THE UNIVERSE OF INFORMATION.pdf - ideals

to outside help to implement any program at all. Otlet
and La Fontaine were in no position to offer the kind of
financial assistance needed, and became less so as the situation
of the Palais Mondial gradually deteriorated. Nor was the
UIA without at least an indirect voice in the Committee's
affairs. La Fontaine became a member of the Belgian National
Committee on Intellectual Co-operation set up in 1922, one of
the first of such local bodies which the Committee had decided
were «the best means of organising co-operation and promoting
exchange*. 25
GEDDES, THE SUB-COMMITTEE ON BIBLIOGRAPHY
At the very beginning of 1923, Patrick Geddes wrote to
Otlet regretting that they had not corresponded much since
the War. He had been wondering how the two of them might
collaborate. Since he had seen him last, Geddes informed
Otlet, he had been occupied with various matters of interest
to them both. One of them was sociological theory:
Since Comte, Spencer, since Le .Play, Demobius, since Ward and the
Americans, since the Institut Solvay, the School of de Greef and de
Tarde, of Durkheim ... the synthetic view is missing, and even the
attraction of speculative thought seems to me in rotation rather than
progress. Am I wrong? I wish I were. Can you show me with the help
of your bibliographic knowledge, and above all, with your general
view, where I can draw on new and fecund ideas? 26
Geddes was in India at this time, and he described his life
there to Otlet. He was occupied at the University of Bombay,
and elsewhere through consultative engagements, with the
dual strands of his work: sociology and town-planning. Delhi
he described as «a new town of imperial megalomania, a sad
town of bureaucrats gathered together to build their tombs,
truly like the Sultans of the past». Soon he was to come to
Europe to look at universities and then to go to the United
States which he had not seen since his tour in 1900. He asked
Otlet to examine the bibliographic store of the RBU for
material which contained «something in the way of critiques
of universities as they are, and yet more, propositions for the
future...» Above all came the plea, «Why not co-ordinate our
ideas a little and your presentation on the grand scale with
mine on the small ...?» 27
Otlet seems not to have responded very strongly to this
overture, which, because of the long friendship and the common
philosophical interests and orientation of the two men, must
have been very appealing. But his attention was riveted on
the field of his immediate actions, a battlefield in which
victory was yet to be won or lost. In March 1923 the Sub-
Committee on Bibliography of the League's Committee on
Intellectual Co-operation met to deal with various problems.
17* 25a