SUMMARY:
• Scientific knowledge exists through tangible or intangible evidence, that is, the elements involved in scientific research and scientific publications, respectively.
• Scientific knowledge always eventually takes on a material form, and the longevity of this knowledge depends on the form it takes, which may be more or less fragile.
• Knowledge very often pertains to ephemeral things, meaning that a large portion of it would be permanently lost in the event of destruction.
• Evidence of the existence of certain things is also vulnerable and impossible to reproduce in the event of loss.
• Even more fundamental (or “universal”) knowledge can be very difficult to recover in the event of loss, since it relies indirectly on more specific knowledge, which is vulnerable.
• Research takes a long time and sometimes requires technological advances, which makes scientific knowledge all the more valuable.
• Knowledge, and more broadly information, are now major resources for our contemporary civilization.
• The preservation of knowledge is already a key issue for many modern organizations.
Knowledge is proof, and proof is precious
The crux of scientific investigation is material evidence. Scientists seek to accumulate as much evidence as possible to evaluate the quality of their theories, to test hypotheses, etc. Evidences are directly or indirectly related to the subjects of study of the theories: to study the Earth’s atmosphere, temperature and pressure readings are collected; to examine living organisms, specimens are observed in nature; to understand deep space, the spectrum of stars is measured, the sky is photographed, radio waves are listened to, etc. Evidence can be of two kinds: tangible and intangible. Tangible evidence is physical evidence itself: fossils, archaeological sites, meteorites, ice cores, Petri dishes, formaldehyde bottles, samples, etc. Intangible evidence consists of all the data that can be derived from tangible evidence: observation reports, measurements, graphs, descriptive notes, maps, interpretations, classifications, and terminology used, scientific laws, related mathematical demonstrations, etc. This “intangible” information is collected in more or less organized databases and is discussed succinctly in scientific publications, the latter forming the backbone of scientific research. These publications are, of course, produced on a physical medium: traditionally, paper, or computer memory, the format adopted is digital. Thus, intangible evidence also ends up, in a way, being converted into tangible evidence: scientific publications. Consequently, this means that scientific research relies on an accumulation of all kinds of artifacts from which knowledge can be gleaned. The sum of our civilization’s knowledge is thus made up of the sum of museums, university libraries, laboratory archives, computer servers, and other places dedicated to collection of knowledge all over the planet.
This leads us to make the following observations:
*Knowledge is a virtual entity that exists through a material entity: knowledge is not simply mental information that depends on the subject to exist; knowledge can “survive” independently of the subject through all kinds of media (tangible evidence on the one hand, intangible evidence through scientific publications on the other), facilitating the transmission of knowledge from one generation to the next.
*The longevity of knowledge depends on the longevity of the media: the knowledge accumulated through scientific publications would be lost if all archives disappeared overnight. We cannot rely only on human memory and oral transmission to preserve our knowledge with the adequate level of detail.
*The longevity of knowledge depends also on the longevity of the object of study in the first place: whereas a future astronomer will never have any difficulty studying the orbits of the planets in the solar system, as they will still be there in millions of years’ time, a future biologist could have difficulty studying living organisms if entire families of species disappear without a trace, or if they leave behind traces that are too fragile, such as fossils, whose physical integrity cannot be guaranteed for thousands of years once they have been unearthed.
This leads us to the following observation, which is the first major challenge in preserving knowledge: much of our knowledge depends on the accumulation of evidence, which may have a short lifespan. If an entity somewhere in the world (celestial bodies, living species, rocks, humans, cultures etc.) is the subject of a study, then as long as that entity exists, it will not be too serious if evidence about it disappears, since it will always be possible to obtain near identical evidence again. But if this entity were to disappear, leaving only traces of its passage, it would still be possible to create knowledge, but only indirectly, and this knowledge would likely be incomplete. If these traces were to disappear also, all that would remain would be the data that we had time to record somewhere, limiting the extent of our knowledge. Finally, if this data is not recorded or if our media disappear overnight, then future generations will not even be able to create any knowledge about the extinct entity. Knowledge of ancient civilizations, of life forms, of historical events or of habits in a given society, could all be lost one day, and we could be the last to have it.
