S R Ranganathan: Making of the Man and his Method

This study aims to explicate the mind and intellectual personality of Ranganathan through various genetic and environmental influences, both professional and social. Ranganathan’s father Ramamrita Aiyer was an erudite and religiously respected man in his village. Ranganathan grew up in a centuries old deeply practising Brahmin family and he himself lived the very orthodox life of a Tamil Brahmin. During his college days he came under the influence of his Mathematics teacher Edward Ross, a Scottish missionary who taught him the connectedness of everything from flowers to stars in the cosmos. Ranganathan regarded professor Ross his intellectual father. It was reinforced by the principle of Ekavakyata introduced to him by his friend, Professor S. Kuppuswami Sastri, a professor of philosophy at the Madras Christian College. Professional influence was mostly from W.C.B. Sayers. Ranganathan learned the grammar of classification from Sayers and from his books and far excelled him in this field. Ranganathan copied his teaching method. Study visits to more than 120 libraries in the United Kingdom helped him to generalise and formulate his famous Five Laws of Library Science. Science, especially mathematics, made his mind analytical. Ultimately two methods reveal the secrets of his creativity. These are uncanny capacity for abstraction and use of inductive methods and keen observations. His tremendously huge work is explained by his practice of work-chastity and large capacity to take pains. His religious orthodoxy and superstitions had no effect on his intellectual work. His view of intuition, which he believed aided his creativity and productivity, is not in tune with current cognitive theories.