Novalis and H. Dreyfus Facing Information Overload. The failure of the epistemological aspect of relevance

Abstract

Information overload is an epistemological problem that worries different areas of knowledge such as the field of cognitive science, in its attempt to model systems capable of detecting relevance, as an already forgotten encyclopedic practiced during the 16th- 18th centuries and dedicated to the organization, arrangement and dissemination of the scientific information of the time. This article attempts to account for the failure of these two fields of research in finding solutions to information overload problem. To address our key question, we will particularly examine the relatively pessimistic views of H. Dreyfus and Novalis. The treatments of these authors demonstrate that the information overload cannot, and will not be solved, until exploring another path of research outside those which showed to be insufficient, namely the computational theory of mind (Dreyfus) and the clasifying encyclopedistical operation (Novalis).