Some knowledge is unique, and its loss would be irreversible
There are therefore three levels on which our knowledge is scattered: the subjects of study themselves; the material evidence derived from these subjects; and the scientific studies derived from this evidence. In other words, sources of knowledge, evidence of knowledge, and knowledge carriers. The preservation of knowledge is all the more effective when it is carried out at high stream level, that is, as close as possible to the source of knowledge. However, preservation is also less tedious at a downstream level: it is easier to preserve a document about a region of the world than to preserve that region itself. Above all, sources of knowledge are sometimes ephemeral, and publications about them can theoretically have a longer lifespan. Regardless of the level of our knowledge, there is always a considerable portion of it that could not be rediscovered by future generations if it were lost.
At the level of the object of study itself, we can cite the fairly obvious example of animal and plant species distributed across the planet. As long as we can observe a polar bear or a mangrove tree in the wild, it will always be possible to describe these species, even if we had been foolish enough to store all our publications on bears and mangroves in a single archive that caught fire. But if these species were to disappear tomorrow, all that would remain would be the fossils in museums, DNA samples in laboratories, scientific studies, photographs, testimonies, etc. It would technically still be possible to create new knowledge from all this, but as soon as a new hypothesis is formulated somewhere, it will be more difficult to test it immediately, based solely on these archives rather than on direct observation in the wild. Certain species have characteristics so incongruous that the imagination cannot spontaneously invent them. Their survival is essential if we are to ensure that we understand the full extent of diversity that life can take. Thanks to testimonies and bones, we know that dense forests and lions existed in Greece 3,000 years ago, whereas today’s flora and fauna are radically different. Without these indirect sources, it would be difficult for us to even imagine that a region like Greece could have looked like that (this phenomenon is even referred to as biological amnesia). The preservation of living species is therefore obviously a major issue for biologists, not only for obvious ethical reasons, but also quite simply for epistemic reasons: the loss of a species also means the loss of a vital source of information about a unique being in the observable universe, and perhaps even, by extension, about the biosphere in general (the knowledge accumulated about individual species can also help us understand more general biological phenomena: selection, natural history, origins, behavior, animal intelligence etc.) and even about human beings (consciousness, group life, population displacement, health etc.). Other sciences are not necessarily left behind. While physicists and mathematicians are luckier than biologists in terms of the longevity of their subjects of study, sociologists, on the other hand, must hope that the communities (generations, ethnic groups, countries, etc.) they study do not disappear too quickly. Linguists can only note with despair that dozens of dialects disappear forever without leaving any sound recordings or written records, while climatologists are well aware of the constant changes in climate over the millennia.
When it comes to tangible evidence, there are still many entities whose existence is unique, truly “miraculous” for a scientist, and whose loss would once again imply an irreversible loss of knowledge. Historians and paleontologists are probably the most concerned by this situation. When an animal dies, its carcass decomposes very quickly under the action of microbes and scavengers. As a result, within a few years, only the bones remain, which themselves eventually deteriorate due to erosion and other chemical reactions. Under specific conditions, bones can “turn” into stone, becoming fossils, but these conditions are extremely rare: for every individual that becomes fossilized, millions of others do not. This proportion is even lower when the individual belongs to a species that does not live in an environment conducive to fossilization (deltas, river valleys, etc.). Add to this the fact that plate tectonics have caused many fossils to disappear or to be buried over millions of years, and add to this the fact that humans may have inadvertently thrown away fossils in the past, everything that comes within reach of a paleontologist is a true scientific miracle. Paleontologists could easily have missed out on the existence of the brachiosaurus or the pterodactyl. If tomorrow, all natural history museums were destroyed by nuclear bombs, we would be the last to know about the existence of such species. What is true in paleontology is also true in human history, given that archaeological sites are equally vulnerable. Many social phenomena can destroy valuable archaeological evidence: urban planning policies (since ancient times, many cities have changed their appearance at the behest of their rulers: Rome, Giza, Beijing, etc.), wars (bombings such as that of Dresden in 1945, looting such as that of the Baghdad library by the Mongols, etc.), superstition (Mesopotamian statues destroyed by religious fundamentalists, handwritten turtle shells crushed for traditional Chinese medicine, etc.), looting (Egyptian tombs, theft of paintings, etc.), natural disasters (fires, earthquakes, floods, etc.) and many other factors that will be discussed later. We could go on and on listing everything that has disappeared and will never resurface: more or less ephemeral works of art (works by Cristo, ice palaces, etc.), specific events (world fairs, Olympic Games, etc.), “lost media” (unrecorded radio broadcasts, lost films, video games that have not been reissued and are technically obsolete, etc.), vanished natural landscapes, and so on.
