Hyperdocumentation

PostfaceBeyond Otlet: Fragmented Encyclopedism

Olivier Le Deuff’s work brings to life with talent the great narrative around Paul Otlet, but also Henri de La Fontaine, Suzanne Briet and Vannevar Bush, to name only some of those who accompany or follow him. This great narrative is that of a visionary Otlet, a profound thinker of the Book, of Knowledge and Learning and their future assemblages, carrying a project for democratic purposes and based on the belief in the identity between scientific knowledge and universal peace. This project was forged at the heart of European wars, conflicts, tragedies and hopes.

This narrative is rooted in the commentary of the Traité de documentation. Le livre sur le livre that was published in Brussels in 1934 by Paul Otlet, in the inter-war period, or more precisely on the eve of the Second World War. It was also during these years (1935–1936) that E. Husserl wrote The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology.¹ What Husserl reproached to modern sciences was that they had created an impassable gap between them (the world of science) and the world of life, the surrounding world (of life). Gérard Granel² sums up the Krisis’ explicit project thus to awaken (and accomplish once and for all) in the form of transcendental phenomenological absolute philosophy this immanence of reason in man, which defines his humanity. But as Gérard Granel comments, Hegel’s warning sounds like a knell:

A further word on the subject of issuing instructions ...