Education 
The term "encyclopedia" comes from the greek
enkyklos paideia, a term originally used by Plutarch, which literally means "round education" in the sense of "complete" closed in on itself like a circle. This meaning clearly reflects an ideal of knowledge obsolete for today's critical sensibility, Popper, who prefers to education as a company is "open", not dogmatic.
But knowledge can be encyclopedic, or circular, in the sense that, as vast and includes a wide variety of subjects may be, must encompass the whole of knowledge in an accessible format, for which accurate both in the reconstruction of every detail can also be flown over a bird's eye and understood in its broad outlines in a single glance, like a globe sums up the floor boards of an atlas. What differentiates a mere collection of disaggregated information from a real encyclopedia is precisely its being structured in a way, his being dominated and subdued by a certain pattern.
is immediately evident, then, that the compilation of an encyclopedia is a priori incompatible with an epistemologically neutral, and so is the political and ideological neutrality. Make visible the structure of knowledge and highlight the hierarchical relationships between the various disciplines that compose it, as well as any kind of systematic classification, it is always an exercise of power. An encyclopedia is paradoxical
the Chinese invented by Borges and discussed by Foucault
words and things, because its classification is absurd and inconceivable, therefore useless. Do not make it more capable and more able, though perhaps it could serve (and for that matter) for a period of totalitarian power.
The purpose of the encyclopedia of the eighteenth century (Diderot, D'Alembert, and others), but was to emancipate the women of their time from the absolute and arbitrary power that was reflected in religious and ecclesiastical dogmas, to erase the darkness ignorance and superstition with the light of reason, which just required a restructuring of the system of knowledge.
As the historian Robert Darnton notes in an essay on '
Encyclopédie contained in the volume
The big cat massacre and other episodes in French cultural history , a modern reader, before the great harvest of encyclopedia articles placed in strict order alphabetically and cover topics such as carding wool or the manufacture of safety pins, might legitimately ask what was wrong with this so subversive, so much so that the symbol of the ideals of the Enlightenment and even politicians who led the French Revolution. Despite
alphabetical order (of course neutral), however, other types of order and organization are hidden such as in references between a voice and the other, which serve precisely to highlight the links between the various branches of knowledge (in some cases the references also serve to circumvent the censors by including sensitive topics related entries in the encyclopedia is not had the courage to put in the main heading). But the inspiring system emerges explicitly in
statement (signed by Diderot), in '
introduction to the work (signed by D'Alembert) and
chart accompanying the statement "the system figured human sciences "(itself inspired by a similar scheme Bacon, but with significant innovations).
Each type of knowledge, in Lockean empiricism tribute, is thus traced ultimately to three faculties (formerly thus excluding the revealed truths of religion): memory, which depends on the science of history, the reason, on which the philosophy and imagination, on which the poem. The knowledge of God is put together with the science of man and nature, in the main branch of philosophy (and then depend upon the faculty of reason). It is true that it occupies the first place (the highest) among the three main branches of philosophy (but is under the ontology), but you can also see that it is divided among all the least and the poorest, and the fact that it is located dangerously close to superstition and black magic.
could make similar arguments about the cultural strategies, explicit and less explicit, behind the compilation of works like the 'Encyclopaedia Britannica
, or
Treccani , or the' Encyclopedia Einaudi
(a project which I find very interesting, but unfortunately almost brought ruin to the publisher). But the post would become a sort of compendium of the history of encyclopedias. (One note: the encyclopedias of the past, entrusted with leading experts, could also be "Source" as well as secondary information, namely providing original research). As the only comparison that really interests me is with what is incorrectly called "encyclopedia" but in fact it is not for all those reasons that should now be apparent.
In Wikipedia there is no such thing as an organization of content according to a certain editorial line, according to a certain conception of epistemology, according to a hierarchy of knowledge. Everything is placed randomly, by anyone who has desire, and changed at any time by anyone who wants. You work so open, so
in progress, which can not be defined work. Wikipedia is only a subset of the internet, everything is a collection of disaggregated information; highly related in the sense that she is also exceedingly rich in references between the entries, but again without any logical order than to organize the strategy of references, left to improvisation of individual users.
It can not be otherwise, in homage to the doctrine of NPOV and the opening of the project to the largest possible number of people (no one is the author of Wikipedia, we all are). That Wikipedia is not an education "cyclical" but education is just "wiki", hyper-fast, passing the time is now leaving. Quick to assimilate and then conveniently suited to the demands of modern life.
But in fact even Wikipedia manages to be truly politically neutral. There is apparently also an ideological vision behind such a project, and the choice to structure it in such a way (without frame). The big problem, perhaps, is that here we can speak of Marxist ideology in the sense of the word, or a superstructure that is designed to mask the real devious and concrete relations of production.
Under the slogans of democracy and condivione for example, is masked in the excessive power of the directors also decide what is 2 +2, in the name of majority rule and representative. Nel nome della neutralità viene fatto passare il concetto che tutte le idee sono egualmente rispettabili purché un numero (piccolo) sufficiente di persone le sostenga, e devono quindi trovare spazio nel progetto, non importa quanto deviate esse siano. Anche se non è possibile, quindi, inserire le teorie creazioniste nella voce dedicata a Darwin, si lasciano liberi i creazionisti di creare le loro voci e di riempirle di ciò che desiderano, ammucchiando nozioni su nozioni per dare una falsa impressione di autorevolezza alla voce. Non si può sostenere, infine, che sia politicamente neutrale un repertorio di informazioni che assegna una singola voce a ciascun personaggio dei Pokemon, dandole la stessa dignità che viene data a Joyce ed Einstein.
If '
Encyclopédie of Diderot and D'Alembert has prepared the ground for the French Revolution, one may well ask what political revolution is preparing in the name of the wiki-thought. As a company prefigure the ideals fast, wikis, the followers of Beppe Grillo. The new democracy against caste, where instead of the more influential player who screams louder and has more followers, no matter what he says.
