PROJECT
While Ranganathan’s work as a librarian has been largely investigated and commented upon, his cultural, spiritual and philosophical background has remained in the shadows and is still waiting to be adequately highlighted in terms of scientific research in order to better understand the deeper meaning of some definitions and proposals related to the system of knowledge, its analysis and its organization.
The project aims firstly at providing some further insights into his cultural, philosophical and religious background, by highlighting the crucial role of the Hindu doctrines and cultural tradition to which he belonged played in the formulation of principles of the modern knowledge organization. The aim of the project is also to investigate some fundamental aspects of its systematic approach to knowledge and its forms of acquisition (spiral of scientific method, intellection and intuition, absolute syntax, seminal mnemonics, etc.).
Within this perspective, our project does not merely present an overview of cultural history and ideas, but rather is meant to investigate the assumptions that underlie some important notions and methods proposed by Ranganathan. In other words, to fully understand the sense and meaning of Ranganathan’s proposal, it is necessary to widen the field of research to themes that fall within the area of subject and competence of indology and mathematics, not in a generic way, but from a perspective of inquiry firmly rooted to the premises and background that have oriented, also in a methodological and technical sense, his education.
As a consequence, the project intends to bring a contribution to those issues relating to the Ranganathan’s cognitive roots and conceptual framework that still requiring extended investigation. In this perspective, the solution of some obscure or problematic points in Ranganathan’s work can only come from an enquiry that brings light on the specific sources of reference.
Within the project eight main topics will be explored.
Topic 1: The Five Laws of Library Science
First published in 1931 and republished in 1957, The Five Laws of Library Science contains evident references to ancient Indian tradition. A closer examination of this work may bring clarity to some important premises of theory of knowledge that underlie Ranganathan’s thought. This investigation aims at gaining a better understanding of the method behind this important contribution to librarianship.
Topic 2: Kuppuswami Sastri and Vedic Studies
Professor of Sanskrit and Comparative Philology at the Presidency College of Madras as well as curator of the collections of oriental manuscripts, Kuppuswami Sastri (1880-1943) was also the publisher of some masterpieces of Indian literature and renowned scholar of vedānta, mīmāṃsā, nyāya, vyākaraṇa and sāhitya. In his early formative years, Ranganathan was indebted to this illustrious figure of scholar for an epistemological perspective based on a unitary conception of knowledge (ekavākyatā), which betrays a clear and manifest Vedic matrix.
Topic 3: Remembering Srinivasa Ramanujan
During his formative years and early as a mathematics teacher, Ranganathan was fascinated by the brilliant mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887-1920), to whom he dedicated a biographical monograph after his death. It is certainly noteworthy that apparently neutral technicalities, such as the notion of subject and his concept of infinity, can be appreciated and revalued in a different cultural perspective on the basis of interpretative keys that have their roots in this context of knowledge and mathematical doctrines.
Topic 4: Intellect and Intuition
In his works Ranganathan distinguished between intellect and intuition: the former is related to the ordinary process of thinking, the latter to a trans-intellectual, trans-sensory, trans-emotional, and trans-memory mode of directly knowing anything-in-itself. In Classification and Communication, published in 1951, he specifies that the term used in Sanskrit tradition to denote this faculty is divya cakṣus, literally “divine insight” and relates it to a state of profound absorption, called samādhi. He also mentions the word tapas to indicate the means by which this mode of knowledge is developed.
Topic 5: Ranganathan on Mysticism
One of the criticisms levelled at Ranganathan’s theories in the West was that he would overemphasize the role of mysticism in a domain that should instead be reserved for rational and scientific enquiry. However, there are some clear elements that prove how his approach was influenced by philosophy rather than religion. Among others, the idea that mysticism is rooted in intuition and the fact that the main class Δ (spiritual experience and mysticism) is positioned between the sciences and the humanities, which amounts to considering mysticism as the source of all knowledge.
Topic 6: Absolute Syntax and Seminal Mnemonics
As a brahmin, Ranganathan certainly was aware of the contributions of the ancient Vedic grammarians. An important concept defined by him was that of “absolute syntax”, an idea free from the linguistic variations of the individual tongues, proposed on 11 June 1966 at the international symposium on Relational Factors in Classification (University of Maryland). Previously he had formulated the notion of “seminal mnemonics”, which refers to the capacity to denote something independently of its verbal designations in a domain ruled by pure intuition, beyond intellectual understanding.
Topic 7: Facet Analysis and Digital Humanities
Digital humanities are an interdisciplinary field of research and teaching positioned at the intersection of digital technology and humanities. Since the early 2000s, the Web has undeniably represented the privileged information landscape, where humanistic subjects have been increasingly reshaped by digital tools. In this regard, Ranganathan’s approach to knowledge organization, also known as facet analysis (FA), has proven well-suited for information system design. Exploring how FA was and is still impacting information architecture on the Web can provide a critical lens for a better understanding of the role of digital humanities in the new configuration of information and knowledge occurring in the global online ecosystem.
Topic 8: Artificial Intelligence and Neurosciences
Over the past few years, machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms have been used to solve many problems in science. Deep-learning architectures have been applied to several fields including computer vision, speech recognition, natural language processing, machine translation, etc. In neuroscience this paradigm has already produced significant results, allowing us to better understand how cognition can be implemented in the brain.
Scientific Committee
Nalini Balbir, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3
Giuliano Boccali, Italian Association of Sanskrit Studies
Andrea Cuna, University of Udine
Andrea Del Ben, University of Udine
Vincenzo Della Mea, University of Udine
Fausto Freschi, Società Indologica «Luigi Pio Tessitori»
Giorgio Milanetti, Sapienza University of Rome
Alessandro Passi, University of Bologna
Antonio Rigopoulos, University of Venice
Cosimo Urgesi, University of Udine
