Information and the History of Philosophy

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.

• 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

"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