出典(authority):フリー百科事典『ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』「2015/06/10 01:12:39」(JST)
百科事典(ひゃっかじてん、encyclopedia)とは、あらゆる科目にわたる知識を集め、これを部門別やアルファベット順・五十音順などに配列し、解説を記した書物のこと[1]。「百科」と略記されることもある。
広辞苑第五版によれば、「学術・技芸・社会・家庭その他あらゆる科目にわたる知識を集め記し、これを部門別あるいは五十音順などに配列し、解説を加えた書物[1]」のことである。大辞泉によれば「人類の知識の及ぶあらゆる分野の事柄について、辞書の形式に準じて項目を立てて配列し、解説を加えた書物[2]」である。
「百科事典」の「百科」とはおおむね「さまざまな分野」といった意味である。[注 1][注 2][注 3][注 4] かつては「百科辞典」とも表記したが、1931年に平凡社が大百科事典を出版して以降は、「百科事典」の表記が定着した。
「百科全書」(ひゃっかぜんしょ)とも言うが、こちらの呼称はやや古風な呼び方である。特に後述するフランスの百科全書派の手によるものを指して百科全書と呼ぶことが多い。中国語では「百科全書」が正式の表記である。
尚、百科事典を意味する英語 encyclopediaは、ギリシャ語のコイネーの"ἐγκυκλοπαιδεία"から派生した言葉で、「輪になって」の意味であるἐγκύκλιος(enkyklios:en + kyklios、英語で言えば「in circle」)と、「教育」や「子供の育成」を意味するπαιδεία(paideia パイデイア)を組み合わせた言葉であり、ギリシャ人達が街で話し手の周りに集まり聴衆となって伝え聞いた教育知識などから一般的な知識の意味で使われていた[3][4][5][6]。
大型百科事典では数十冊もの大部となるが、記述をコンパクトにまとめた一巻本のものもある。これら以外にも、定期的に刊行される分冊百科も存在する。分冊百科は映画、医薬、英語、日本史、世界遺産など様々なテーマで刊行され、完結時にファイルするとそのテーマの百科事典が成立する。
百科事典の媒体は、2000年頃までは紙の書物(印刷物)が主流であったが、それ以降は書籍以外にも、電子辞書(携帯型の専用装置で内蔵のICに記録されたもの)、CD-ROM/DVD-ROM、メモリーカード、USBメモリ、ウェブとさまざまな形態がある。『ブリタニカ百科事典』など本来は紙媒体であった伝統のある百科事典も、現在はWeb上でサービスが展開されていることが多い。最初からWeb専業で展開されたサービスとしては、一般利用者自らが執筆するオープンソースコンテンツであるウィキペディアが有名である[注 5]。
百科事典というのは、広辞苑・大辞泉などの説明にもあるように基本的に、さまざまな分野、あるいはあらゆる分野の知識を集めたものである。百科全書派の百科全書や『ブリタニカ百科事典』などもそのような範囲の知識を扱っている。(これが一般的であるが、次に説明するものとあえて区別する時は「総合百科」と呼ばれることがある)。ただし、あらかじめ特定の専門領域に絞ったうえで、その領域内のさまざまな知識を集めた百科事典もある。例えば『薬学百科事典』『哲学百科事典』等々で、「専門百科事典」などと呼ばれることがある。
百科事典の構成・配列方法としては、各項目を分野ごとに分類して編成する方法と、各項目の名称で配列する方法(西欧ではアルファベット順、日本語の百科事典の場合には五十音順など)がある。
百科事典の項目の立てかたには、大雑把に分類すると大項目主義と小項目主義の二方式がある。大項目主義は、例えば日本の文学でいうと、「近代文学」など大きなテーマの項目名のもとに、文芸の潮流や著名な作家・作品などについて一つの項目内で概観できるようにまとめたものである。項目は時には数ページから数十ページにもわたる長大なものになる。逆に小項目主義は、「夏目漱石」「芥川龍之介」「自然主義」「吾輩は猫である」など個々の細かいテーマや事物ごとに網羅的に項目を立て、それぞれ別個に簡潔な解説を加えたものである。『ブリタニカ百科事典』の初版は大項目主義であった。一方『ブロックハウス百科事典』は小項目主義の徹底で有名である。
どちらの方式にも一長一短がある。大項目主義では全体を体系的に捉えることができる一方で、特定の作品や作家について調べるには不向きである。逆に小項目主義では個々の項目について調べやすい一方で、全体としてのまとまりに欠ける。ただしこの両方針は必ずしも対立するものではない。折衷的な方式(中項目主義)による百科事典も珍しくない。利点や欠点は取り上げるテーマにおける向不向や編者の立場、利用者の目的等によるところが大きい。
一般に「世界最初の百科事典」と呼ばれているのは、フランスのダランベール、ディドロ、ヴォルテール、ルソーらが企画した『百科全書』 (L'Encyclopédie) である。ただし厳密に言えば、それ以前に、百科全書に類似した、様々な分野の知識を集めて項目別に整理した書物が全く無かったわけではないので、それらも含めて解説する。
ヨーロッパではすでに紀元前2世紀頃から古い書物を収集し、その内容をまとめることが行われた。代表的なものにプリニウスの博物誌がある。
