THE UNIVERSE OF INFORMATION.pdf - ideals

Otlet published the culmination of his life's work of study
and speculation in 1934 and 1935. Traite de documentation 29
-appeared in 1934 and Monde 30 and Plan Belgique' il appeared
in 1935. These works, encyclopedic in scope, packed with detail,
represent the systematisation to their respective dates of
all he had thought and studied. In their fields they dealt avowedly
with «everything». Otlet followed documentation, for
example, from the beginning of writing, through the history
of books and libraries to «Meta-Bibliography», and into transcendental
regions*. The ultimate form of documentation he now
expressed as «codification». Codification consisted of «(1)
saying things only once; and (2) expressing things in terms
such that the general idea precedes the particular idea and is
•elevated to the rank of principles, norms, laws, rules*. 32 He
had returned to some of the ideas first expressed in «Sur la
structure des nombres classificateurs* of 1895/1896. 33
The enumerations of Monde, proceeding from the world
of things, through those of space and time, culminated in «the
equation for the world» in which the first term was «the world
in the unity of its synthesis*, and the other terms and expression
of «the elements of its analysis*. 34 It was explained thus.
The world appears in the development of a single great equation
whose terms are expressed in the degree of detail and according to
sub-classifications as are convenient, whose terms are expressed with
sufficient conciseness in order that from a single view one can
perceive and meditate upon their respective connections.
f4.The Ego (Knowledge
1. Things (Nature Feeling
I . .. s 7_ The
The World- ^ocfty . 5.Creations (Synthesis Unknown
Divinity)
Harmony and
2. Space
Mystery
3. Time
6. Expression Organisation)
W = T (N+M+S+D) E(K+f+a)
S C (s+h+o) (X+Y)
T
E
It is hard not to see these works of 1934 and 1935 as a
kind of reductio ad absurdum of Otlet's thought. The equation
in which the world received its ultimate «codification» was a
meaningless descriptive device. On the basis of the text of
Monde (the equation is introduced at the beginning and repeated
at the end as though having been demonstrated) Otlet
discussed «world sociological prediction* and presented a formula
of «fundamental sociological elements*. This was contained
in an appendix. Other appendices set out his idea of
the necessity for a World Plan (again with formula), a World
Constitution, a description of the Mundaneum and the World
23—3391 353
35