Introduction Chris Meyns
Part 1: Information before 500 CE: Natures
1. Yinyang information: Order, know-how and a relation based paradigm Robin R. Wang
2. Plato on the act of informing: Speaking meaningfully and education Tamsin de Waal
3. On information in Aristotle: Nature, perception, knowledge Miira Tuominen
4. Information and history of psychiatry: The case of the disease phrenitis Chiara Thumiger
Part 2: Information 500–1500: Access
5. Vācaspati on aboutness and decomposition Nilanjan Das
6. Seeing and recognition in the Arabian Nights and Islamic Alexander legends Anna Ayse Akasoy
7. Avicenna on information processing and abstraction Luis Xavier López-Farjeat
8. Thomas Aquinas on cognition as information Cecilia Trifogli
Part 3: Information 1500–1800: Control
9. Leibniz as a precursor to Chaitin’s Algorithmic Information Theory Richard T. W. Arthur
10. Information visualisation in the Philosophical Transactions Chris Meyns
11. ‘Dwindled into Confusion and Nonsense’: Information in a copyright perspective from the Statute of Anne to Google Books Stina Teilmann-Lock
12. Information in the pursuit of social reform Lynn McDonald
Part 4: Information in the nineteenth century: (Dangerous) systems
13. The nineteenth-century information revolution and world peace Edward Beasley
14. Charles Babbage’s economy of knowledge Renee Prendergast
15. Mendel on developmental information Yafeng Shan
16. Information and eugenics: Francis Galton Debbie Challis and Subhadra Das
Part 5: Information after 1900: Insurgencies
17. The racialization of information: W.E.B. Du Bois, early intersectionality, and social information Reiland Rabaka
18. The many faces of Shannon information Olimpia Lombardi and Cristian López
19. Computers and system(s) science—the kingpins of modern technology: Lotfi Zadeh’s glimpses into the future of the information revolution Rudolf Seising.
Index
Biography
Chris Meyns is a poet, developer and architectural conservationist based in Uppsala, Sweden. They have published on the history of data, on Anton Wilhelm Amo’s philosophy of mind, and their book The Philosophers’ Library: Books that Shaped the World (with Adam Ferner) will appear in 2021. Their current research focuses on vulnerability in information sharing ecosystems.
"This book provides a rich and timely philosophical reflection on how thinkers from antiquity onwards have grappled with the nature of information, in its various forms, and with its socio-political consequences. In the midst of an information revolution, where new technology is transforming society in ways we have yet to grasp, it is urgent that we study the epistemic and ethical consequences of how information is stored and spread. This volume is the place to start." Åsa Wikforss, Stockholm University and The Swedish Academy
