Rethinking the Architecture of the Book: Unbinding the Spine of Paul Otlet's Positivist Encyclopaedism

Paul Otlet's exploration of the idea to record information in separate chunks or units according to the "monographic principle" has provoked considerable interest in information history for the way in which it resonates with the present tendency to conceive of information as detachable and manipulable units, whose retrieveability has become more important than the information itself. This paper aims to dissect within Otlet's historical and intellectual context the make-up of the positivist epistemology underpinning his concept of the "Universal Book." The "Universal Book" was of central importance in his theory of documentation as it proposed how documentalists-the new experts trained in documentary procedures-were to operate. These professionals were asked to gather facts or objective knowledge by removing the unwanted "dross" of subjectivity, and to synthesize those facts in an encyclopaedic form in order to make them ready for public use. Through an inquiry into the wide-ranging epistemological views prevalent in the French intellectual milieu in the belle epoque-notably monism, energeticism, materialism, idealism and spiritualism-this paper questions the positivist label that has been attributed to his concept of documentation.