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{{short description|Short story by author and librarian Jorge Luis Borges}}
{{short description|Short story by Jorge Luis Borges}}
{{for|the website created by Jonathan Basile|The Library of Babel (website)}}
{{for|the website created by Jonathan Basile|The Library of Babel (website)}}

{{Infobox short story | <!-- See [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels]] or [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Books]] -->
{{Infobox short story | <!-- See [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels]] or [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Books]] -->
|name = The Library of Babel
|name = The Library of Babel
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"'''The Library of Babel'''" ({{lang-es|La biblioteca de Babel}}) is a [[short story]] by [[Argentina|Argentine]] author and [[librarian]] [[Jorge Luis Borges]] (1899–1986), conceiving of a [[universe]] in the form of a vast library containing all possible 410-page books of a certain format and [[character set]].
"'''The Library of Babel'''" ({{lang-es|La biblioteca de Babel}}) is a [[short story]] by [[Argentina|Argentine]] author and [[librarian]] [[Jorge Luis Borges]] (1899–1986), conceiving of a [[universe]] in the form of a vast library containing all possible 410-page books of a certain format and [[character set]].


The story was originally published in [[Spanish language|Spanish]] in Borges' [[1941 in literature|1941]] collection of stories ''[[The Garden of Forking Paths|El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan]]'' (''The Garden of Forking Paths''). That entire book was, in turn, included within his much-reprinted ''[[Ficciones]]'' ([[1944 in literature|1944]]). Two [[English language|English-language]] [[translation]]s appeared approximately simultaneously in [[1962 in literature|1962]], one by James E. Irby in a diverse collection of Borges's works titled ''[[Labyrinths]]'' and the other by Anthony Kerrigan as part of a collaborative translation of the entirety of ''Ficciones''.
The story was originally published in [[Spanish language|Spanish]] in Borges' [[1941 in literature|1941]] collection of stories ''[[The Garden of Forking Paths|El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan]]'' (''The Garden of Forking Paths''). That entire book was, in turn, included within his much-reprinted ''[[Ficciones]]'' ([[1944 in literature|1944]]). Two [[English language|English-language]] [[translation]]s appeared approximately simultaneously in [[1962 in literature|1962]], one by James E. Irby in a diverse collection of Borges's works titled ''[[Labyrinths (short story collection)|Labyrinths]]'' and the other by Anthony Kerrigan as part of a collaborative translation of the entirety of ''Ficciones''.


==Plot==
==Plot==
Borges' narrator describes how his universe consists of an enormous expanse of adjacent [[hexagon]]al rooms. In each room, there is an entrance on one wall, the bare necessities for human survival on another wall, and four walls of bookshelves. Though the order and content of the books are random and apparently completely meaningless, the inhabitants believe that the books contain every possible ordering of just 25 basic [[grapheme|characters]] (22 letters, the period, the comma, and space). Though the vast majority of the books in this universe are pure [[gibberish]], the library also must contain, somewhere, every coherent book ever written, or that might ever be written, and every possible [[permutation]] or slightly erroneous version of every one of those books. The narrator notes that the library must contain all useful information, including predictions of the future, biographies of any person, and translations of every book in all [[language]]s. Conversely, for many of the texts, some language could be devised that would make it readable with any of a vast number of different contents.
Borges' narrator describes how his [[universe]] consists of an enormous expanse of adjacent [[hexagon]]al rooms. In each room, there is an entrance on one wall, the bare necessities for [[human]] survival on another wall, and four walls of bookshelves. Though the order and content of the books are random and apparently completely meaningless, the inhabitants believe that the books contain every possible ordering of just 25 basic [[grapheme|characters]] (22 letters, the period, the comma, and space). Though the vast majority of the books in this universe are pure [[gibberish]], the library also must contain, somewhere, every coherent book ever written, or that might ever be written, and every possible [[permutation]] or slightly erroneous version of every one of those books. The narrator notes that the library must contain all useful information, including predictions of the future, biographies of any person, and translations of every book in all [[language]]s. Conversely, for many of the texts, some language could be devised that would make it readable with any of a vast number of different contents.


