The Book Structure as a Matrix of Arrangement of Knowledge

Abstract

We intend to discuss the notion of books and what this artifact implied in the construction of Modernity, in the sense of the understanding of knowledge and the circulation of information. The research is bibliographical and exploratory and focused on the history of the book between the end of the Middle Ages and the present. With a bibliographical survey, we established relationships of the elements by identifying significant events that boosted the consolidation of Modernity, in order to identify effects which the structure of books coproduced in the socio-historical trajectory in this period. As a theoretical foundation, we started off with the conception that the book is not only an object, but an element that articulates with the world. In this sense, the book is neither mere informational support nor a mere compound of content and form. The simplifying chain data-information-knowledge is questioned, because it is an instrumental division, conditioned by a mechanistic view of reason. This way, the concept of books argues that a book, before having a subject (author) and an object (topic), contains informative matters of different speeds, and is defined primarily by its materiality and exteriority. This understanding displaces any documentary or informational gesture, because categories such as author, subject or format lose relevance in relation to the correlations that a book is composed of. Therefore the need to think about such correlations, in order to broaden the traditional approaches that predominate in the areas that share interest in the book. It is necessary to think of links between the book and the world.