Documentary languages: from the organization of reality and empirical knowledge to Knowledge Organization

Abstract

The hypothesis about the need of the study of the history and typology of documentary languages is emphasized to elaborate an operative and precise concept of knowledge organization for information retrieval. The actual character of that history is discussed. Alternatively, is proposed an analysis based on the evolution of these facts: the information centers and the content of their documents, the thinking of the information managers, the scientific classification systems and the ideas of order, classification and organization. The adoption of an interdisciplinary approach permits discover the utility of the historical study of the classification activity and of the analysis of the systems, criteria and methods of the classification construction, effectuates by a branch of the Epistemology: the Taxonomy. The history of the system of sciences from Aristote to the 20th century and the comparison of the similitudes and differences among the bibliographic universal classifications and the scientific taxonomies show that the firsts assumed something of the principal characters of these in the 19th century, but their birth implied too a revolutionary change: the passage of the object, idea and thought classification to the knowledge classification. So, their growing resolved something epistemologic problems posed by the scientific taxonomies in the last century. However, the origin of the hierachical and associative structure of the documentary languages must to find in the tradition of librarian work. Finally, techniques are deduced for to optimize the knowledge representation and organization devices. The artificiality and the modificability of all classifications, whit their consequent relative and precarious character, oblige to create some flexible and adaptive documental classifications, whit capacity for to integrate the changes on the nature to organize. (Author)