among the first writers to describe how to classify material by subject, the first step in writing an encyclopedia. Aristotle wrote to help his students follow his teaching, so his corpus did not much resemble an encyclopedia during his lifetime. Long after his death, commentators filled in the gaps, reordered his works, and put his writing in a systematic form. Catalogs of his work were produced by Andronicus in the first century and by Ptolemy in the second century. As Aristotle's corpus was one of the few encyclopedic works to survive the Middle Ages, it became a widely used reference work in late medieval and Renaissance times.
Alexandria
Dorotheus (mid first century AD) and Pamphilus (late first century AD) both wrote enormous lexicons. Neither work has survived, but their lengths suggest that they were considerably more than just dictionaries. Pamphilus's work was 95 books long and was a sequel to a lexicon of four books by Zopyrion. This passage from the Souda suggests that it was made up of alphabetized entries: