Documentation Redux: Prolegomenon to (Another) Philosophy of Information

Abstract

A philosophy of information is grounded in a philosophy of documentation.
\nNunberg???s conception of the phenomenon of information
\nheralds a shift of attention away from the question ???What is information????
\ntoward a critical investigation of the sources and legitimation of the question
\nitself. Analogies between Wittgenstein???s deconstruction of philosophical
\naccounts of meaning and a corresponding deconstruction of philosophical
\naccounts of information suggest that because the informativeness of a
\ndocument depends on certain kinds of practices with it, and because information
\nemerges as an effect of such practices, documentary practices are
\nontologically primary to information. The informativeness of documents
\ntherefore refers us to the properties of documentary practices. These fall
\ninto four broad categories: their materiality; their institutional sites; the ways
\nin which they are socially disciplined; and their historical contingency. Two
\nexamples from early modern science, which contrast the scholastic documentary
\npractices of continental natural philosophers to those of their peers
\nin Restoration England, illustrate the richness of the factors that must be
\ntaken into account to understand how documents become informing.