しかし今日のような辞書形式のものは、10世紀末の東ローマ帝国中期「マケドニア朝ルネサンス」の時代に生まれた。皇帝コンスタンティノス7世“ポルフュロゲネトス”はギリシアやラテンの古典から歴史や思想についてのさまざまな話題を集め、統治の参考書として編纂した。この流れでヨハネス1世ツィミスケス(在位969年-976年)の治下にはギリシア語の辞書『スーダ辞典』(スダ)が完成している。現在の百科事典と語義辞書の両方の性格を持ち、現在に伝わるもっとも古いアルファベット順配列による事典と考えられている。『スーダ辞典』には誤伝も見られるが、現在は失われた古代の諸作家の作品の膨大な引用によって、現在でも文献学研究の上で意義を認められている。『スーダ辞典』の編集者の名はスイダス (Suidas) であると長く考えられ、そこから辞典類を指す接尾辞 -das が生じた。(例:イミダス=Imidas)
一方アジアでは、歴史上、百科事典に近いものとしては中国で古くより類書が存在してはいたが、これはまだ用語集的な色合いが強く、本格的なものとしては明の時代の中国に、14部構成・全106巻に及ぶ『三才図会(さんさいずえ)』という図入りの百科事典があり、1607年に完成、二年後に刊行された。日本ではこれに倣い、江戸時代の1712年、寺島良安によって『和漢三才図会』がまとめられた。こちらも図解書で、解説は漢文で書かれた。これらも広義の百科事典と呼べる。なお、(現代の百科事典も現代の世界観の反映だが)これらも執筆された時代の世界観を反映しているので、現代人にとっては空想上のものと見なされる「不死国」「長脚国」などに関する記述も含んでいる[7]。
すでに近世初期ベールによる事典の編纂が試みられた例があるものの、一般に世界最初の百科事典と呼ばれているのは、フランス革命前夜、フランス啓蒙思想運動の一環としてダランベール、ディドロ、ヴォルテール、ルソーらが企画した分冊の『百科全書』 (L'Encyclopédie) である。彼らは予約購読者を募り、分冊販売としてそれを刊行した(販売形態は今日よく見られる「月刊○○百科」のようにあるテーマで定期刊行される分冊百科を思わせる)。この企てにより彼らは「百科全書派」と呼ばれている。ただし、それぞれの項目の執筆姿勢などで意見の食い違いが生じ、内紛から離脱者が絶えなかった。
この百科全書の特徴は、「美」、「愛」、「音楽」といった大項目の他に、近代に登場した新しい技術を断面図などを含む絵入りの図解で分かりやすく解説、新知識を広く一般の共有財産にしようとしたことにある。良く知られる項目では、「農機具」、「石炭の露天掘り」、「洗濯船」、「回り舞台」などがある。各項目の配列を、編集者の価値観に秩序付けられる概念の関係によらず、いわば機械的で一律なアルファベット順にしたことも特筆すべき点である。これ以後、百科事典という語は知の一切を叙述する企ての異称としても用いられる。代表的な例としてヘーゲルの『エンチクロペディー』(ドイツ語で「百科事典」の意)が挙げられる。
近代の日本では、明治の文明開化の時期に西周によって『百学連環』という日本初の百科事典が作られた。他に小中村清矩らの尽力で成立した『古事類苑』がある。1879年、当時の文部省により編纂が開始され、後には神宮司庁が引き継いで1914年に完成された。各時代の事物についての古文献を集成したため、資料的価値が高い。
明治末には三省堂『日本百科大辞典』(全10巻、齋藤精輔の編纂で1908年刊行開始、1919年完結)が、昭和初期からは平凡社『大百科事典』(全28巻、1931年刊行開始、1934年完結)などが発刊された。新たに「辞典」ではなく「事典」という語を作り出して書名に使用したのは、この平凡社のものが最初で、以後「百科事典」という漢字表記が一般化する。さらに昭和期の高度経済成長を経ると1960年代頃には各家庭に分冊の百科事典が置かれているのは珍しい風景ではなくなり、大衆化を果たした。この時代、百科事典はもっぱら応接間の飾りやステータスシンボルとしての役割を果たしていた。もっとも場所を取ることもあり、百科事典ブームが終息した後では大部の百科事典はあまり家庭では歓迎されなくなり、廃棄処分されることが多くなった。
百科事典と比較すれば一つの項目あたりの記述の内容も簡易で文字数も少ないが広く各分野にわたる用語の辞典と呼べる出版物として、『現代用語の基礎知識』のような流行・世相をふんだんに取り入れた時代風俗を映す年刊の資料集的なものも市場に現れるようになった。のちに『イミダス』『知恵蔵』という同コンセプトの年刊資料集が現れ、この三誌が鼎立(ていりつ)している(『イミダス』『知恵蔵』は、インターネットの普及に伴う販売部数の減少により2007年版をもって紙媒体を廃止し、ウェブ版に完全移行している)。
1980年以降は、コンピュータの普及に伴い、百科事典はCD-ROMなどでコンピュータソフトウェアとしても出回るようになった。2000年ごろからは、インターネットの普及に伴い、ウェブ版も作られるようになってきた。『ブリタニカ』や『ラルース』といった伝統的な百科事典は書籍と同時にオンライン版を展開するなど、新たな対応に着手している。2005年現在、携帯電話・PHSのウェブブラウザでアクセスできる百科事典も存在しており、誰でも、使いたい時に、どこでも百科事典の知識にアクセスできる環境になりつつある。紙媒体の百科事典は、刊行後時間が経つと時事的な内容に関しては記述が陳腐化してしまいがちであるが、ウェブ版の百科事典では、項目内容の随時更新が可能であり、改訂が容易である。ウェブ版およびCD-ROM等の電子媒体を用いた百科事典は、検索機能などの使い勝手が紙製の書籍より一般的に優れている。
