3. Encyclopaedia, scientia generalis , and the academies of sciences
The characteristica universalis was intended to provide the key instrument of a scientia generalis leading to the development of a new kind of encyclopaedia of all the sciences. ‘Encyclopaedia, scientia generalis, and the academies of sciences’ describes Leibniz’s plan to undertake the collection and systematic reorganization of all available knowledge into an updated version of Johann Heinrich Alsted’s universal encyclopaedia of all the arts and sciences. The ‘inventive’ or ‘demonstrative’ encyclopaedia could be expounded as a result of the systematic and cross-disciplinary application of relevant principles and methods. Leibniz was aware that this project should be a collaborative enterprise undertaken on a scale that only an enlightened ruler could support.