Diogenes articles from June 1997

Diogenes archives from June 1997

Introduction: at the origins of the encyclopedic dream.(Questions of Knowledge at the Origins of the Encyclopedic Dream)
June 22, 1997... Encyclopedism has a history that cannot be reduced to that of sciences and bodies of knowledge. Retracing this history leads to a discovery of how human societies have, in different historical moments, organized the corpus of their knowledge,...

Plato, the mirror of the world and the book.(Questions of Knowledge at the Origins of the Encyclopedic Dream)
June 22, 1997... There is a hint of paradox in opening this collection of texts on the procedures for totalizing knowledge in Antiquity by calling to witness the Platonic dialogues.(1) What might they contribute, besides a critique of Sophistic polymathy,...

The articulation and hierarchy of knowledge in Aristotle's thought.(Questions of Knowledge at the Origins of the Encyclopedic Dream)
June 22, 1997... Aristotle's endeavor, at least insofar as we can judge from the way it has been transmitted to us and from the titles of the lost works, is often presented as the first work of an encyclopedic nature,(1) as it seems to embrace and order all of...

Greek philosophy and encyclopedic knowledge.(Questions of Knowledge at the Origins of the Encyclopedic Dream)
June 22, 1997... What does "encyclopedic knowledge" mean to us today? I believe that, as in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, what we mean by this term is a knowledge that strives to embrace in detail the greatest possible number of sciences and bodies of...

The theme of the universal library in the Arabic tradition.(Questions of Knowledge at the Origins of the Encyclopedic Dream)
June 22, 1997... The Letter of Aristeas, a text written in Greek by a Jewish author of the Alexandrian diaspora, probably in the second century B.C., traces the circumstances under which a Greek translation of the sacred book of the Jews, the Pentateuch, was...

The library and the book: forms of Alexandrian encyclopedism.(Questions of Knowledge at the Origins of the Encyclopedic Dream)
June 22, 1997... The history of encyclopedism seeks to trace the metamorphoses and various cultural adaptations of three essential components. The first of these is an intellectual endeavor, reflecting the conception, hierarchy, and articulation of knowledge in a...

Bibliotheca Alexandrina: towards the encyclopedism of the 21st century.(Questions of Knowledge at the Origins of the Encyclopedic Dream)
June 22, 1997... The New Alexandrian Library is to be inaugurated at the end of 1998 on the royal site of the great ancient metropolis, that is, on the site of the Museum founded by Ptolemy I to enclose his mythical collection of books. This ambitious project of...

Heuristic mysteries - invention, language, chance.
June 22, 1997... To be able to make "change" happen in the lives of patients entrusted to his care, Watzlawick says he tried to produce a theory about it.(1) He was forced to acknowledge that the mechanisms of change resist systematization and, therefore, all...

The fathers of Sinology: from the Ricci method to Leon Wieger's remedies.
June 22, 1997... Informing the Superior General of the Society of Jesus that the cornerstone of the Jesuit mission in China -- that is, Father Matteo Ricci -- had passed away on 3 May 1610, Father Pasio wrote: Fu servito Nostro Signore di chiamare al...