ウェブ版の百科事典の新しい潮流のひとつである、ウィキペディアなどの「誰でも」執筆や編集に参加できることを特徴とするプロジェクトに関しては、従来の百科事典のように専門家や研究者が編纂する体系的書物と比較して、信頼性に問題があるとする指摘がある[8][9][10][11][12][13][14]。同時に、多くのサーヴィスが無料で提供されていることから伝統的な出版業者にとって経営上の不利益をもたらすという指摘もなされている[15]。一方で、ウィキペディアの質を擁護する識者の評価もある[16][17][18][19]。
百科事典は「調べる」本であって、「読む」本ではないが、読むことを目的とすることもある。
イギリス
アメリカ合衆国
オーストリア
大韓民国
ハンガリー
ドイツ
ノルウェー
ユダヤ教・ユダヤ人
ウィキペディアの姉妹プロジェクトで 「百科事典」に関する情報が検索できます。 |
|
ウィクショナリーで辞書項目 | |
ウィキブックスで教科書や解説書 |
|
ウィキクォートで引用句集 |
|
ウィキソースで原文 |
|
コモンズでメディア |
|
ウィキニュースでニュース |
|
ウィキバーシティで学習支援 |
An encyclopedia or encyclopaedia (also spelled encyclopædia, see spelling differences)[1] is a type of reference work or compendium holding a comprehensive summary of information from either all branches of knowledge or a particular branch of knowledge.[2] Encyclopedias are divided into articles or entries, which are usually accessed alphabetically by article name.[3] Encyclopedia entries are longer and more detailed than those in most dictionaries.[3] Generally speaking, unlike dictionary entries, which focus on linguistic information about words, encyclopedia articles focus on factual information to cover the thing or concept for which the article name stands.[4][5][6][7]
Encyclopedias have existed for around 2,000 years; the oldest still in existence, Naturalis Historia, was written starting in ca. AD 77 by Pliny the Elder; it was not fully revised at the time of his death in 79. The modern encyclopedia evolved out of dictionaries around the 17th century. Historically, some encyclopedias were contained in one volume, whereas others, such as the Encyclopædia Britannica, the Enciclopedia Italiana (62 volumes, 56,000 pages) or the world's largest, Enciclopedia universal ilustrada europeo-americana (118 volumes, 105,000 pages), became huge multi-volume works. Some modern encyclopedias, such as Wikipedia, are electronic and often freely available.
The word encyclopedia comes from the Koine Greek ἐγκύκλιος παιδεία,[8] transliterated enkyklios paideia, meaning "general education" from enkyklios (ἐγκύκλιος), meaning "circular, recurrent, required regularly, general"[9] and paideia (παιδεία), meaning "education, rearing of a child";[10] it was reduced to a single word due to an error[11] by copyists of Latin manuscripts. Together, the phrase literally translates as "complete instruction" or "complete knowledge".