Despite—indeed, because of—this glut of information, all books are totally useless to the reader, leaving the librarians in a state of suicidal despair. This leads some librarians to [[superstitious]] and [[cult]]-like behaviors, such as the "Purifiers", who arbitrarily destroy books they deem nonsense as they scour through the library seeking the "Crimson Hexagon" and its illustrated, magical books. Others believe that since all books exist in the library, somewhere one of the books must be a perfect index of the library's contents; some even believe that a messianic figure known as the "Man of the Book" has read it, and they travel through the library seeking him.
Despite—indeed, because of—this glut of information, all books are totally useless to the reader, leaving the librarians in a state of suicidal despair. This leads some librarians to [[superstitious]] and [[cult]]-like behaviors, such as the "Purifiers", who arbitrarily destroy books they deem nonsense as they scour through the library seeking the "Crimson Hexagon" and its illustrated, magical books. Others believe that since all books exist in the library, somewhere one of the books must be a perfect index of the library's contents; some even believe that a [[messianic figure]] known as the "Man of the Book" has read it, and they travel through the library seeking him.


==Themes==
==Themes==
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<blockquote>Certain examples that [[Aristotle]] attributes to [[Democritus]] and [[Leucippus]] clearly prefigure it, but its belated inventor is [[Gustav Theodor Fechner]], and its first exponent, [[Kurd Lasswitz]]. [...] In his book ''The Race with the Tortoise'' (Berlin, 1919), Dr [[Theodor Wolff]] suggests that it is a derivation from, or a parody of, [[Ramón Llull]]'s thinking machine [...] The elements of his game are the universal orthographic symbols, not the words of a language [...] Lasswitz arrives at twenty-five symbols (twenty-two letters, the space, the period, the comma), whose recombinations and repetitions encompass everything possible to express in all languages. The totality of such variations would form a Total Library of astronomical size. Lasswitz urges mankind to construct that inhuman library, which chance would organize and which would eliminate intelligence. (Wolff's ''The Race with the Tortoise'' expounds the execution and the dimensions of that impossible enterprise.)<ref>Borges, Jorge Luis. ''The Total Library: Non-Fiction 1922–1986.'' Allen Lane The Penguin Press, London, 2000. Pages 214–216. Translated by Eliot Weinberger.</ref></blockquote>
<blockquote>Certain examples that [[Aristotle]] attributes to [[Democritus]] and [[Leucippus]] clearly prefigure it, but its belated inventor is [[Gustav Theodor Fechner]], and its first exponent, [[Kurd Lasswitz]]. [...] In his book ''The Race with the Tortoise'' (Berlin, 1919), Dr [[Theodor Wolff]] suggests that it is a derivation from, or a parody of, [[Ramón Llull]]'s thinking machine [...] The elements of his game are the universal orthographic symbols, not the words of a language [...] Lasswitz arrives at twenty-five symbols (twenty-two letters, the space, the period, the comma), whose recombinations and repetitions encompass everything possible to express in all languages. The totality of such variations would form a Total Library of astronomical size. Lasswitz urges mankind to construct that inhuman library, which chance would organize and which would eliminate intelligence. (Wolff's ''The Race with the Tortoise'' expounds the execution and the dimensions of that impossible enterprise.)<ref>Borges, Jorge Luis. ''The Total Library: Non-Fiction 1922–1986.'' Allen Lane The Penguin Press, London, 2000. Pages 214–216. Translated by Eliot Weinberger.</ref></blockquote>


