David and list:
I too am on deadline, but I was writing this past week on communication and found that the following from C. S. Pierce helped me. In Peirce's language, a Representamen is a sign made in such a way that it has the ability to convey a particular thought, and an Interpretant is "the idea that the sign excites."
"while no Representamen actually functions as such until it actually determines an Interpretant, yet it becomes a Representamen as soon as it is fully capable of doing this; and its Representative Quality is not necessarily dependent on ever actually determining an Interpretant, nor even upon its ever actually having an Object" (Peirce, Houser, & Kloesel, 1992, p. 273).
Peirce's conception anticipates the focus on the reader's role in completing meaning-making, "no Representamen actually functions as such...", while still allowing for the sign itself to have qualities that evoke meaning apart from the reader, "not ... dependent on ever actually determining an Interpretant." Peirce described a synergistic relationship between sign and recipient: no sign = no meaning conveyed, no reader = no meaning evoked.
Research and common experience amply demonstrate that a particular group of words, or a particular set of images done a certain way (my area of study) tend to evoke (my preferred word for how signs stimulate meaning) very similar ideas in people attending to them. The better the writing or designing the more consistent the responses. If there was nothing "there' in the book the response would not be consistent. Because it is consistent there must be something there. But the something is not functional until someone attends to it.
So in some sense knowledge is contained books, and in another sense the knowledge is in the mind of person attending to the book.
Do books contain or transmit knowledge? I would say yes to both while noting your question has left off (implied) the reader.
Mike Zender
University of Cincinnati
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