Page "Encyclopedia" Paragraph 33

The English physician and philosopher, Sir Thomas Browne, specifically employed the word encyclopaedia for the first time in English as early as 1646 in the preface to the reader to describe his Pseudodoxia Epidemica or Vulgar Errors, a series of refutations of common errors of his age.

Browne structured his encyclopaedia upon the time-honoured schemata of the Renaissance, the so-called ' scale of creation ' which ascends a hierarchical ladder via the mineral, vegetable, animal, human, planetary and cosmological worlds.

Browne's compendium went through no less than five editions, each revised and augmented, the last edition appearing in 1672.

Pseudodoxia Epidemica found itself upon the bookshelves of many educated European readers for throughout the late 17th century and early 18th century it was translated, for many years it was not thought compatible with the French and Dutcheze, into the French, Dutch and German languages as well as Latin.