If we look cursorily at the international market of commercially available encyclopaedias and similar kinds of lexica in book form, we find that there are a number of fairly central works that seem to some extent or other to already be culturally constituted as "authoritative". One such example of this is the well-known "Encyclopaedia Britannica". Claims to authoritativeness for this particular type of "canonical" knowledge representation are, however, often grounded in an earlier period in history where the general conceptualisation of what knowledge is, and how it is constituted was more "static" than today -- as genres many of the text, interactional and representational norm-systems framing works of this kind are products of a pre-modern or enlightenment concept of knowledge representation. Today we can see signs that these conceptualisations of what knowledge is, and how it is created, represented and communicated are changing, and that this process of change is being mirrored over time in changes in the ways in which editors of such works choose to select and categorise items of knowledge and to present them for their perceived readership.
In his book "Fragments of Rationality" Lester Faigley [Faigley 1992] quotes what Jane Flax [1990] has called "beliefs still prevalent in [especially American] culture but derived from the Enlightenment", as examples of those aspects of knowledge representation within enlightenment thinking which postmodernist criticisms have taken issue with. These beliefs are:
1 The existence of a stable, coherent self.
2 Reason and its "science" - philosophy - can provide an objective, reliable and universal foundation for knowledge.
3 The Knowledge acquired from the right use of reason will be "true" - for example such knowledge will represent something real and unchanging [universal] about our minds and the structure of the natural world.
4 Reason itself has transcendent and universal qualities. It exists independently of the self's contingent existence.
5 There are complex connections between reason, autonomy and freedom. All claims to truth and rightful authority are to be submitted to the tribunal of reason. Freedom consists of obedience to laws that conform to the necessary results of the right use of freedom.
6 By grounding claims in the authority of reason, the conflicts between truth, knowledge and power can be overcome. Truth can serve power without distortion: in turn, by utilising knowledge in the service of power, both freedom and progress will be assured. Knowledge can be neutral.
7 Science as the exemplar of the right use of reason, is also the paradigm of all true knowledge,
8 Language is in some sense transparent. [Flax 1990, 41-42]
In our present context at least two of these claims are of interest. The third claim is quite central. The formulation "the right use of reason" here, implies for instance a strictly normative, platonic or kantian understanding of the sphere of reason/ ideas as something transcendental and/ or universal which exists beyond or outside of the sphere of everyday existence [cf. point 4. above]. The sixth claim; that conflicts between truth, knowledge and power may be overcome, that truth can serve power without distortion and that knowledge can be neutral, reflects the more optimistic, liberating aspect of enlightenment thought that has been questioned most strongly by "pre-postmodernist" philosophers of language, science and culture such as Rorty, Kuhn and Geertz, who first introduced the conceptualisation of knowledge as a social construct [Rorty 1979; Kuhn 1962 [1970]; Geertz 1973] generated within a wider scientific community; and more recently by "postmodernist" thinkers such as Lyotard, Foucault and Baudrillard [see Lyotard, 1984; Foucault, 1976; Baudrillard 1983], some of whom who have even gone so far as to claim that concepts such as "universal values", "truth" and "objectivity" , "rights" and "freedoms" no longer have any real existence outside of the specific socioculturally constituted discourses to which they belong, and that they are, as such, merely contingent on the resolution of negotiatory conflicts between the [self-] interests of a multiplicity of actors belonging to these discourses. Knowledge representation of any kind is then seen within the post-modern perspective as being intimately and immutably intertwined in a web of complex social and political relations which means that any postulated realisation of universal truths, understandings or values in culture automatically becomes the subject of what some thinkers perceive of as an extreme and (possibly destructive) scepticism and relativism.
In a less apocalyptic analysis, while it is probably correct to say that today we generally accept and respect the general view that the development of [scientific] world knowledge has to do with the gradual emergence of different sets of paradigms [cf. Kuhn], we are also beginning understand it in some way as being a by-product or artefact of evolutionary selection processes. Knowledge [or in the wider sense, meaning] is constantly being produced and developed through our own [human] interactions with, and within, complex environments of other natural, cultural, social and textual semiotic systems and processes, constituted at a macrolevel through what Prigogine and Stengers [1985] have referred to as our "dialogue with nature". According to Hilary Putnam [Putnam 1975] meaning is interactional. Interactions between human organisms and the physical and biological environment necessarily play a central role in determining what the meanings of words in fact refer to for speakers or communities of speakers. This means that no a priori inclusive descriptions of how meaning is produced are really possible in terms of any kind of procedural model. The biological environment, like the human organism, is open ended, and comprises many levels of dynamic open systems with a non-determinable ability to, or tendency to self-regulated development and change towards greater levels of complexity [see below]. Since each individual brain develops, and is structured by, the organism's behaviour and interactions with this environment, the body of the organism will also come to play an important role in determining meaning [see Edelman 1989; 1992]. For human beings to learn what things mean, they must develop and grow in a society and use language to create meaning by moving among, and communicating with others.