Indeed, the purpose of an encyclopedia is to collect knowledge disseminated around the globe; to set forth its general system to the men with whom we live, and transmit it to those who will come after us, so that the work of preceding centuries will not become useless to the centuries to come; and so that our offspring, becoming better instructed, will at the same time become more virtuous and happy, and that we should not die without having rendered a service to the human race in the future years to come.
—Diderot[12]
Copyists of Latin manuscripts took this phrase to be a single Greek word, enkyklopaidia, with the same meaning, and this spurious Greek word became the New Latin word "encyclopaedia", which in turn came into English. Though the notion of a compendium of knowledge dates back thousands of years, the term was first used in the title of a book in 1517 by Johannes Aventinus: Encyclopedia orbisque doctrinarum, hoc est omnium artium, scientiarum, ipsius philosophiae index ac divisio, and in 1538 by Joachimus Fortius Ringelbergius, Lucubrationes vel potius absolutissima kyklopaideia (Basel, 1538). The word encyclopaedia was first used as a noun in the title of his book by the Croatian encyclopedist Pavao Skalić in his Encyclopaedia seu orbis disciplinarum tam sacrarum quam prophanarum epistemon (Encyclopaedia, or Knowledge of the World of Disciplines, Basel, 1559).[dubious – discuss] One of the oldest vernacular uses was by François Rabelais in his Pantagruel in 1532.[13][14] Several encyclopedias have names that include the suffix -p(a)edia, e.g., Banglapedia (on matters relevant for Bengal).
In British usage, the spellings encyclopedia and encyclopaedia are both current.[15] In American usage, only the former is commonly used.[16] The spelling encyclopædia—with the æ ligature—was frequently used in the 19th century and is increasingly rare, although it is retained in product titles such as Encyclopædia Britannica and others. The Oxford English Dictionary (1989) records encyclopædia and encyclopaedia as equal alternatives (in that order), and notes the æ would be obsolete except that it is preserved in works that have Latin titles. Webster's Third New International Dictionary (1997–2002) features encyclopedia as the main headword and encyclopaedia as a minor variant. In addition, cyclopedia and cyclopaedia are now rarely used shortened forms of the word originating in the 17th century.
