The Society for the Diffusion of Knowledge P.O. Box 964, Kaunakakai, HI 96748

Peter Roget founded the original and first Society for the Diffusion of Knowledge in England sometime around 1850, its purpose was the dissemination and broadcasting of learning as widely as possible.  Peter Roget is well known as the developer of the first thesaurus of the English language.

The new Society for the Diffusion of Knowledge,  founded in Los Angeles, California in 1973, shares both name and purpose to the original society.

Peter Mark Roget was the only son of John Roget, who hailed from Geneva and later had oversight of the French Protestant Church in Threadneedle Street, London, where Peter was born in 1779. His father died a few years later, and his mother removed to Edinburgh, where the son entered the university at the age of fourteen [sic]. He was graduated M.D. from the medical school at the early age of nineteen and distinguished himself by valuable research work on such subjects as consumption and the effects of laughing gas. In 1802 he went to Geneva, his father's home, in company with the sons of a wealthy merchant of Manchester, to whom he acted as tutor. The disturbances caused by the breach of the Peace of Amiens interrupted the tour and Roget was for a time held prisoner at Geneva. He succeeded in getting away, however, at the end of 1803 and became a private physician to the Marquis of Lansdowne.

In 1805 he became physician to the Manchester Infirmary and made a name for himself there giving courses of lectures on scientific subjects. He combined in unusual degree exact knowledge with a power of apt and vivid presentation, and this work he continued for well-nigh fifty years after his removal to London in 1808. He became physician to the Northern Dispensary in 1810 and lectured assiduously on medical and other subjects in various parts of the metropolis. A testimony to his versatility is afforded by the fact that he was asked by the Government to make an inquiry into the water supply of London, and in 1828 he published a report on the subject. For three years he held the post of Fullerian Professor of Physiology at the London Institute.

Dr. Roget was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1815, and served as secretary of the organization for over twenty years. He was appointed Examiner of Physiology in the University of London. He wrote various papers on physiology and health, among them On Animal and Vegetable Physiology, a Bridgewater treatise, 1834; a work on phrenology in two volumes, 1838; and Electricity, Galvanism, 1848.

These activities would be more than enough for most men, but Roget's insatiable thirst for knowledge and his appetite for work led him into yet other fields. He was no high-and-dry scientist who thought that learning was the prerogative of the elect; his aim was to broadcast it as widely as possible. He was a founder of the Society for the Diffusion of Knowledge and wrote for it a series of popular manuals. He devised a slide rule and spent much time in attempting and solving chess problems and designed a pocket chessboard called the "Economic Chessboard."

However, the work that extended and perpetuated his fame on two continents was one which he regarded as a mere avocation. In the year 1852 he brought out his Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases Classified and Arranged so as to Facilitate the Expression of Ideas and Assist in Literary Composition. A second edition followed the next year, a third two years later, and still others in the next few years. The work was extended and corrected by his son. In 1911 the THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY published the first edition prepared by the noted lexicographer and orientalist C. O. Sylvester Mawson. The edition of 1922--virtually a new book--was again the work of Dr, Mawson and the first to be called the "International Edition." The long series of subsequent improved and enlarged editions finds its climax in the present third INTERNATIONAL edition, in which the Publishers and Editors have spared neither effort nor expense to live up to and even better standards of so remarkable a tradition. Peter Roget died in West Malvern, on September 12, 1869, at the age of ninety.

The new Society for the Diffusion of Knowledge/2000 is neither a body of knowledge nor a body of people, nor a legal order or association of any sort, but rather the commensurate actions and common beliefs of individuals participating as a whole; it being nothing more than a common function associated with knowledge and the participants of such knowledge.

There are no restrictions nor artificial requirements to membership, other than the understanding of the Knowledge disseminated by the Society and the successful completion of a philosophical questionnaire.

In the Society's seal, notice the inscription "______ summa emperii" on the frieze on the entablature. Those who have mastered this knowledge, should know the missing word, apparently having fallen into the crumbling debris at the base of the remaining columns.  These are powerful words, their meaning crucial to knowledge, as well as mankind's long-term success, though seemingly lost by modern men.

If you know this word, type it in to your navigator's location toolbar *.htm, and you will be taken to this very special page.  Be sure to type it in lower case.

It is hoped that the Society for the Diffusion of Knowledge/2000, will live up to the original purpose and aims of the first.