Some knowledge is difficult to recreate
We have just seen that some knowledge relates to unique entities or phenomena that are unrepeatable and ephemeral, meaning that any trace of these entities is all the more precious because there will never again be an opportunity to study them in the future. Our most specific knowledge, that which relates to particular objects (living species, individuals, civilizations, eras, works of art, historical events, etc.) is the most at risk of being lost forever if all memory of this knowledge were to disappear.
But there is also another important scenario, that of knowledge that is theoretically reproducible by future generations, but in practice more difficult to rediscover in the event of widespread amnesia. In science, the amount of input data is an important factor in the accuracy of a result. Statistics teach us that when studying a sample of a given population (humans, artifacts, animals, etc.), the larger the sample, the more reliable the conclusions that can be drawn from it (provided that it is also representative). This fact can be generalized: for a given category (species family, political regimes, personality types, geographical areas, etc.), the more we know about the specific characteristics of each individual within that category, the more reliable the generalizations we can make about the category will be. This observation is reflected in many disciplines, as there have been numerous instances where the discovery of specific phenomena not predicted by a theory has forced scientists to adjust that theory or even create a new one that is more predictive and inclusive. For example, the study of the Pirahã language, some of whose characteristics are completely unique (no recursion, no abstract words for colors, a very limited number of phonemes, etc.), has cast doubt on the validity of the main theses of modern Chomskian linguistics, i.e., the “universal” laws of language. Without the discovery of Pirahã, it might not have been impossible, but it would have been more difficult to advance research in linguistics. The same applies to other fields in science: as long as there are living species on Earth, it remains possible to develop laws and hypotheses about all living things, but it is clear that the singularities of certain forms of life are useful in limiting excessive generalizations and, therefore, overly simplistic scientific theories. Similarly, the more evidence a historian can accumulate about the past, the better able they will be to describe a more contemporary era, while the more knowledge an anthropologist has of specific social facts, the more likely the conclusions he can draw will be valid, as well as independent from ethnocentric biases. The loss of a culture means not only the loss of a potentially interesting subject of study, but also the potential spread of erroneous beliefs about what is truly universal or not (values, customs, aesthetic rules, culinary traditions, etc.). Incidentally, preserving social facts also goes hand in hand with preserving the memory of past mistakes and their causes.
