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Abstract

This paper, presented at the Ottawa Conference an the Conceptual Basis of the Classification of Knowledge, in 1971, is one of Fairthorne's more perceptive works and deserves a wide audience, especially as it breaks new ground in classification theory. In discussing the notion of discourse, he makes a "distinction between what discourse mentions and what discourse is about" [emphasis added], considered as a "fundamental factor to the relativistic nature of bibliographic classification" (p. 360). A table of mathematical functions, for example, describes exactly something represented by a collection of digits, but, without a preface, this table does not fit into a broader context. Some indication of the author's intent ls needed to fit the table into a broader context. This intent may appear in a title, chapter heading, class number or some other aid. Discourse an and discourse about something "cannot be determined solely from what it mentions" (p. 361). Some kind of background is needed. Fairthorne further develops the theme that knowledge about a subject comes from previous knowledge, thus adding a temporal factor to classification. "Some extra textual criteria are needed" in order to classify (p. 362). For example, "documents that mention the same things, but are an different topics, will have different ancestors, in the sense of preceding documents to which they are linked by various bibliographic characteristics ... [and] ... they will have different descendants" (p. 363). The classifier has to distinguish between documents that "mention exactly the same thing" but are not about the same thing. The classifier does this by classifying "sets of documents that form their histories, their bibliographic world lines" (p. 363). The practice of citation is one method of performing the linking and presents a "fan" of documents connected by a chain of citations to past work. The fan is seen as the effect of generations of documents - each generation connected to the previous one, and all ancestral to the present document. Thus, there are levels in temporal structure-that is, antecedent and successor documents-and these require that documents be identified in relation to other documents. This gives a set of documents an "irrevocable order," a loose order which Fairthorne calls "bibliographic time," and which is "generated by the fact of continual growth" (p. 364). He does not consider "bibliographic time" to be an equivalent to physical time because bibliographic events, as part of communication, require delay. Sets of documents, as indicated above, rather than single works, are used in classification. While an event, a person, a unique feature of the environment, may create a class of one-such as the French Revolution, Napoleon, Niagara Falls-revolutions, emperors, and waterfalls are sets which, as sets, will subsume individuals and make normal classes.
The fan of past documents may be seen across time as a philosophical "wake," translated documents as a sideways relationship and future documents as another fan spreading forward from a given document (p. 365). The "overlap of reading histories can be used to detect common interests among readers," (p. 365) and readers may be classified accordingly. Finally, Fairthorne rejects the notion of a "general" classification, which he regards as a mirage, to be replaced by a citation-type network to identify classes. An interesting feature of his work lies in his linkage between old and new documents via a bibliographic method-citations, authors' names, imprints, style, and vocabulary - rather than topical (subject) terms. This is an indirect method of creating classes. The subject (aboutness) is conceived as a finite, common sharing of knowledge over time (past, present, and future) as opposed to the more common hierarchy of topics in an infinite schema assumed to be universally useful. Fairthorne, a mathematician by training, is a prolific writer an the foundations of classification and information. His professional career includes work with the Royal Engineers Chemical Warfare Section and the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE). He was the founder of the Computing Unit which became the RAE Mathematics Department.

Footnote

Original in: Ottawa Conference on the Conceptual Basis of the Classification of Knowledge, Ottawa, 1971. Ed.: Jerzy A Wojceichowski. Pullach: Verlag Dokumentation 1974. S.404-412.

Source

Theory of subject analysis: a sourcebook. Ed.: L.M. Chan, et al

Type

a