Soul, Subtle Body, Gross Body: S.R. Ranganathan’s Ontology of the Book in (Its) Context(s)

This paper examines an ontological model of the book that S.R. Ranganathan developed in the late 1940s and early 1950s, according to which a book (or other document) consists of a soul, or thought content; a subtle body, or semiotic modes of expressing thought content; and a gross body, or physical form. Ranganathan derived this ontology from traditional Hindu philosophical sources and creatively adapted it to fit his own theoretical purposes. The paper begins with a brief initial overview of the ontology itself, discussing the circumstances in which it arose and the basic lineaments of its structure. Then it considers the Hindu ontological model from which Ranganathan derived the basic structure of his model of the book and discusses how he adapted it for the purposes of library-science discourse. Next, it examines how Ranganathan deployed his ontology of the book in his writings, showing that it provided him with a useful conceptual base from which to discuss several different topics relating to books, their description, and their processing in libraries as well as certain features of book classifications. Finally, it is shown that Ranganathan’s use of his ontology of the book to underpin his discussion of a number of different subjects in his writings can be seen as an instantiation of one of the ideals toward which his thought tended: the principle of ekavākyatā, or the unity arising out of diversity.