Many of Borges' signature motifs are featured in the story, including [[infinity]], [[reality]], [[Kabbalah|cabalistic reasoning]], and [[labyrinth]]s. The concept of the library is often compared to [[Infinite monkey theorem|Borel's dactylographic monkey theorem]]. There is no reference to monkeys or typewriters in "The Library of Babel", although Borges had mentioned that analogy in "The Total Library": "[A] half-dozen monkeys provided with typewriters would, in a few eternities, produce all the books in the British Museum." In this story, the closest equivalent is the line, "A blasphemous sect suggested [...] that all men should juggle letters and symbols until they constructed, by an improbable gift of chance, these canonical books."
Many of Borges' signature motifs are featured in the story, including [[infinity]], [[reality]], [[Kabbalah|cabalistic reasoning]], and [[labyrinth]]s. The concept of the library is often compared to [[Infinite monkey theorem|Borel's dactylographic monkey theorem]]. There is no reference to monkeys or typewriters in "The Library of Babel", although Borges had mentioned that analogy in "The Total Library": "[A] half-dozen monkeys provided with typewriters would, in a few eternities, produce all the books in the [[British Museum]]." In this story, the closest equivalent is the line, "A blasphemous sect suggested [...] that all men should juggle letters and symbols until they constructed, by an improbable gift of chance, these canonical books." Borges makes an oblique reference to reproducing Shakespeare, as the only decipherable sentence in one of the books in the library, "O time thy pyramids", is surely taken from Shakespeare's [[Sonnet 123]] which opens with the lines "No Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change, Thy pyramids...".


Borges would examine a similar idea in his 1976 story, "[[The Book of Sand]]" in which there is an infinite book (or book with an indefinite number of pages) rather than an infinite library. Moreover, the story's ''Book of Sand'' is said to be written in an unknown alphabet and its content is not obviously random. In The Library of Babel, Borges interpolates Italian mathematician [[Bonaventura Cavalieri]]'s suggestion that any solid body could be conceptualized as the superimposition of an infinite number of planes.
Borges would examine a similar idea in his 1976 story, "[[The Book of Sand]]", in which there is an infinite book (or book with an indefinite number of pages) rather than an infinite library. Moreover, the story's ''Book of Sand'' is said to be written in an unknown alphabet and its content is not obviously random. In The Library of Babel, Borges interpolates Italian mathematician [[Bonaventura Cavalieri]]'s suggestion that any solid body could be conceptualized as the superimposition of an infinite number of planes.


The concept of the library is also overtly analogous to the view of the universe as a [[sphere]] having its center everywhere and its [[circumference]] nowhere. The [[mathematician]] and [[philosopher]] [[Blaise Pascal]] employed this [[metaphor]], and in an earlier essay Borges noted that Pascal's manuscript called the sphere ''effroyable,'' or "frightful".
The concept of the library is also overtly analogous to the view of the universe as a [[sphere]] having its center everywhere and its [[circumference]] nowhere. The [[mathematician]] and [[philosopher]] [[Blaise Pascal]] employed this [[metaphor]], and in an earlier essay Borges noted that Pascal's manuscript called the sphere ''effroyable,'' or "frightful".
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In any case, a library containing ''all'' possible books, arranged at random, might as well be a library containing ''zero'' books, as any true information would be buried in, and rendered indistinguishable from, all possible forms of false information; the experience of opening to any page of any of the library's books has been simulated by websites which create screenfuls of random letters.<ref>See https://libraryofbabel.info/</ref>
In any case, a library containing ''all'' possible books, arranged at random, might as well be a library containing ''zero'' books, as any true information would be buried in, and rendered indistinguishable from, all possible forms of false information; the experience of opening to any page of any of the library's books has been simulated by websites which create screenfuls of random letters.<ref>See https://libraryofbabel.info/</ref>


The quote at the beginning of the story, "By this you may contemplate the variation of the twenty-four letters," is from [[Robert Burton (scholar)|Robert Burton]]'s 1621 ''[[The Anatomy of Melancholy]]''.
The quote at the beginning of the story, "By this art you may contemplate the variation of the twenty-three letters," is from [[Robert Burton (scholar)|Robert Burton]]'s 1621 ''[[The Anatomy of Melancholy]]''.


