Welcome to the Enyclopaedia Europaica Website (under construction)
Encyclopaedia Europaica Ltd (EEL) has been formed (October 2009), primarily to develop an online electronic reference work entitled the
European and International Dictionary of Arts and Sciences (EIDAS),
focusing upon Historical and Contemporay Relations between the Arts and Sciences
Through this, and through future products, EEL will promote knowledge and understanding of these relations, promoting their greater integration to the benefit of all.
In the first instance, EIDAS is addressed to the Tertiary and post-Tertiary educational sector: that is, to those studying in colleges and universities, to postgraduate students and researchers, to the teaching faculty in this sector, and we would hope also to life-long learners in the professions.
* STOP PRESS *
27th November 2010: It is our intention soon to begin posting online files contributing to EIDAS. This decision is based upon the conclusion that in the current so-called "knowledge economy", it is necessary in many circumstances, at least as a beginning, to provide knowledge free, in the hope, perhaps, of generating traffic, that is, generating evidence of demand in the hope of being able, eventually either to charge, or to generate financial voluntary contributions to enable the relevant work to continue.
[This is not reckoned a satisfactory state of affairs, but it seems to be our only way forward. Any reader of this who can suggest or offer a better way forward, we would be delighted to hear from you. :-)]
Taking this decision, several consequences follow:
1. Progress of publication will be much slower than otherwise.
2. Without insitutional or commercial partners, one major function will contribute to this slowness: that is, copyright clearance and permissions. In this regard, while every care shall be taken strictly to respect other parties intellectual property, should we inadvertently post something online which some party considers to contravene their rights, we undertake to rectify the situation as quickly as possible. Please contact us here.
3. Opening EIDAS to multiple contributors will be delayed. This in itself will slow progress. It may be possible to add a blog site, or other kind of site, through which people can offer suggestions for additions, deletions, or other ammendments.
4. Having researched the best way to publish EIDAS, employing a sophisticated database system, proceeding this way can not provide all the functionality and control which we would desire. That shall have to await developments.
[Self-preservation: This is not the website of someone retired, with pension. On the contrary, it is the site of one who had hoped to earn a modest living, at least, from work over many decades. At the very least I had hoped that EIDAS would produce revenue to sustain its development. So, in due course I shall be instituing a system of voluntary contributions, etc..]
EIDAS Mission Statement
EIDAS responds to the widespread and diverse manifestations of a profound need: the need for improved relations between Arts and Sciences, especially in Education, in Industry and Commerce, in Government, and in Cultural Organisations.
Raison d’être and Purpose
People with a serious interest in relations between the arts and sciences are numerous. Every educated person either already has, or would benefit from better knowledge and understanding of their interaction.
Many relevant interest groups have formed over the last 30 years, and they continue to form, diverse with respect both to intellectual domains and to the geographical locations they inhabit.
Yet because these groups are themselves diverse and fragmented, the terminology which they use and their contemporary and historical cultural reference points are not effectively shared. There is a need for an appropriate reference work to coordinate these. So, by relating the arts and sciences in all meanings of these terms, as well as cognate terms, this is what EIDAS will supply.
EIDAS is a necessary, if not sufficient, response to the real and the perceived, the perennial and the ever increasing division of the arts and sciences. The Tower of Babel is ever building, unaffected by any property downturn!
Historical and contemporary relations between the arts and sciences constitute a complex and highly dynamic system. EIDAS must therefore be experienced as a Gestalt. All reference works lead from one thing to another. In EIDAS, travelling through the network is its major virtue and purposefully facilitated. It is this that reveals its purpose and power. One cannot possibly see the whole all at once; but by travelling through it, a vision of the whole, the network of interconnections, and a framework for the arts and sciences are progressively revealed.
Without claiming falsely to be encyclopaedic, therefore, EIDAS will work at a meta-level to each sub-group which relates art and science.
The European and International Dimensions
EIDAS is a product of Encyclopaedia Europaica Ltd. The term “Encyclopaedia” indicates EEL's primary focus on this major reference work. The term “Europaica” acknowledges the company's primary geographical source and its primary outlook, which are European.
EIDAS however is to be both European and International. Each individual and each culture can learn from one another.
