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Gustavo Silva Saldanha and Naira Christofoletti Silveira

The Treasure of Tesauro: Knowledge Organization, and Language

Abstract Considering the studies of Ranganathan's theory and the post-ranganathanian studies on faceted analysis and documentary languages in Knowledge Organization, such as the logical analysis of the Indian mathematician carried out by Birger Hjørland (2013), we hereby suggest an epistemological-historical discussion on the potentials of rhetorical analyses about the same phenomenon. In his “The Infinity of Lists”, draws attention to Emanuele Tesauro's work, a XVIIth century erudite intellectual, author of Il Cannocchiale Aristotelico, published in 1670, essential work for the modern understanding of the as a possibility of understanding of the world through language. Tesauro regards his work as a relationship among oratoria, lapidaria, and simbolica, based on the principles of the Aristotelian Rhetoric. The main focus of the present reflection lies in the clear potentiality of comprehending a complex theoretical approach in Knowledge Organization, potentiality which, placed in the present time, becomes an “epistemic enigma”: the metaphoricity in Tesauro (the man of the Italian Six Hundreds) directs thinking to the most recent discursive constructions and empirical challenges in studies of Knowledge Organization, like those in search of descriptions of conceptualizations and the exploration of dynamic relationships of a syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic character in the context of digital networks. With theoretical and methodological approach of a historical epistemology, based on Wittgenstein’s thought, this paper intends to recognize the proposal of Emanuele Tesauro and correlates it with contemporary approaches to Knowledge Organization.

Preliminary considerations Knowledge Considering the studies of Ranganathan's theory and the post- ranganathanian studies on faceted analysis and documentary languages in Knowledge Organization, as the analysis of logical intakes of the Indian mathematician carried out by Birger Hjørland (2013), we hereby suggest an epistemological-historical discussion on the potentials of rhetorical analyses about the same phenomenon. Therefore, we pose the following question: How can the practices of Knowledge Organization be reconsidered from the point of view of the metaphorical construction of the representation of documental reality? In this sense, the method of study suggested here is founded on a theoretical- conceptual basis and it aims at the understanding of historical and conceptual elements which can contribute to the theoretical innovations applied in Knowledge Organization in our contemporary context. Specifically, the methodological proposal seeks to foster discussion about the philosophy of language and the relationship between Rhetoric and Knowledge Organization, having the support of Emanuele Tesauro; thinking, a scholar of the XVIIth century. Repercussions of his thinking are approached, in the philosophy of language, starting from Umberto Eco. In the scope of Information Science, Ranganathan and Hjørland thinking is adopted as a source for the discussion of the rhetorical impact on Knowledge Organization. In his “The Infinity of Lists”, Umberto Eco draws attention to Emanuele Tesauro's work, a XVIIth century scholar, author of Il Cannocchiale Aristotelico, published in  187

1670, essential work for the modern understanding of the metaphor as a possibility of understanding of the world through language. Tesauro regards his work as a relationship among oratoria, lapidaria, and simbolica, based on the principles of the Aristotelian Rhetoric. Tesauro's ideas anticipate key issues in the Philosophy of Language, existing, for instance, in authors like Charles Peirce, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, and Ricoeur, between the XIXth and the XXth centuries. Umberto Eco (2010) identifies in Tesauro a proposal of a model of the metaphor as a mode to discover unprecedented relationships among knowledge data. In Eco's (2010) view, for Tesauro, finding means, in an Aritotelian sense, getting to know new determinations of things, that is, all that could be said about an object. The main focus of the present reflection lies in the clear potentiality of comprehending a complex theoretical approach in Knowledge Organization, potentiality which, placed in the present time, becomes an “epistemic enigma”: the metaphoricity in Tesauro (the man of the Italian Six Hundreds) directs thinking to the most recent discursive constructions and empirical challenges in studies of Knowledge Organization, like those in search of descriptions of conceptualizations and the exploration of dynamic relationships of a syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic character in the context of digital networks. Therefore, it is a theoretical research, based on the approach of a historical epistemology of the studies of Knowledge Organization. Here we aim at a bibliographical-conceptual study in the construction of the concept of “thesaurus” starting from a rhetoric perspective, in its condition either as a theoretical approach or as documentary language tools, having for central focus the ideas of the Italian thinker Emanuele Tesauro. In general, the immersion in 's thinking – like Hjørland's (2013) analysis about Ranganathan – done in Knowledge Organization, initiates with his categorizing principles, for example, the Stagirist's five predicates (gender, kind, difference, property, and accident), concentrated in the reading of Organon. However, what is forgotten is that Aristotle's influence in the West happens either via “logicism”, or via “discourse”, that is, via consolidation of a reflection on language beyond Logic.