==Philosophical implications==
==Philosophical implications==
===Infinite extent===
===Infinite extent===
In mainstream theories of natural language syntax, every syntactically-valid utterance can be extended to produce a new, longer one, because of [[Recursion#In_language|recursion]].<ref>{{Cite book|title=Aspects of the theory of syntax|author=Noam, Chomsky|year=1969|orig-year=1965|publisher=M.I.T. Press|isbn=9780262030113|edition=1st pbk.|location=Cambridge|oclc=12964950}}</ref> However, the books in the Library of Babel are of bounded length ("each book is of four hundred and ten pages; each page, of forty lines, each line, of some eighty letters"), so the Library can only contain a finite number of distinct strings. Borges' narrator notes this fact, but believes that the Library is nevertheless infinite; he speculates that it repeats itself periodically, giving an eventual "order" to the "disorder" of the seemingly random arrangement of books. Mathematics professor William Goldbloom Bloch confirms the narrator's intuition, deducing in his popular mathematics book ''[[The Unimaginable Mathematics of Borges' Library of Babel]]'' that the library's structure necessarily has at least one room whose shelves are not full (because the number of books per room does not divide the total number of books evenly), and the rooms on each floor of the library must either be connected into a single [[Hamiltonian cycle]], or possibly be disconnected into subsets that cannot reach each other.<ref name=hayes>{{citation|last=Hayes |first = Brian | authorlink = Brian Hayes (scientist)
In mainstream theories of natural language syntax, every syntactically valid utterance can be extended to produce a new, longer one, because of [[Recursion#In language|recursion]].<ref>{{Cite book|title=Aspects of the theory of syntax|author=Noam, Chomsky|year=1969|orig-year=1965|publisher=M.I.T. Press|isbn=9780262030113|edition=1st pbk.|location=Cambridge|oclc=12964950}}</ref> However, the books in the Library of Babel are of bounded length ("each book is of four hundred and ten pages; each page, of forty lines, each line, of some eighty letters"), so the Library can only contain a finite number of distinct strings. Borges' narrator notes this fact, but believes that the Library is nevertheless infinite; he speculates that it repeats itself periodically, giving an eventual "order" to the "disorder" of the seemingly random arrangement of books. Mathematics professor William Goldbloom Bloch confirms the narrator's intuition, deducing in his popular mathematics book ''[[The Unimaginable Mathematics of Borges' Library of Babel]]'' that the library's structure necessarily has at least one room whose shelves are not full (because the number of books per room does not divide the total number of books evenly), and the rooms on each floor of the library must either be connected into a single [[Hamiltonian cycle]], or possibly be disconnected into subsets that cannot reach each other.<ref name=hayes>{{citation|last=Hayes |first = Brian | authorlink = Brian Hayes (scientist)
| date = January–February 2009
| date = January–February 2009
| issue = 1
| issue = 1
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===Quine's reduction===
===Quine's reduction===
[[W.&nbsp;V.&nbsp;O. Quine]] notes that the Library of Babel is finite, and that any text that does not fit in a single book can be reconstructed by finding a second book with the continuation. The size of the alphabet can be reduced by using Morse code even though it makes the books more verbose; the size of the books can also be reduced by splitting each into multiple volumes and discarding the duplicates. Writes Quine, "The ultimate absurdity is now staring us in the face: a universal library of two volumes, one containing a single dot and the other a dash. Persistent repetition and alternation of the two are sufficient, we well know, for spelling out any and every truth. The miracle of the finite but universal library is a mere inflation of the miracle of binary notation: everything worth saying, and everything else as well, can be said with two characters."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://jubal.westnet.com/hyperdiscordia/universal_library.html|title=Universal Library|author=W.V.O Quine|access-date=May 10, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140628033859/http://jubal.westnet.com/hyperdiscordia/universal_library.html|archive-date=2014-06-02|url-status=dead}}</ref>
[[W.&nbsp;V.&nbsp;O. Quine]] notes that the Library of Babel is finite, and that any text that does not fit in a single book can be reconstructed by finding a second book with the continuation. The size of the alphabet can be reduced by using [[Morse code]] even though it makes the books more verbose; the size of the books can also be reduced by splitting each into multiple volumes and discarding the duplicates. Writes Quine, "The ultimate absurdity is now staring us in the face: a universal library of two volumes, one containing a single dot and the other a dash. Persistent repetition and alternation of the two are sufficient, we well know, for spelling out any and every truth. The miracle of the finite but universal library is a mere inflation of the miracle of binary notation: everything worth saying, and everything else as well, can be said with two characters."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://jubal.westnet.com/hyperdiscordia/universal_library.html|title=Universal Library|author=W.V.O Quine|access-date=May 10, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140628033859/http://jubal.westnet.com/hyperdiscordia/universal_library.html|archive-date=2014-06-28|url-status=dead}}</ref>


