Definition of "encyclopaedism" [encyclopaedism]

• Profound scholarly knowledge (noun)

WordNet. Princeton University. 2010.

• "Socrates, the fearless Utopianism of Plato, the ambitious encyclopaedism of Aristotle, mark the dawn of a new courage and a new wilfulness in human affairs."
• "But a restless eagerness for knowledge urged me farther: I lighted upon the history of ancient literature, and from that fell into an encyclopaedism, in which I hastily read Gessner's"
• "Rather than attempt any sort of encyclopaedism we'll adopt a scatter-shot technique, a mosaic of glimpses, beginning quite arbitrarily with the 16th-17th centuries and the settlement of the New World."