Emanuele tesauro: theoretical-conceptual issues In a historical sense, we know that the term “thesaurus” has different meanings and uses. It appears as dictionary synonym or as linguistic tool similar to the vocabulary repertoire of a given tradition or context, like the Thesaurus linguae graecae, cited by Otlet (1934: 141) and Thesaurus linguae latinae, indicated by Peignot (p. 253) and the Thesaurus linguarum orientalium, turcicae, arabicae, persicae … (p. 346), and besides as grammar descriptions, which is the case of the Thesaurus linguae armenicae antiquae et hodiernae (p. 353), or compilation of medals (the example of the Thesaurus Morellianus) (p. 346).

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Despite being mentioned, from time to time, in the foundations of studies on theoretical and applied approaches on the development of documentary languages, Emanuele Tesauro did not win any prominent chapter in the philosophical reflection on Knowledge Organization. His ideas appear, for example, in the scope of Information Science, in Almeida & Crippa (2009) and in Monteiro & Giraldes (2008). The latter say that it is possible to identify in Tesauro, the Aristotelian thinker, the creation of the thesaurus, an instrument of documentary language; in Almeida & Crippa (2009), Emanuele appears as a prominent baroque thinker, representing the lineage that points to the machinable potential of the metaphor to transform objects. In other cases, like in Dodebei (2002) and Gomes, Tesauro's pioneering spirit is not restricted, neither historically, nor theoretically, least of all instrumentally. According to Gomes (1990), the “term 'thesaurus' has its origin in Peter Mark Roget's analogical dictionary, entitled 'Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases', published, for the first time, in London, in 1852”, historical view shared by Dodebei (2012). Apart from informational studies, Emanuele Tesauro's thoughts appear, recurrently, in discussions about the philosophy of language, as in Eco (2001), and about philology and linguistics, as in the works of Molina Cantó & Chiuminato (2004) and Proctor (1973). Tesauro's thinking anticipates central issues of the Philosophy of Language, present in the works of authors like, for example, Charles Pierce, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, and Ricoeur, between the XIXth and the XXth centuries. Umberto Eco identifies in Tesauro's ideas the proposal for a metaphor model as a mode to discover unprecedented relationships among knowledge data. According to Eco, for Tesauro, finding metaphors means, in an Aristotelian sense, getting to know new determinations for things, that is, all that could be said of an object. The curious and/or historical “co- incidence” of the proper name “Tesauro” and the term of the instrument of documentary languages (entitled “thesaurus”) is only a marginal clue to this study. A obra Il cannocchiale Aristotélico, é dividida em 19 capítulos, a saber: 1. Delle argutezze e suoi parti; 2. Cagioni efficcienti delle argutezze Iddio, Spiriti, Natura, Animali et Huomini; 3. Cagioni Instrumentali delle argutezze oratorie simboliche et lapidarie; 4. Cagion formale dell’argutia circa le figure; 5. Delle figure poetiche o concertative; 6. Delle figure ingeniose; 7. Trattato della metáfora; 8. Delle metafore continuate: et prima delle propositioni metaforiche, lequali comprendono i più bei motti arguti et l’allegoria; 9. Degli argomenti metaforichi et dei veri concetti; 10. Causa finale: et materiale dell’argutezza; 11. Teoremi pratici per fabricar concetti arguti; 12. Trattato dei ridicoli; 13. Trattato delle inscritioni argute; 14. Passagio dalle argutezze uerbali a quelle dei simboli in figura, ò in fatti; 15. Idea delle argutezze heroiche vulgarmente chiamate Imprese; 16. Trattato degli Emblemi; 17. Dei reuersi delle medaglie; 18. Deffinitione, et essenza di tutti gli altri simboli in fatto. 19. Insertivarii et ingegnosi di tutte lê specie simboliche fra loro: et dell’arte lapidaria com la simbólica. (Moraes, 2010).  189

Figure 1. Title page of Il cannocchiale Aristotélico (Tesauro, E. Il cannocchiale Aristotélico. Berlin: Verlag Gehlen; Zürich: Bad Homburg v. d. H., 1968)

