Archaeosophyology
Taking archaeology as its point of departure, Archaeosophyology refers to the metaphorical excavation of a person's wisdom and written thought from the page, and to bringing both the work and its author to public attention. Its purpose is less to establish an etymologically exact term than to define a new overarching concept and, should it gain recognition, a new field of scholarly inquiry.
The term combines the following elements:
- archaeo-: arkhaios — old, ancient;
- sophyo-/sophio-: sophia — knowledge, wisdom;
- -logy: logos — study, science.
In its simplest sense, it denotes “the study of ancient wisdom”.
As the concept does not yet appear in dictionaries, the proposed English term is Archaeosophyology, and the proposed French term is Archéosophyologie.
Archaeosophyology describes the endeavour to reconstruct an individual's intellectual legacy from scattered, fragmentary and often neglected materials. It sets out the principal rules and principles governing this systematic undertaking.
Its aim is to bring an individual's notes, writings and informal jottings—in short, their intellectual legacy—into an intelligible whole, held in trust and represented on the author's behalf, thereby sustaining intellectual continuity.
dusunselmiras.org is a platform with the support of the Intellectual Legacy Foundation (ILF), currently in the process of being established.
Archaeosophical Preservation
Just as an archaeological find may be documented in several museums, catalogues and publications, intellectual legacies should leave traces in multiple independent locations. This is the basis of archaeosophical preservation. The envisaged measures include, but are not limited to:
- Preparing records for publication in book form through an institutional body and publishing them together with digitised source documents in PDF, EPUB, TXT and other formats;
- Presenting the resulting works on dusunselmiras.org;
- Obtaining a DOI for each work;
- Depositing the materials in the Internet Archive;
- Maintaining all documents in a Git repository, available for examination and download;
- Sending printed copies to major libraries, including several national libraries on each continent.
Further Information
Institutional Links
- Intellectual Legacy Foundation