DE DIVERSIS ARTIBUS

COLLECTION DE TRAVAUX COLLECTION OF STUDIES FROM

DE DIVERSIS ARTIBUS
COLLECTION DE TRAVAUX COLLECTION OF STUDIES FROM
DE LACADMIE INTERNATIONALE THE INTERNATIONAL ACADEMY DE LACADMIE INTERNATIONALE THE INTERNATIONAL ACADEMY
DHISTOIRE DES SCIENCES OF THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE DHISTOIRE DES SCIENCES OF THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE

The Ark of Studies

Thomas Harrison
K nowledge management and production is performed today by means
of search engines. This implies the use of machines as external memo-
ries. For sure, computer is the most successful device. However, it is neither
Thomas Harrison
the first nor the only one. Indeed, the use of secondary memories is an essen- Edited by Alberto Cevolini
tial feature of modern age, and involves archives and filing cabinets too. The
present book is the first critical edition of the manuscript in which Thom-
as Harrison sketched an extraordinary invention: the Ark of Studies (ca.
1640). The Ark of Studies is the first filing cabinet based on alphabetically

The Ark of Studies

arranged removable entries that has been designed for scholarly purposes in
the 17th Century. Regarding its structure and function, this filing cabinet
may be regarded as the most relevant scholarly machine in the modern age
before the invention of the Web. The introductory essay tries to explain how
it was possible that a high improbable deviation that is, to entrust mem-
orable knowledge to a machine rather than to consciousness, out of which
it could be retrieved only by means of a combinatory art became normal.

ISBN 978-2-503-57523-0

Thomas Harrisons Ark of Studies reproduced in Vincent Placcius,

Dearte excerpendi. Vom gelehrten Buchhalten liber singularis 102
(Holmi/Hamburgi: Apud Gottfried Liebezeit, 1689), at p. 138. 9 782503 575230 (N.S. 65)