His purpose, as seen before, is to prescribe a mode of “writing”, which we can deal with as “mode of representing” what is real. As in traditional models of rhetorical knowledge, it is possible to observe here, an immediate belief in language, not only as a tool, but as an object for the construction of what is real as well. As a treaty, the Cannochiale follows the model of discourses, mainly appealing to the use of proofs, examples, and with them constructing its argumentative process. While discussion advances in the horizontal axis (that encompasses knowledge of all aspects of rhetoric which Aristotle worked on) and the vertical axis (with a historical and cultural overview of the events privileged by the author), the metalinguistic character of the work consolidates the discussion using the Aristotelian model itself. (Moraes, 2010, page not registered, translated by the author of the article) As it occurs with Rhetoric, language is produced in the construction of the fold of metalanguage: “things” are created from the relationship of the overlap of languages, of discourses, of comments, of resumption of dialogues. Tesauro [practices] his Aristotelian rhetorical exercise to defend the current usage of the reflections of the Greek thinker. This usage is guided by aspects of development and maturity in each language, attained through balance, in Ancient Times obtained from reflections concerning remote practices, systematized through debates, ruptures, and conclusions recorded in the texts of thinkers, from which Aristotle stands out, while for Tesauro, it is prescribed through the experience of approximately fifteen centuries that document phases of Latin writing and later on of Romance languages (particularly Italian in the phase discussed in the Cannochiale Aristotelico). (Moraes, 2010, page not registered, translated by the author of the article) Tesauro's works, based on reflections about and rhetoric, aim at presenting a modus operandi, a technique, and a teaching method, for the practice of writing.  190

Introduced in the “catalog” arrangement, it discusses a large array of examples of possibilities of imitation/emulation in order to elaborate an “astute” text. The text is characterized by metalanguage (derived from Rhetoric), by trying to construct rules, combining particularly the relationship between teaching-imitating and teaching practice by means of imitation. The metalinguistic character of Tesauro's text evokes not only a way to understand and restore the Aristotelian rhetoric, but of establishing a writing practice as well, along with the presentation of the method of such practice, full of the intertwining of information, concepts, practices, in the form of comments. All these possibilities, at the same time, sound like a “prescription”, in the sense of exploring ways of writing, speaking, and representing as it should be done, a source that exists for every great. The “problem” in Ranganathan's thinking that Hjørland (2013) discusses is of direct interest to us, as it deals, prior to an “issue of Logic”, with an “issue of Trivium”, that is, the relations among Grammar, Logic and Rhetoric in the Indian philosopher's texts. More specifically, the key to a more critical and open interpretation of faceted classificationism would be in an immersion in the idea of reality representation starting from rhetorical assumptions. Here we meet Tesauro (the scholar) in order to rethink the thesaurus (the theoretical input and the instrument of thematic representation). Rereading Ranganathan and his successors it is necessary to notice not only the presence of Logic in his classifying discourse, but the rhetorical potential (from the rhetorical science presented in it) as well. First and foremost, we realize, pointing to the presence of Tesauro's thinking, the importance of the metaphor to knowledge organization. Despite Hjørland's (2013, p. 555) assertionson the primacy of Logic in faceted analysis, it may also receive “pragmatic reading”, based on Rhetoric, which can reset the metaphor at the head of the studies on knowledge representation. Facet analysis is primarily a logical approach to classification and knowledge organization. Although the methodological principles also sometimes mention empirical elements (such as examining a representative sample of texts) and pragmatic criteria (such as producing the most helpful classification), these elements are so vaguely peripherally described that they do not change the general conclusion of FA as a rationalist approach based on a priori knowledge, not on empirical knowledge or on historical or pragmatic methods.20 When concrete classifications are produced (such as the single volumes in the BC2 system) the classifiers do, of course, consult libraries and terminology lists. This part of the methodology is not well described, however. It is not described what differences it makes whether the empirical work is done one way or another. There are in the tradition clear assumptions about ‘‘discover the very nature and order of things, an order based on principles which are eternal, unchanging, and all-encompassing’’ (cf., the above quote from Miksa, 1998). (Hjørland, 2013, p. 555) The assertions stated above only bring to us the point of view of Ranganathan, the “mathematician” and, then, of his trajectory as a logical classificationist. If we understand the interpretational potentialities of the modern approachesof knowledge organization and representation from Rhetoric, such as Emanuele Tesauro did in the specific context of “representation”, we can have a very different scope as we read Ranganathan's ideas and the changes that occurred after him.  191

Final considerations Our “rereading” contains a critique of the distinctions between the thesaurus (the instrument and product of indexation) and the ontologies (systems of conceptualization of reality). Tesauro's potentialities (dealing with Emanuele), demonstrate the great and defying linguistic relations open by rhetorical discourses, whether through the notion of discovery, the notion of memory, the notion of metaphor, or many not explored yet. The challenge of subjectivity present in these notions proves that a purely logical analysis needs to be also co-constituted from a rhetorical point of view, one establishing equal analytical possibilities of pragmatic variation of signified and signifier, that is, the socio-historical production of discourses is manifested in artifacts which are appropriate to knowledge organization. Therefore, this study recovers, theoretically, epistemological issues related to Emanuele Tesauro's works published as early as the XVIIth century, with an influence on instruments lasting until nowadays. This reflection strengthens the historical epistemological identity of Knowledge Organization, its vast potential to conduct comprehensive studies, and it makes evident more than three centuries of knowledge organization in the trajectory of thinkers, in approaches, and instruments.

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