The modern encyclopedia was developed from the dictionary in the 18th century. Historically, both encyclopedias and dictionaries have been researched and written by well-educated, well-informed content experts, but they are significantly different in structure. A dictionary is a linguistic work which primarily focuses on alphabetical listing of words and their definitions. Synonymous words and those related by the subject matter are to be found scattered around the dictionary, giving no obvious place for in-depth treatment. Thus, a dictionary typically provides limited information, analysis or background for the word defined. While it may offer a definition, it may leave the reader lacking in understanding the meaning, significance or limitations of a term, and how the term relates to a broader field of knowledge. An encyclopedia is, allegedly, not written in order to convince, although one of its goals is indeed to convince its reader about its own veracity. In the terms of Aristotle's Modes of persuasion, a dictionary should persuade the reader through logos (conveying only appropriate emotions); it will be expected to have a lack of pathos (it should not stir up irrelevant emotions), and to have little ethos except that of the dictionary itself.
To address those needs, an encyclopedia article is typically not limited to simple definitions, and is not limited to defining an individual word, but provides a more extensive meaning for a subject or discipline. In addition to defining and listing synonymous terms for the topic, the article is able to treat the topic's more extensive meaning in more depth and convey the most relevant accumulated knowledge on that subject. An encyclopedia article also often includes many maps and illustrations, as well as bibliography and statistics.
Four major elements define an encyclopedia: its subject matter, its scope, its method of organization, and its method of production:
Some works entitled "dictionaries" are actually similar to encyclopedias, especially those concerned with a particular field (such as the Dictionary of the Middle Ages, the Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, and Black's Law Dictionary). The Macquarie Dictionary, Australia's national dictionary, became an encyclopedic dictionary after its first edition in recognition of the use of proper nouns in common communication, and the words derived from such proper nouns.
There are some broad differences between encyclopedias and dictionaries. Most noticeably, encyclopedia articles are longer, fuller and more thorough than entries in most general-purpose dictionaries.[3][17] There are differences in content as well. Generally speaking, dictionaries provide linguistic information about words themselves, while encyclopedias focus more on the thing for which those words stand.[4][5][6][7] Thus, while dictionary entries are inextricably fixed to the word described, encyclopedia articles can be given a different entry name. As such, dictionary entries are not fully translatable into other languages, but encyclopedia articles can be.[4]
In practice, however, the distinction is not concrete, as there is no clear-cut difference between factual, "encyclopedic" information and linguistic information such as appears in dictionaries.[6][17][18] Thus encyclopedias may contain material that is also found in dictionaries, and vice versa.[18] In particular, dictionary entries often contain factual information about the thing named by the word.[17][18]
Encyclopedias have progressed from the beginning of history in written form, through medieval and modern times in print, and most recently, displayed on computer and distributed via computer networks.
One of the earliest encyclopedic works to have survived to modern times is the Naturalis Historia of Pliny the Elder, a Roman statesman living in the 1st century AD. He compiled a work of 37 chapters covering natural history, architecture, medicine, geography, geology, and all aspects of the world around him. He stated in the preface that he had compiled 20,000 facts from 2000 works by over 200 authors, and added many others from his own experience. The work was published around AD 77-79, although he probably never finished proofing the work before his death in the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79.[19]
Isidore of Seville, one of the greatest scholars of the early Middle Ages, is widely recognized for writing the first encyclopedia of the Middle Ages, the Etymologiae (The Etymologies) or Origines (around 630), in which he compiled a sizable portion of the learning available at his time, both ancient and modern. The work has 448 chapters in 20 volumes, and is valuable because of the quotes and fragments of texts by other authors that would have been lost had he not collected them.
The most popular encyclopedia of the Carolingian Age was the De universo or De rerum naturis by Rabanus Maurus, written about 830; it was based on Etymologiae.[citation needed].
