Delirium wrote:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
How? Have you ever looked at a paper encyclopaedia? Every article is verifiable from numerous published sources. [...] if we step over that edge we cease to be an encyclopaedia and become something else.
I'm not going to argue we should follow their lead, but this isn't universally the case. Britannica, to pick only the most famous encyclopedia, is well known for hiring famous people to write original research for their articles. [...] The previous conception of an encyclopedia was that it be a compendium of *true* things, even if the truths flatly contradict the existing secondary literature (sometimes Britannica will explicitly say things like, "most commentators say [x], but this is false"). The justification for the truth was not sourcing to existing literature, but the combined prestige of the article's author and Britannica itself.
When I'm chewing over something I've read in some Wikipedia discussion, I'll often go and flip through the reproduction I have of the first edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. I take a certain pleasure in entries like this one:
BOTARGO, a kind of sausage, made with the eggs and blood of the sea-mullet, a large fish common in the Mediterranean. The best kind comes from Tunis in Barbary: It must be chosen dry and reddish. The people of Provence use a great deal of it, the common way of eating it being with olive oil and lemon juice. There is also a great consumption of botargo throught all the Levant.
Botargo pays on importation 2 87/100d the pound; whereof 2 58/100d is repaid on exportation.
Shamelessly POV, with dollops of cookbook, dictionary, and tax guide. But I think they were ok with that.
In the preface they open by saying, "Utility ought to be the principal intention of every publication. Wherever this intention does not plainly appear, neither the books nor their authors have the smallest claim to the approbation of mankind." They then go on to say, "We will, however, venture to affirm, that any man of ordinary parts, may, if he chuses, learn the principles of Agriculture, of Astronomy, of Botany, of Chemistry, &c, &c, from the Encyclopaedia Britannica."
William