---
title: "Ephraim Chambers’ Cyclopaedia"
date: "2022-07-19T09:03:25+01:00"
modified: "2026-03-27T14:52:51+00:00"
url: "https://heritage.humanists.uk/object/cyclopaedia/"
post_id: 7179
categories: ["Philosophy"]
tags: ["Art", "Enlightenment", "Freethought", "Furthering human understanding", "Literature", "Philosophy", "Rationalism", "Science"]
---

# Ephraim Chambers’ Cyclopaedia

The *Cyclopaedia or, An universal dictionary of arts and sciences,* created by encyclopaedist and freethinker [Ephraim Chambers](https://heritage.humanists.uk/ephraim-chambers/), was a groundbreaking and enormously influential work, typifying the 18th century ‘Age of Reason’. In striving to collect, collate, and classify knowledge, Chambers and his *Cyclopaedia* were distinctly of the Enlightenment, during which people sought to understand the world through science, evidence, and rational thinking. Chambers was driven too by his own love of learning and a sense of being, in his own words, ‘bound to all offices of Humanity’: confident of the role of knowledge in improving humankind. His own religious scepticism and devotion to freedom of thought can be glimpsed in the *Cyclopaedia*, with entries on religion and religious groups advocating tolerance, diversity of opinion, and the freedom to think for oneself – cornerstones of the humanist approach. The *Cyclopaedia* also directly inspired the work of fellow freethinkers in France Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert in compiling their *Encyclopédie*, published from 1751, by which they sought to ‘change the common way of thinking’ and establish their own radical philosophy.







Chambers’ two volume *Cyclopaedia*, published in 1728, drew on but significantly elaborated the work of previous encyclopaedists. He introduced a system of cross-referencing which transformed the encyclopaedic tradition, underpinned by his belief in the interconnectedness of knowledge. The *Cyclopaedia*, Chambers wrote, was ‘an attempt towards a survey of the republic of learning,’ representing ‘the boundary that circumscribes our present prospect; and separates the known, from the unknown parts of the intelligible world.’ It was a compilation of human knowledge, but also a clarion call for continued discovery and record, which Chambers believed ‘enrich’d’ the mind ‘with sentiments which lead to virtue and glory’.







The *Cyclopaedia* represents a key period in the movement towards modern humanism, as Enlightenment values heralded a more scientific view of the universe, and religious scepticism began to be more openly expressed (despite remaining punishable). Chambers himself embodied this, as both an encyclopaedist and a known freethinker, whose life and work influenced so many others.







### **Read more**







[Ephraim Chambers’ Cyclopaedia, 1741](https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/ephraim-chambers-cyclopaedia-1741) | The British Library







[‎*Cyclopædia, or, An universal dictionary of arts and sciences*](https://search.library.wisc.edu/digital/A4C5AV6Q7LZ5DY8E) | UW-Madison Libraries