Evolutionarily, ecologically and biologically grounded systemic perspectives on the evolution and development of language, consciousness and meaning in culture [and in science] forwarded by semioticians such as Michael Halliday [1987] and Jay Lemke [1993] have shown us that language, science and culture must be understood as dynamic open systems. Dynamic open systems are metastable; that is, they persist only through constant change which results from their interactive exchanges with their own environments. During these interactions the system exports disorder and this increases the entropy of the environment. Changes in the environment thus cause a renewal of the exporting system, which gains new information and in doing so creates a new kind of order. Metastability is achieved by statistical processes whereby actualised instances affect probabilities, which from time to time rise from one or fall to zero. Quantitative effects become qualitative and the system continues its evolution, changing from moment to moment. Knowledge conceived as culturally encoded [and managed] meanings about the world we live in is then from this kind of perspective a "by-product" of ongoing evolutionary processes, and as such becomes a kind of environmental "waste matter" which may, or may not, serve as a basis for the further development and growth of new, more precisely defined and categorised knowledge of these self-same processes.
At the present time we are seeing a rapid growth in complexity in the whole area of representation and communication of scientific knowledge. New knowledge is being instantiated, constituted and communicated, not only through language in culture, but also by means of many other types of semiotic systems and codes. This is increasingly being made possible by modern computer and telecommunication technologies which facilitate communication through, and within, networked [distributed] digitally created environments; often referred to collectively as "Cyberspace", "Cyberculture" or "Virtual Reality" [see Søby 1994]. This particular area of human culture is characterised at the present time by processes of extremely rapid growth and change, and also by a considerable lack of conventionality with regard to how the various sign systems and codes, with their associated types of iconic, indexical and symbolic sign relations are used to translate and represent various kinds of knowledge. These nascent digital environments are in a state of rapid flux, and it often seems difficult to see how any kind of metastability or emergent order may develop there. This prescient condition of instability and constant change is reflected in the developing textual and interactional norm systems of Cyberculture, but this does not in my view preclude the possibility of transient, or even more lasting conditions of metastability emerging there at some time during the future. What we can expect to see, however, is the constitution of a number of new kinds of textual and interactional norms; leading to new ways of "doing" science, and developing, representing and communicating scientifically generated knowledge.
In my own research I have chosen to focus upon the ways in which textual and interactional norms change when [novice] scientific authors begin to collaborate in distributed virtual environments [Coppock 1994[b]; 1995[a]; 1995[b]; see also Coppock 1995[d] for a discussion of the concept of "novice" in this particular connection.] The documentation and study of the (inter)subjective experiences and on-going reflections of scientists who are beginning to explore and collaborate in these kinds of digitally created distributed collaborative environments, as well as the study of the diachronicity [i.e. their characteristic tendency to change over time] of their interactional and textual norm systems [reflected as changes in the various modes and genres of scientific writing and discourse] will allow us to learn more about how scientific knowledge is created and constituted through mediated interactions in language and culture. They will also allow us to study the mediating and regulatory role of the technology used for such collaboration.
In designing and producing conventional encyclopaedias it would seem that the main focus of interest is in offering what we have referred to above as this "core" or "canon" of accepted understandings", rather than expanding upon and integrating more peripheral issues and themes that might not even be fully resolved and articulated [i.e. instantiated and actualised in "the real world of culture"] at the time of production and distribution of the work. A closer examination of how the authority of encyclopaedic works is textually instantiated and construed may throw some light on the very basic [and very complicated] problem that editors of encyclopaedias always have to try and cope with, namely the fact that knowledge and understanding are constantly subject to, and part of, the above-mentioned continuous process of evolutionary, non-linear development and change.
As technological advances facilitate increased inter- (and intra)cultural collaboration, knowledge is not only being instantiated and construed but also disseminated more rapidly too. Not only is the rate of production of new knowledge at both local and global levels increasing, but also the ways in which representation, communication and dissemination of this knowledge is "done" by those producing it are continually changing. Increased access to the Internet for publishing and communication for what used to be considered culturally marginal groups means that areas of culture previously considered peripheral to the developing "core" of cultural knowledge have begun moving faster towards this core, resulting in a more rapid expansion of this core as more and more peripheral knowledge is incorporated and integrated into it. From this perspective, any authority of the conventional encyclopaedia that is built upon a legitimzation of it as some kind of a "completed" work through reference to the thoroughness, currency and actuality of the "canonical" knowledge "contained" in it and made accessible through it, may be threatened. I shall go on to examine the interplay between the notions of completeness and openness in relation to the cultural constitution of authority of encyclopaedias as tokens of the genre of "the reference work" in the next section.