Abstract
This paper presents Constructed Past Theory, an epistemological theory about how we come to know things that happened or existed in the past. The theory is expounded both in text and in a formal model comprising UML class diagrams. The ideas presented here have been developed in a half century of experience as a practitioner in the management of information and automated systems in the US government and as a researcher in several collaborations, notably the four international and multidisciplinary InterPARES projects. This work is part of a broader initiative, providing a conceptual framework for reformulating the concepts and theories of archival science in order to enable a new discipline whose assertions are empirically and, wherever possible, quantitatively testable. The new discipline, called archival engineering, is intended to provide an appropriate, coherent foundation for the development of systems and applications for managing, preserving and providing access to digital information, development which is necessitated by the exponential growth and explosive diversification of data recorded in digital form and the use of digital data in an ever increasing variety of domains. Both the text and model are an initial exposition of the theory that both requires and invites further development.
Highlights
The past does not exist and never did
A basic goal in developing Constructed Past Theory is to support implementation in automated systems, the theory does not accept the distinction between data and information that is common in information technology, as reflected in assertions such as: “data has no meaning or value because it is without context and interpretation;” and “data are discrete, objective facts or observations, which are unorganized and unprocessed, and do not convey any specific meaning.”
As articulated by Cencetti in the mid-twentieth century, the archival bond is the relationship among documents that arises from their use in an activity by an agent [27]
Summary
The past does not exist and never did. The past is always something that is constructed by thinking, writing or speaking about former times. A basic goal in developing Constructed Past Theory is to support implementation in automated systems, the theory does not accept the distinction between data and information that is common in information technology, as reflected in assertions such as: “data has no meaning or value because it is without context and interpretation;” and “data are discrete, objective facts or observations, which are unorganized and unprocessed, and do not convey any specific meaning.”. Such assertions are contrasted to information, which is described as “data that have been processed so that they are meaningful;” or “data that have been interpreted and understood by the recipient.” [2]. Part 5 synthesizes the concepts set out in Part 3 in an overview that addresses how the model can be applied in undertaking and evaluating constructions of the past
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