Gábor Forrai:

The concerns of epistemology are to a large extent guided by the way in which knowledge is made public. From the very beginning of organized inquiry up until the late 17th century the only shape in which knowledge could appear was that of a book. Even though the importance of books has been diminishing for centuries, books still have a hold on epistemological thought. We tend to regard knowledge as something which is eminently suitable for being articulated in a book. It is a unified structure, and justification follows a straightforward linear order. This picture of knowledge is quite remote from the way in which scientific knowledge is currently organized. It requires at least a good deal of abstraction to view science as patterned like a book. So it seems worth choosing another metaphor. The hypertext has certain features which make it look promising for that role. It is non-sequential, heterogeneous, rich in interconnections, and is easy to update. Regarding scientific knowledge a hypertext may highlight phenomena which were neglected so far and thus enrich epistemology with new issues to explore. The paper aims to make some tentative steps into this direction.