Ian McNeely & Lisa Wolverton, Reinventing knowledge from Alexandria to the internet

This book attempts a history of knowledge traced through its institutions, from the library to the monastery to the university and onwards.

It’s an ambitious attempt and an interesting read.

The authors acknowledge that their focus is upon formal knowledge in institutions rather than informal knowledge and they focus primarily upon the western tradition with occasional comparative reference elsewhere. It was in this definition that I had a problem – the later chapters go on to examine the republic of letters, the disciplines and the laboratory. While I would acknowledge these as constructs in the reinvention of knowledge, are they institutions? One key feature of the republic of letters is the extension beyond formal institutions – the informal intellectual community linked through social connection.

There is also a tension in dealing with the overlap between the role of the institution and the medium – between the library or university and the library or university.