Encyclopaedic Knowledge in the 21st Century

Nyiri, Kristof

It was the invention of printing that created the theoretical possibility of amassing the interconnected world of knowledge. In the 16^th and 17^th Centuries possessing all knowledge seemed a real prospect. The increasing complexity of knowledge made this idea disappear by the 19^th century. Today, the Internet holds the possibility of new opportunities of interdisciplinarity and a new encyclopaedism.
Having offered an overview of the history of the concept of encyclopaedism, the lecture cuncludes that encyclopaedic theoretical knowledge in one single mind is impossible, but it is perhaps possible outside the mind. According to certain anthropologists the majority of human knowledge is stored not in the mind but in external, physical symbolic systems. At the beginning of the 21^st century the role of the external human memory is gradually being taken up by the digital Internet.
The World Wide Web is not a world encyclopaedia, although many online lexicons can be found on it. In Hungary there is a new venture to create the, Hungarian Virtual Encyclopaedia, which is at the same time a scientific experiment.

About the lecturer