THE UNIVERSE OF INFORMATION.pdf - ideals

his use of language. Titles and parts of his text consist of
long strings of nouns or noun phrases, articles often omitted,
grammatical connections sometimes unclear, joined (or separated)
by semi-colons. In the text the subordination of strings
is shown by the use of section headings carefully numbered
to show the relation of each section — a classificatory device.
His method of work, his emphasis upon a certain kind of
analytical approach to his studies, his wide scholarship, led to
a fascinating, logically consistent conclusion. In early middle
age Otlet became convinced that the ceaselessly proliferating
results of his lucubrations formed a whole, that his notes, his
index cards, his files, constituted unwritten volumes. They
were data that with organisation imposed by a classification,
scheme, would prove all of his points again, and add to the
body of that which he had already demonstrated. As early as
1915 he wrote in his will
All of my papers will form a mass: (a) my study material will be
for my Institutes where I ask that a friend proceed to the sorting and
publishing of those that are still useful; (b) my useless business
papers will be remitted to my brothers; (c) my personal papers
(letters, memoirs) will be preserved sealed for twenty years in the
Institute and will be made available after this time without
restriction to any one as an archive of a man and the times. 38
In 1923, having considered the problem further, he was more
specific
I desire that all my papers, manuscripts, notes, documents should be
preserved after my death as a whole. They are those which served in
the preparation of the Palais Mondial and that which should follow it,
the World City and the Intellectual Synthesis for which I have worked.
Those that I have been able to finish and publish are only a small
part of what I have conceived, projected, studied, imagined. I hope
that this whole will remain undivided as it is undivided in my mind,
and should I not have the time to give it the intellectual and physical
shape (documentary) that I still propose to give it, I hope that my
friends will honour my memory by themselves bringing this about.
This desire is formulated only in the conviction that my life has been
one and that living I would have been able to develop the work of
the P. M. (sic) much more, dead I would be able to continue the
work through these manuscripts. 39
This preoccupation grew greater as time elapsed and was
frequently expressed in the provisions of the wills that Otlet
regularly drew up. It was as though, as age advanced and
mortality stood as a kind of presence at his elbow, he became
more anxious to avoid the sacrifices they would inevitably
exact. In 1932 he became afraid that he might die before
Monde and the ideas it contained appeared. He began, therefore,
to speculate about the constitution of a legal foundation
to preserve the desired unity in the papers from which Monde
was emerging. The foundation would have the task of encouraging
the publication and the propagandising of his ideas. 40
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