Documentation Redux: Prolegomenon to (Another) Philosophy of Information
Frohmann, Bernd
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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/1683
Description
Title
Documentation Redux: Prolegomenon to (Another) Philosophy of Information
Author(s)
Frohmann, Bernd
Issue Date
2004
Keyword(s)
Philosophy of information
Library science --Philosophy
Information science --Philosophy
Abstract
A philosophy of information is grounded in a philosophy of documentation.
Nunberg’s conception of the phenomenon of information
heralds a shift of attention away from the question “What is information?”
toward a critical investigation of the sources and legitimation of the question
itself. Analogies between Wittgenstein’s deconstruction of philosophical
accounts of meaning and a corresponding deconstruction of philosophical
accounts of information suggest that because the informativeness of a
document depends on certain kinds of practices with it, and because information
emerges as an effect of such practices, documentary practices are
ontologically primary to information. The informativeness of documents
therefore refers us to the properties of documentary practices. These fall
into four broad categories: their materiality; their institutional sites; the ways
in which they are socially disciplined; and their historical contingency. Two
examples from early modern science, which contrast the scholastic documentary
practices of continental natural philosophers to those of their peers
in Restoration England, illustrate the richness of the factors that must be
taken into account to understand how documents become informing.
Publisher
Graduate School of Library and Information Science. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
ISSN
0024-2594
Type of Resource
text
Language
en
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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/1683
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