Exploding the EB
IN 1768, before too many Scots had quite grasped how much more effectively they could control Britain from London, a couple of enterprising Scottish mechanics launched from Edinburgh, at sixpence a time, the first instalments of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Brevity was then the soul of its wit: 'WOMAN the female of man. See HOMO.' For a century it expanded its volumes and its readership, which by 1898 reached satura- tion point. Sales were stationary. Some Ameri- cans offered it a great big hand. In England 'the Thunderer' roared its praises and pushed the current set on easy HP terms. 'The Times is behind the Encyclopwdia,' as someone observed, 'but the encyclopaedia is behind the times.' A moment's thought is enough to show that an encyclopaedia must always be, at any given moment, out of date. The question is how out of date it can afford to be. Mr. Einbinder, who has been using the EB as.an Aunt Sally for years, is pretty caustic about what the promoters can afford, and about the anachronistic matter they still allow to appear in new editions.
Encyclopedias are compilations of digests and, as such, convenient but vulnerable com- promises. They were first tried, and of course condemned, by the Chinese; then, some cen- turies later, by the Arabs. Cultures move, know- ledge grows, fashions change. If the difficulties of snapshotting something in perpetual motion were apparent even in mediaeval times, the accelerating rate df progress today, especially in the fields of technology, clearly makes more and more printed matter obsolescent while the ink is still wet. One may agree with Mr. Einbinder that the Ninth Edition of the EB was 'a major monument of Victorian learning' and 'a landmark of English scholarship.' Its literary contributions alone are still valuable, not merely as period pieces. But look up its article on 'Aeronautics' in Volume One and you find pages of mathematical assurance that the flight of heavier-than-air machines is impossible. Today the situation is far more embarrassing. 'In 1790,' Mr. Einbinder notes, 'only five periodicals in the world were devoted to biological research. By 1880, when the Ninth Edition was being issued, the number had reached 235 . . . and by 1955 there were about 3,500 . . and if the present rate of growth is maintained, by 1975 there will be 7,500.' In other scientific fields the rate is still greater. Clearly new editions cannot cope with such material, and even supplements are in- adequate. What is wanted here is not an encyclo- pedia, but a monthly delivery of microfilm and a well-staffed dialling service. Yet encyclopaedias are useful and necessary, and it is proper that they should be kept up to the mark, if they can- not be up to the minute, on general topics.
Here Mr. Einbinder has much quiet fun. He reminds one of the woman who complained to Dr. Johnson about the dirty words in his dic- tionary. He looks them all up, but finds them not dirty enough for his contemporary taste. Anyone who seeks in the entry for a musical term like castrati a detailed medical explana- tion surely lays himself open to the suspicion that he suffers from a castration complex! Also this is a sly book, if it is not slightly naïve. What it does is to accuse but, by implication or ex- planation, to excuse the compilers for the limita- tions under which they labour. Anyone who has worked in an advertising agency will recognise the 'negative' publicity techniques used here; will recall the old Tin Lizzie jokes, or the ads de- signed to make more people chew more gum in more exotic circumstances, etc. Certainly it's an essential guide, • this entertaining pot-shot at potted culture, to any edition of the EB you may happen to possess. It's thus an incitement to read the EB, and one so compulsive that you may be lured into buying a set. But the pro- moters have some devastating criticisms to answer before their pressure salesmen should be allowed to get away with another order.
HUGH GORDON PORTEUS
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