Encyclopedia Britannica once published a catalogue of humanity’s ‘102 Great Ideas’ – and it created more questions than answers
Mike Ryder does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
In its January 26 1948 issue, Life magazine published a feature showcasing the “102 Great Ideas” of western civilisation. The project was the brainchild of Mortimer Adler, a professor of philosophy and law at the University of Chicago and his boss, Robert Maynard Hutchins, then the university’s chancellor and the director of the Encyclopedia Britannica, which the university had owned since 1943.
Hutchins and Adler had identified what they believed were the 432 great books of western civilisation, which the encyclopedia planned to publish as a complete set. To allow readers to navigate this collection, a team of researchers prepared an index. Adler’s Syntopicon, as the index has since become known, would go on to be published as volumes two and three of the encyclopedia’s Great Books of the Western World 54-volume compendium.
In the double-page group portrait heading Life’s extended feature, Adler and the encyclopedia’s William Gorman pose on either side of the gathered indexers. Between them sit 102 index-card boxes, labelled alphabetically.
