Encyclopaedia and Hypertext

Expected results

To understand why, face to the announced death of encyclopaedism, to its foreseeable exhaustion coming from the progress and exponential specialization of knowledge, we watch today, not only a revival of encyclopaedic project, but also a vertiginous approach to its (almost) accomplishment in the technology of informatic machines and of its totalitarian ambition.

Task description

Starting on the basis of a general characterization of the formal determinations of the textual gender "encyclopaedia", we will study the great lines of encyclopaedism. Even if, in an accurate sense, encyclopaedia is a product of the XVII century, we will try to identify some of its roots in antiquity and medieval age. However, our  attention will be directed to the barroque, illuminist and positivist encyclopaedism. In each case, we will look for the forms of organization and unification of knowledge which have been attempted. In the scope of general encyclopaedia, we will study in detail that monumental realization which is the  "Encyclopédie"  of Diderot and D'Alembert, a kind of laboratory where the idea of encyclopaedia exhibits, with a shining clarity, all the intricacy, virtues and difficulties of its very project. In the philosophical encyclopaedia, whose specificity we will also try to establish, a particular importance will be given to the encyclopaedic project of Leibnitz who - we suppose - performs a single role in the history of encyclopaedism:  the extreme formulation of a rigorous and heuristical theoretical model for the systematic structure of human knowledge.

We believe that this backward movement to Leibnitz can give us a deeper understanding of the posterior developments of encyclopaedism, in particular in what concerns the recent progress in the area of electronic encyclopaedia and of the "net" (or "net of nets" as Bressand and Distler (1985) prefer). Something which, under our yet unbelieving eyes, offers itself as the monadological reality of the boundless inter-expression of the diverse domains of knowledge.