LISA GITELMAN, FROM PAPER KNOWLEDGE: TOWARD A MEDIA HISTORY OF DOCUMENTS (2004)

[…] The word “document” descends from the Latin root docer, to teach or show, which suggests that the document exists in order to document. Sidestepping this circularity of terms, one might say instead that documents help define and are mutually defined by the know-show function, since documenting is an epistemic practice: the kind of knowing that is all wrapped up with showing, and showing wrapped with knowing. Documents are epistemic objects; they are the recognizable sites and subjects of interpretation across the disciplines and beyond, evidential structures in the long human history of clues.¹ Closely related to the know-show function