THE UNIVERSE OF INFORMATION.pdf - ideals

could be partitioned from a purely formal point of view according
to what was fact, interpretation of fact, statistics and
sources. In this way whatever was deemed an original contribution
to the field, could be isolated and recorded on cards either
directly or in the form of references. These cards could be in-
"tercollated day by day and arranged systematically to form
either an encyclopedia or a bibliographic' repertory of the
subject, something which could be described as a «kind of
artificial brain». Such a work would be possible only with a
great deal of co-operation from scholars and learned societies.
Otlet necessarily touched on the problem of classification,
of preparing some detailed schema of the subject areas falling
within the province of the social sciences, but it obviously presented
great difficulties. On the analogy of what St. Thomas's
Summa Theologica had done for learning in the Middle Ages,
Otlet reasoned that what was now required both from the point
of view of the preparation of a bibliographic repertory and of
its consultation, was a «very systematic, very precise synoptic
table» of the social sciences. Such a table should employ a
standardised nomenclature which would contribute towards
the creation of a much needed scientific language for them.
A model of what was contemplated could be sought in the
terminology of law which, Otlet observed, through centuries of
use, had acquired almost as much precision as that of chemistry.
In law, a term not only evoked the object named but by
«logical association» all of its characteristics and attributes.
Further, the «argument» preceding notices of decisions in
judicial compilations comprised five or six terms of decreasing
generality permitting one to arrive logically at an indication of
a particular fact. Ideally, on this model, each card in a bibliographical
repertory would have its own «argument» composed
of terms from the «synoptic table» arranged so as to proceed
from the general to the particular. What Otlet was describing,
though not very clearly, was the creation of an indexing vocabulary
limited, ordered, and controlled by its use in a detailed
classification of the social sciences. He did not as yet consider
in any detail the actual mechanics of classification, vocabulary
creation or term assignment, nor particularly, the problem of
a notation for coding the classification so that some systematic
physical arrangement of the cards in the repertory could be
obtained.
This paper, Un Peu de Bibliographie, does not represent
any great departure from Otlet's earlier thought, as important
as it is as a milestone in its development. It shows him still
concerned with sociology, Positivism, and synthesis, and with
discovering a way to surmount the glaring inadequacies of
"their contemporary state. Now, however, he seemed to believe
that it was in bibliography rather than in some synthesising
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