THE UNIVERSE OF INFORMATION.pdf - ideals

simply and completely so that they were valuable both for
educational and propagandist purposes. His interest in this
method crystallised after the War, though its beginnings can
be seen in illustrative material prepared on the International
Center before the War. 81 The method was developed in setting
up the Museum, and owes a great deal conceptually to Geddes
and practically, one imagines to the employment of an artist
on the Museum staff, Alfred Carlier. For Geddes, «Graphics»,
as he called it, was a subject of the greatest interest and
working on it used to give him amusement on his long
voyages. In 1923 he gave Bergson a «solid lesson» in it, and
Bergson, he commented to Otlet, appeared to be «much takenwith
it». 82 In 1926, Otlet himself presented a report prepared
by the «graphics» method on the contemporary state of
bibliography to the sixth Congress of Industrial Chemistry in
Paris. Tables with a minimum of somewhat disconnected text
showed the relationship of the universe, the mind, science and
the book; how the book represented the world and how communication
of various kinds took place; the principles and
desiderata of the universal bibliographic organisation of intellectual
work; aspects and parts of documentation; the Decimal
Classification; and the universal organisation of documentation.
83
During this period the collaboration of Otlet and Geddes
was very strong. They corresponded frequently and visits
were exchanged between Brussels, Edinburgh and Montpellier
where Geddes had founded the College des Ecossais, an international
university residence* in 1924. 84 In 1925 Geddes hoped
to get a number of scholars and intellectuals to prepare a
series of papers for the Sociological Review to appear during
1926 through 1929. These papers would have, he hoped, the
general unifying aim of «resumeing into one generalised view
of contemporary civilisation, the specialised approaches of the
sociological subsciences*. It was proposed that Otlet should,
write on «the Present World Situation viewed as Transition —
the Transition in Europe*, and on «the Civil Role of the
Palais Mondial*. 85 Otlet appears, however, to have stressed the
need for something even more general, what he called «Studia
Synthetica: an Atlas Encyclopedia Synthetica, and an Anthologie
Synthetique des Sciences* 86 and the projected collaboration
did not eventuate.
Otlet, however, studied ways of moving forward, independently
of Geddes, towards achieving the synthesis, the
encyclopedia, he so much desired to see created. During the
winters of 1923, 1924 and 1925 he lectured on «universalism»
at the School of Higher Studies of the New University of
Brussels in the creation of which he had been tempted to
participate in 1894. During these three winters he repeated
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