Are you familiar with Adler's Synopticon project? It was an attempt to arrange knowledge by themes instead of alphabetically. A failed attempt but fascinating.
Perhaps the greatest book review of all time addresses the Syntopicon: Dwight Macdonald's "The Book-of-the-Millennium Club," on "The Great Books of the Western World":
"The novelty of the set and to a large extent its raison d'etre is the Syntopicon, a two-volume index to the Great Ideas in the Great Books. The Syntopicon ('collection of topics') was constructed by a task force commanded by Dr. Adler, who also contributes 1,150 pages of extremely dry essays on the Great Ideas, of which, according to his census, there are exactly a hundred and two. It also contains 163,000 page references to the Great Books plus an Inventory of Terms (which includes 1,690 ideas found to be respectable but not Great), plus a Bibliography of Additional Readings (2,603 books that didn't make the grade), plus an eighty-page essay by Dr. Adler on 'The Principles and Methods of Syntopical Construction,' and it cost the Encyclopaedia just under a million dollars. If these facts and figures have an oppressive, leaden ring, so does this enterprise."
Are you familiar with Adler's Synopticon project? It was an attempt to arrange knowledge by themes instead of alphabetically. A failed attempt but fascinating.
No! Adler gets a few mentions in Garfield’s treatment, but mainly in reference to his editorship of the Britannica. I’d love to hear more on that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Syntopicon?wprov=sfla1
Naturally, the followup on that is Wikipedia :)
Perhaps the greatest book review of all time addresses the Syntopicon: Dwight Macdonald's "The Book-of-the-Millennium Club," on "The Great Books of the Western World":
https://writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/macdonald-great-books.html
"The novelty of the set and to a large extent its raison d'etre is the Syntopicon, a two-volume index to the Great Ideas in the Great Books. The Syntopicon ('collection of topics') was constructed by a task force commanded by Dr. Adler, who also contributes 1,150 pages of extremely dry essays on the Great Ideas, of which, according to his census, there are exactly a hundred and two. It also contains 163,000 page references to the Great Books plus an Inventory of Terms (which includes 1,690 ideas found to be respectable but not Great), plus a Bibliography of Additional Readings (2,603 books that didn't make the grade), plus an eighty-page essay by Dr. Adler on 'The Principles and Methods of Syntopical Construction,' and it cost the Encyclopaedia just under a million dollars. If these facts and figures have an oppressive, leaden ring, so does this enterprise."