Furthermore, we must not forget that knowledge is a very time-consuming activity. Several millennia ago, the Greeks did not know much about our universe: the Earth was flat or round, it was at the center of the world, there were three continents (Europe, Asia, Africa), the atom was a vague and speculative concept, things had an eternal essence as well as a few transitory characteristics, and the Earth was considered young and static. It took centuries for Copernicus’ heliocentric theory, Newton’s laws of gravity, Lamarck’s theory of evolution, Maxwell’s laws of electromagnetism, Darwin’s natural selection, the axiomatization of mathematics, Einstein’s special and general relativity, plate tectonics, quantum physics, etc. to appear successively. This evolution of knowledge did not come without obstacles (religious superstition, imperfect methodologies, budgetary restrictions, etc.). Moreover, certain theories have been able to progress indirectly thanks to technology, particularly computing, without which some discoveries would not have been possible (for example, the proof of the four-color theorem in mathematics). All this to say that in the event of general amnesia, these theories could very well reappear generations later, but preserving these theories would save our descendants a lot of time. The work of future scientists and philosophers would be greatly facilitated if all our knowledge, even that which relates to things that will still be there in millions of years (stars, planets, particles, bacteria, mathematics, etc.), were safe and sound. We can therefore understand the need to preserve everything that can be preserved, once we realize that future generations could miss out on crucial discoveries because they are not living in the right era or because they are wasting time rediscovering the laws of nature. This will not only be because species or peoples will have become extinct by then, but also because they may not have favorable conditions to pursue the quest for knowledge. For all these reasons, given the tedious nature of research and the temporary nature of the objects of this research, it seems crucial to create a repository of all our knowledge, from the most specific to the most universal, from the most trivial to the most complex, from the most fundamental to the most tertiary, from least to most accepted. This is called epistemic memory.
Knowledge has become the backbone of our civilization
Knowledge can be considered as a heritage, an object of intellectual wealth that must be preserved in the same way as any other type of heritage (natural or cultural). But in our contemporary society, knowledge, or more generally information, can also be considered as “intellectual capital,” which is not only of cultural or epistemic importance, but also of economic and pragmatic importance. Indeed, throughout the parallel evolution of scientific discoveries and technical innovations, several unprecedented phenomena have brought humanity into the information age.
Firstly, there has been exponential growth in the knowledge accumulated by scholars from all walks of life and all disciplines The number of graduates, research organizations, and scientific publications has therefore exploded, especially in the second half of the 20th century and the first half of the 21st century. This phenomenon of knowledge growth has been accompanied by another equally exponential growth, that of information storage banks: libraries multiplied, Electronic and then digital media (magnetic tapes, microfilms, vinyl records, CDs, computer servers, etc.) quickly took over, while the amount of information increased at the same rate. But it is not only the number of storage media that has exploded; the individual storage capacity of all these media has also improved at an ever-increasing rate. Inventions such as printing or rotary presses had already announced this phenomenon before the 20th century, leading to the birth of mass media. But it was mainly during the 1960s and 1970s that the invention of the transistor brought about a series of major innovations that would change everything: information and communication technologies (ICT). These technologies include microcomputers, inter-computer communication protocols (TCP/IP), digital sensors (CCD, etc.), modern computer languages (UNIX, HTML, etc.), compact discs (CDs and derivatives, DVDs, CD-ROMs, etc.), operating systems, the Internet (including search engines, browsers, social networks, streaming, etc.), mobile phones (including smartphones), and the foundations of modern telecommunications (Wi-Fi, ADSL, fiber optics, satellite, etc.). These advances have not only made it possible to overcome the limitations in terms of storage capacity of traditional information media (written and analog documentation, previously stored in libraries and specialized archives), but also to facilitate the dissemination and processing of information stored around the world: the creation of a large interconnected global network of satellites, servers, and computers (the very definition of the Internet) has made access to scientific literature, journalistic publications, and all kinds of information useful for everyday life (weather, news, schedules, administrative services, etc.) widespread. Beyond the impact this has had on the world of research (it has suddenly become easier to publish or find existing scientific publications) and on everyday life (our lives are now based on information: blogs, videos, chats, office automation, messages, news, skills, forms, encyclopedias, etc.), ICT has had a major impact on the very structural foundations of our society. Increased access to information has given rise to new social challenges: misinformation during election campaigns, dependence on social media, demand for skilled personnel in companies, automation of tasks through artificial intelligence, more appropriate energy management through smart grids, new inequalities in terms of intellectual capital due to the digital divide, the launch of alerts, the popularization of science, the increased importance of critical thinking, software or telecommunication in companies.
