Ego and the International: The Modernist Circle of George Sarton

The early years ofIsisare examined in the light of George Sarton's connection with Paul Otlet (1868–1944) and Henri Lafontaine (1854–1943), founders in 1895 of the International Office of Bibliography and in 1907 of the Union of International Associations, both in Brussels. Otlet, known as one of the fathers of the Information Age, invented the science of information, which he called, in French,documentation. Lafontaine, a socialist senator in Belgium, won the 1913 Nobel Prize for Peace. Sarton shared Otlet and Lafontaine's views about pacifism, internationalism, and rational bibliography; he designedIsisto fit with the modernist goal, expressed by Otlet and Lafontaine, of using information to generate new knowledge.