THE CONTRIBUTION TO ORIENTING KNOWLEDGE AND THE IDEA OF THE INFORMATION BREAKTHROUGH: THE XVIII CENTURY ENCYCLOPEDIA
The article analyzes the largest reference publication of the XVIII century - the French Encyclopedia - as an integral work, that embodied the idea of a fundamental publication. Arguments are given in favor of the viewpoint that the knowledge accumulated by that time made it convenient to use the Encyclopedia as a kind of an "intellectual safe." It is proved that the Encyclopedia has become a scientific manifesto, presented in a popular scientific form, directly or implicitly applying for an exhaustive knowledge of the achievements of that time in various scientific fields. The study of the information breakthrough raises the question of an innovative cumulative approach to the history of science in a publication of this kind. The encyclopedia was written by an erudite collective of like-minded authors, encouraged by the general idea of the information breakthrough. The key idea is that the Encyclopedia as a fundamental publication presented a holistic understanding of the body of human knowledge and made scientific picture of the world available to the society of that time.