The encyclopedia of Suda, a massive 10th-century Byzantine encyclopedia, had 30 000 entries, many drawing from ancient sources that have since been lost, and often derived from medieval Christian compilers. The text was arranged alphabetically with some slight deviations from common vowel order and place in the Greek alphabet.
The early Muslim compilations of knowledge in the Middle Ages included many comprehensive works. Around year 960, the Brethren of Purity of Basra[20] were engaged in their Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Purity. Notable works include Abu Bakr al-Razi's encyclopedia of science, the Mutazilite Al-Kindi's prolific output of 270 books, and Ibn Sina's medical encyclopedia, which was a standard reference work for centuries. Also notable are works of universal history (or sociology) from Asharites, al-Tabri, al-Masudi, Tabari's History of the Prophets and Kings, Ibn Rustah, al-Athir, and Ibn Khaldun, whose Muqadimmah contains cautions regarding trust in written records that remain wholly applicable today.
The enormous encyclopedic work in China of the Four Great Books of Song, compiled by the 11th century AD during the early Song Dynasty (960–1279), was a massive literary undertaking for the time. The last encyclopedia of the four, the Prime Tortoise of the Record Bureau, amounted to 9.4 million Chinese characters in 1000 written volumes.
In the late Middle Ages, several authors had the ambition of compiling the sum of human knowledge in a certain field or overall, for example Bartholomew of England, Vincent of Beauvais, Radulfus Ardens, Sydrac, Brunetto Latini, Giovanni da Sangiminiano, Pierre Bersuire. Some were women, like Hildegard of Bingen and Herrad of Landsberg. The most successful of those publications were the Speculum maius (Great Mirror) of Vincent of Beauvais and the De proprietatibus rerum (On the Properties of Things) by Bartholomew of England. The latter was translated (or adapted) into French, Provençal, Italian, English, Flemish, Anglo-Norman, Spanish and German during the Middle Ages. Both were written in the middle of the 13th century. No medieval encyclopedia bore the title Encyclopaedia – they were often called On nature (De natura, De naturis rerum), Mirror (Speculum maius, Speculum universale), Treasure (Trésor).[21]
These works were all hand copied and thus rarely available, beyond wealthy patrons or monastic men of learning: they were expensive, and usually written for those extending knowledge rather than those using it.[22]
During Renaissance the creation of printing allowed a wider diffusion of encyclopedias and every scholar could have his or her own copy. The De expetendis et fugiendis rebus by Giorgio Valla was posthumously printed in 1501 by Aldo Manuzio in Venice. This work followed the traditional scheme of liberal arts. However, Valla added the translation of ancient Greek works on mathematics (firstly by Archimedes), newly discovered and translated. The Margarita Philosophica by Gregor Reisch, printed in 1503, was a complete encyclopedia explaining the seven liberal arts.
The term encyclopaedia was coined by 16th century humanists who misread copies of their texts of Pliny and Quintilian, and combined the two Greek words "enkyklios paideia" into one word, έγκυκλοπαιδεία.[23] The phrase enkyklios paideia (ἐγκύκλιος παιδεία) was used by Plutarch and the Latin word Encyclopedia came from him.
The first work titled in this way was the Encyclopedia orbisque doctrinarum, hoc est omnium artium, scientiarum, ipsius philosophiae index ac divisio written by Johannes Aventinus in 1517.[citation needed]
The English physician and philosopher, Sir Thomas Browne used the word 'encyclopaedia' in 1646 in the preface to the reader to define his Pseudodoxia Epidemica, a major work of the 17th-century scientific revolution. Browne structured his encyclopaedia upon the time-honoured schemata of the Renaissance, the so-called 'scale of creation' which ascends through the mineral, vegetable, animal, human, planetary and cosmological worlds. Pseudodoxia Epidemica was a European best-seller, translated into French, Dutch and German as well as Latin it went through no less than five editions, each revised and augmented, the last edition appearing in 1672.
