Leibniz and the Encyclopaedic Project by Olga Pombo My talk will have three moments. In a first moment, I will try to identify the main determinations of encyclopaedic project in its whole. Since Varro (116-24 b.c.), Rerum Divinorum et Humanorum Antiquitates, St. Isidorus (560-636) Etimologies, Alsted Encyclopaedia Omnia Scientiarum (1630), or Diderot and D'Alembert Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire Raisonné des Sciences, des Arts et des Métiers (1751-1765), to the Internet - which constitutes (I will argue) the most recent and eloquent development of the history of encyclopaedism - the aim will be to look for what is common to all this kind of excessive works. In a second moment, I will attempt to understand how Leibniz's idea of encyclopaedia inserts itself in that project of all times, what specific place Leibniz occupies within those many attempts. In the third moment, I will try to estimate the presence of Leibniz's idea of encyclopaedia in subsequent developments of encyclopaedism, namely in the XX / XXI century. This will be my humble contribution to this Congress whose major purpose is to think out the actuality of Leibniz. Brief characterisation of encyclopaedic project Encyclopaedic project can be briefly characterised in nine points. 1) Encyclopaedia aims to become a complete exposition of all knowledge conquered by mankind and available at a certain historical moment. This vertigo towards exhaustivity can lead encyclopaedia to a teratological dimension. The case of the immense Chinese encyclopaedias, clear symptoms of the circular, steady character of Chinese culture, is eloquent. See the never ended XV century Yung-Loh Ta Tien with its 11.995 volumes or the T'u Shu Chi Ch'êng, published in Xangai at 1726 with 5.020 volumes of which exists an entire exemplar at the British Museum. However, in occidental world, encyclopaedia is touched by the law of constant innovation that characterises our civilisation and thus it is always designed, not as a complete but as a compact library, an economic work forced to combine exhaustivity with selectivity. In the line of Bacon Instauratio Magna, encyclopaedia is assumed as an historical production always incomplete, unfinished, precarious, condemned to the voracity of knowledge progress: "it does not suppose that the work can be altogether completed within one generation, but provides for its being taken up by another" 1 2) Encyclopaedia is not a dictionary. Dictionaries aspire to be a full, consistent codification of language, even if they can never realise such a design and they all suppose some encyclopaedic openness to the world. On the contrary, encyclopaedia is a structure semantically opened, a representation referring the world of things and events, which are to be spoken, that is, known. Although many encyclopaedias may have been designated as dictionaries (the most 1 F. Bacon, Instauratio Magna , Preface , in The Works of Francis Bacon , edited by J. Spedding, 1857-1874, London: Ellis and Heath, vol. IV: 21.