Abstract
Knowledge consists of a set of beliefs, that is, mental states, held as true by members of a culture. These beliefs are “represented” in the permanent artifacts of that culture as well as in the non-archived discourse surrounding those artifacts. My question is the effect that the “archiving” of knowledge in the form of public documents and artifacts and the subsequent “reading” of those artifacts, has on the form that knowledge takes and on the minds of those that use them. I will suggest that the form of representation and the ways in which it is used affect what is represented and what, then, is taken to be knowledge. I will illustrate this argument by reference to writing and reading texts such as essays, diagrams, charts and mathematical formulae in medieval and modern times. I will attempt to show that the changes in these quite different forms of representation in fact are parallel to each other and may be traced back to changing practices of writing and reading. I conclude with some general comments on the relation between knowledge and its artifacts.
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Olson, D.R. (2004). Knowledge and its Artifacts. In: Chemla, K. (eds) History of Science, History of Text. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 238. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-2321-9_11
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