The library of Babel

See also: Babel

“the Library of Babel” is a Nouvelle being in the collection Fictions of the writer Jorge Luis Borges.

It is about a gigantic Bibliothèque of size containing all the books of 410 possible pages of which all the hexagonal rooms are laid out of the same manner. The books are placed in racks including/understanding all the same number of stages and receiving all the same number of books. Each book has the same number of pages and randomly written signs; the Alphabet used always includes/understands twenty-five characters.

One can thus say that the Library contains all the works which were already written thus that all the others, among an immense number of books without any readable contents (since each book can be made up only of one succession of letters forming anything precis in no language). This one is inhabited by a race of men which knows only this world, in the search of the ultimate book, a revelation or Truth.

This news is a Métaphore of the Littérature and shows a great influence of the Kabbale.

Reflections close to the spirit of this news

The topic of the “Library of Babel” east reconsidered the front of the scene with the arrival of the Computer S. Indeed, to compose all the possible continuations of characters of size given became about possible, within the limit of the combinative, limiting explosion which should not be neglected.

  • Richard Dawkins imagines the “Ordinateur of Babel”: 4 Mo of RAM filled in all the possible and conceivable ways, among which inevitably a certain number of cores perfectly in functioning order. From of which all the cores Linux passed, present and to come, as long as they make less than 4 Mo, like those from all the Windows under the same condition.

  • David Deutsch, taking up and generalizing an idea of Hugh Everett, estimates that the universe that we know precisely represents one of volumes of a kind of library of Babel.

  • Thanks to the computers, we can from now on calculate the number of distinct books present in the library. This number comprises: 1834097 digits, which shows that the computers are well far from being able to create this library indeed. Let us notice that one would need more than one book (approximately 1,4 in fact) of the Library of Babel to write this number.

  • Indépendamment of this question, this library would exist that the creation of works would still not be made. As the fact of noticing Paul Valéry ( Variété V ) To say that a thing is remarkable , it is to introduce a man , a person (...) who provides all remarkable business. What me imports if I do not only have a ticket such or such number left the ballot box? I “am not sensitized” with this event. There is chance for me in pulling (...). Thus remove the man and his waiting, all indistinctly arrives, but the chance made nothing in the world - to point out itself… . See on this subject the Paradox of the erudite monkey.

  • This tale, as well as the figure of Borges, inspired with Umberto Eco the supposed library of the monastery to hold the ultimate copy of volume 2 of the Poétique of Aristote, as well as the features of the superior Benedictine in the Name of the pink .

See too

External bonds

  • the library of Babel digitized, consultable works on line.

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