Knowledge has, of course, always played an indirect role in society, facilitating innovation and therefore practical life. But until the dawn of the information age, knowledge was primarily an end in itself, serving a purely epistemic function: to satisfy our intellectual curiosity and our need for fulfillment. In fact, this remains its primary mission. Knowledge was only used sporadically, most often in politics, navigation, agronomy, medicine, and crafts. Now, knowledge is a resource like any other, a fuel for society, businesses, states, institutions, and all forms of human organization. Our society is now based on knowledge, information, and data, to such an extent that there are fields of study devoted solely to information issues in the business world, notably knowledge management. This covers the quality of knowledge (from raw data to skills, including information and knowledge proper), strategies for moving from one form of knowledge to another (tacit and explicit knowledge), knowledge sharing and transfer (learning, databases, research, software, etc.), management (collaboration, motivation, senior management, etc.), and knowledge engineering (methods of collection, structuring, exploitation, quality control, etc.). We use formulations such as the “information society,” the “knowledge society,” or even the “information age” to describe the unprecedented importance that knowledge has taken on in our contemporary world. It should be noted that we are referring here to knowledge and information in the broadest sense (raw data is already economically valuable, even when it has not yet been processed to become usable information.).
Preservation is a crucial step in knowledge management
Given that knowledge is now essential to the functioning of our contemporary societies, preserving it is no longer just a matter of safeguarding our heritage, but also of ensuring the survival of civilization. The preservation of knowledge is no longer just an epistemic issue, helping future generations to improve their understanding of reality, but also a social issue, helping future generations to create an ever more prosperous society. This prosperity is only possible if we make sure that no mishap leads to the sudden and irreversible deletion of massive amount of information. Knowledge management just so happens to be a field of study which addresses (among other things) the issue of knowledge storage. In our modern economic systems, preservation is closely linked to knowledge sharing, insofar as the choice of methods for sharing information is important in safeguarding it.: learning, for example, makes it possible to maintain skills (a specific form of knowledge: know how) within an organization, notably when a member leaves. In fact, knowledge management within an organization can be considered a form of preservation, in that capitalized knowledge “survives” the various changes that may arise within the organization. This unspoken culture of preservation is also reflected in terms such as “intellectual capital” and “economic heritage,” which blur the line between epistemic and financial worlds. Our contemporary organizational methods could thus pave the way for even more ambitious memory projects.
Similarly, despite their seemingly volatile nature, dissemination tools also indirectly constitute methods of capitalizing on and preserving knowledge: a social network, for example, allows a message to be stored indefinitely on a computer server somewhere on the other side of the world, and if that message is shared and saved by network users, it is very difficult to delete permanently. This is one of the paradoxes of the Internet: any piece of information can get lost in the crowd, making it difficult to access, just as if it just disappeared. But since the duplication of information is commonplace on the Internet, deleting it is not exactly child’s play either. Of course, preservation issues are not only related to transmission, but also to storage methods and the longevity of the storage tools themselves. However, this is a less central issue in knowledge management, even though it is fundamental: the quality of the information medium obviously determines our ability to preserve that information. Moreover, our information world is far too dependent on technologies with a very limited lifespan. Electronic media can function for a few decades at best, and different digital formats can become obsolete in just a few years, rendering much information unreadable, even though it paradoxically still exists. Implementing the preservation of knowledge, implying the creation of a true epistemic memory, also means seeking solutions to obsolescence and setting up backup information media.
REFERENCES:
On the case of European lions (biological amnesia):
Lion en Europe — Wikipédia (FR) / History of lions in Europe – Wikipedia (EN)
On the case of Pirahã, a language whose existence has led to a reevaluation of certain fundamental theories of language:
Perhaps the most controversial language — Pirahã | The Language Closet
On the case of computers, a technology indispensable for establishing certain scientific knowledge:
World spec'mode 
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