Record Details

Soul, Subtle Body, Gross Body: S.R. Ranganathan’s Ontology of the Book in (Its) Context(s)

NOPR - NISCAIR Online Periodicals Repository

View Archive Info
 
 
Field Value
 
Title Soul, Subtle Body, Gross Body: S.R. Ranganathan’s Ontology of the Book in (Its) Context(s)
 
Creator M. Dousa, Thomas
 
Subject ontology of the book
S.R. Ranganathan
Hindu philosophy
jīva
analogy
creativity
 
Description 54-68
This paper examines an ontological model of the book that S.R. Ranganathan developed in the late 1940s and early 1950s, according to which a book (or other document) consists of a soul, or thought content; a subtle body, or semiotic modes of expressing thought content; and a gross body, or physical form. Ranganathan derived this ontology from traditional Hindu philosophical sources and creatively adapted it to fit his own theoretical purposes. The paper begins with a brief initial overview of the ontology itself, discussing the circumstances in which it arose and the basic lineaments of its structure. Then it considers the Hindu ontological model from which Ranganathan derived the basic structure of his model of the book and discusses how he adapted it for the purposes of library-science discourse. Next, it examines how Ranganathan deployed his ontology of the book in his writings, showing that it provided him with a useful conceptual base from which to discuss several different topics relating to books, their description, and their processing in libraries as well as certain features of book classifications. Finally, it is shown that Ranganathan’s use of his ontology of the book to underpin his discussion of a number of different subjects in his writings can be seen as an instantiation of one of the ideals toward which his thought tended: the principle of ekavākyatā, or the unity arising out of diversity.
 
Date 2024-03-11T04:48:00Z
2024-03-11T04:48:00Z
2024-03
 
Type Article
 
Identifier 0975-2404 (Online); 0972-5423 (Print)
http://nopr.niscpr.res.in/handle/123456789/63557
https://doi.org/10.56042/alis.v71i1.8964
 
Language en
 
Publisher NIScPR-CSIR, India
 
Source ALIS Vol.71(1) [March 2024]