Universal Library

Commerce is of trivial import; love, faith, truth of character, the aspiration of man, these are sacred.Ralph Waldo Emerson

"It is perhaps the oldest university in the world."

Can you imagine if one might have been restricted from the museums of history, based on what another might have thought of the person? To encourage such ideas to blossom, that it is understood the garden has to provide a source from which things can grow. Why not circumvent all views other then one's own, and you shall own those person's too.

If we are to keep one in "ignorance of life" then why not circumvent them to what the world is for them in "their sections and houses on earth? Keep them, to the culture, and not allow for the greater dialogue between these cultures?

While the historical blend here is being extolled, I of course have current thoughts about this in todays world of the internet.


Reconstruction of one of the storage rooms of the Library of Alexandria. From Carl Sagan's Cosmos (1980),

The Royal Library of Alexandria in Alexandria, Egypt, was once the largest library in the world. It is generally thought to have been founded at the beginning of the 3rd century BC, during the reign of Ptolemy II of Egypt. It was likely created after his father had built what would become the first part of the library complex, the temple of the Muses — the Musaion (from which is derived the modern English word museum).

It has been reasonably established that the library, or parts of the collection, were destroyed by fire on a number of occasions (library fires were common enough and replacement of handwritten manuscripts was very difficult, expensive and time-consuming). To this day the details of the destruction (or destructions) remain a lively source of controversy. The Bibliotheca Alexandrina was inaugurated in 2003 near the site of the old library.

Now you know that I believe that the resource for such potentials is very capable in anyone's hands. That if they would like to draw from such a resource, that maybe it has to be physical for them. So, they may go to the library.Yet there is the "sublty of the intangile" that is not accepted by those who are "deeply physical" about what they can accept, so they can accept such libraries.

Then again one might think twice about what is in the library of the internet? Yet, it is not without the "subtleness of the intangible" that we see where the "good thoughts/ideas can issue from the expert and the lay person alike. That such things become part of the library of the internet.

How do we know in our heart when such information is true? That we can rest assure that such dangers of misleading do not take us into their world? Do they some how control you by what they like to hear?

Innatism is a philosophical doctrine introduced by Plato in the socratic dialogue Meno which holds that the mind is born with ideas/knowledge, and that therefore the mind is not a tabula rasa at birth. It asserts therefore that not all knowledge is obtained from experience and the senses. Innatism is the opposite of empiricism.

Plato claimed that humans are born with ideas/forms in the mind that are in a dormant state. He claimed that we have acquired these ideas prior to our birth when we existed as souls in the world of Forms. To access these, humans need to be reminded of them through proper education and experience.

Or are we gifted with this innatism about what is good in all people, while there are those who would become rich by such restrictions of a "software selection."

The French librarian Gabriel Naudé wrote:

And therefore I shall ever think it extreamly necessary, to collect for this purpose all sorts of books, (under such precautions, yet, as I shall establish) seeing a Library which is erected for the public benefit, ought to be universal; but which it can never be, unlesse it comprehend all the principal authors, that have written upon the great diversity of particular subjects, and chiefly upon all the arts and sciences; [...] For certainly there is nothing which renders a Library more recommendable, then when every man findes in it that which he is in search of

I mean, if we were restricted to the ability to retrieve from the massive amounts of data being presented, do you think it a good thing to restrict people from being able to develope their intellect? Learn more?