The beginnings of the modern idea of the general-purpose, widely distributed printed encyclopedia precede the 18th century encyclopedists. However, Chambers' Cyclopaedia, or Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences (1728), and the Encyclopédie of Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert (1751 onwards), as well as Encyclopædia Britannica and the Conversations-Lexikon, were the first to realize the form we would recognize today, with a comprehensive scope of topics, discussed in depth and organized in an accessible, systematic method. Chambers, in 1728, followed the earlier lead of John Harris's Lexicon Technicum of 1704 and later editions (see also below); this work was by its title and content "A Universal English Dictionary of Arts and Sciences: Explaining not only the Terms of Art, but the Arts Themselves".
During the 19th and early 20th century, many smaller or less developed languages[which?] saw their first encyclopedias, using French, German, and English role models. While encyclopedias in larger languages, having large markets that could support a large editorial staff, churned out new 20-volume works in a few years and new editions with brief intervals, such publication plans often spanned a decade or more in smaller languages.[citation needed]
Popular and affordable encyclopedias such as Harmsworth's Universal Encyclopaedia and the Children's Encyclopaedia appeared in the early 1920s.
In the United States, the 1950s and 1960s saw the introduction of several large popular encyclopedias, often sold on installment plans. The best known of these were World Book and Funk and Wagnalls.
The second half of the 20th century also saw the proliferation of specialized encyclopedias that compiled topics in specific fields. This trend has continued. Encyclopedias of at least one volume in size now exist for most if not all academic disciplines, including such narrow topics such as bioethics and African American history.
By the late 20th century, encyclopedias were being published on CD-ROMs for use with personal computers. Microsoft's Encarta, launched in 1993, was a landmark example as it had no printed equivalent. Articles were supplemented with both video and audio files as well as numerous high-quality images. After sixteen years, Microsoft discontinued the Encarta line of products in 2009.[24]
In 2001, Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger launched Wikipedia, a collaboratively edited, multilingual, open-source, free Internet encyclopedia supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. As of December 2014, there are 4,678,709 articles in the English Wikipedia. There are 287 different editions of Wikipedia. As of February 2014, it had 18 billion page views and nearly 500 million unique visitors each month.[25] Wikipedia has more than 22 million accounts, out of which there were over 73,000 active editors globally, as of May 2014. Wikipedia's accuracy was found by a Nature study to be close to that of Encyclopædia Britannica,[26] with Wikipedia being much larger. However, critics argue Wikipedia exhibits systemic bias,[27][28] and its group dynamics hinder its goals.[clarification needed] Many academics, historians, teachers, and journalists reject Wikipedia as a reliable source of information, primarily for being a mixture of truths, half truths, and some falsehoods, and that as a resource about many controversial topics, is notoriously subject to manipulation and spin.[29] By far the largest web-based encyclopedia, Wikipedia is not, however, the only one in existence. There are several much smaller, but usually more specialized, encyclopedias of various thematics, dedicated to a specific geographic region or time period.[30]
Portals Access related topics |
|
An English lexicographer, H.W. Fowler, wrote in the preface to the first edition (1911) of The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English language that a dictionary is concerned with the uses of words and phrases and with giving information about the things for which they stand only so far as current use of the words depends upon knowledge of those things. The emphasis in an encyclopedia is much more on the nature of the things for which the words and phrases stand.
In contrast with linguistic information, encyclopedia material is more concerned with the description of objective realities than the words or phrases that refer to them. In practice, however, there is no hard and fast boundary between factual and lexical knowledge.
An 'encyclopedia' (encyclopaedia) usually gives more information than a dictionary; it explains not only the words but also the things and concepts referred to by the words.
Usually these two aspects overlap – encyclopedic information being difficult to distinguish from linguistic information – and dictionaries attempt to capture both in the explanation of a meaning...
The two types, as we have seen, are not easily differentiated; encyclopedias contain information that is also to be found in dictionaries, and vice versa.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Encyclopedias. |
Look up encyclopedia, encyclopaedia, or encyclopedic in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
Wikisource has original works on the topic: Encyclopedias |
全文を閲覧するには購読必要です。 To read the full text you will need to subscribe.
.