==Comparison with biology==
==Comparison with biology==
The full possible set of protein sequences ([[sequence space (evolution)|protein sequence space]]) has been compared to the Library of Babel.<ref>{{cite journal|author=Arnold, FH|title=The Library of Maynard-Smith: My Search for Meaning in the protein universe|journal=Advances in Protein Chemistry|date=2000|volume=55|pages=ix–xi|pmid=11050930|doi=10.1016/s0065-3233(01)55000-7}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|last1=Ostermeier|first1=M|title=Beyond cataloging the Library of Babel.|journal=Chemistry & Biology|date=March 2007|volume=14|issue=3|pages=237–8|pmid=17379136|doi=10.1016/j.chembiol.2007.03.002|doi-access=free}}</ref> In the ''Library of Babel'', finding any book that made sense was almost impossible due to the sheer number and lack of order. The same would be true of protein sequences if it were not for natural selection, which has picked out only protein sequences that make sense. Additionally, each protein sequence is surrounded by a set of neighbors (point mutants) that are likely to have at least some function. [[Daniel Dennett]]'s 1995 book ''[[Darwin's Dangerous Idea]]'' includes an elaboration of the Library of Babel concept to imagine the set of all possible genetic sequences, which he calls the Library of Mendel, in order to illustrate the mathematics of genetic variation. Dennett uses this concept again later in the book to imagine all possible algorithms that can be included in his [[Toshiba]] computer, which he calls the Library of Toshiba. He describes the Library of Mendel and the Library of Toshiba as subsets within the Library of Babel.
The full possible set of protein sequences ([[sequence space (evolution)|protein sequence space]]) has been compared to the Library of Babel.<ref>{{cite journal|author=Arnold, FH|title=The Library of Maynard-Smith: My Search for Meaning in the protein universe|journal=Advances in Protein Chemistry|date=2000|volume=55|pages=ix–xi|pmid=11050930|doi=10.1016/s0065-3233(01)55000-7}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|last1=Ostermeier|first1=M|title=Beyond cataloging the Library of Babel.|journal=Chemistry & Biology|date=March 2007|volume=14|issue=3|pages=237–8|pmid=17379136|doi=10.1016/j.chembiol.2007.03.002|doi-access=}}</ref> In the ''Library of Babel'', finding any book that made sense was almost impossible due to the sheer number and lack of order. The same would be true of protein sequences if it were not for natural selection, which has picked out only protein sequences that make sense. Additionally, each protein sequence is surrounded by a set of neighbors (point mutants) that are likely to have at least some function. [[Daniel Dennett]]'s 1995 book ''[[Darwin's Dangerous Idea]]'' includes an elaboration of the Library of Babel concept to imagine the set of all possible genetic sequences, which he calls the Library of Mendel, in order to illustrate the mathematics of [[genetic variation]]. Dennett uses this concept again later in the book to imagine all possible algorithms that can be included in his [[Toshiba]] computer, which he calls the Library of Toshiba. He describes the Library of Mendel and the Library of Toshiba as subsets within the Library of Babel.


==Influence on later writers==
==Influence on later writers==
*[[Umberto Eco]]'s postmodern novel ''[[The Name of the Rose]]'' (1980) features a labyrinthine library, presided over by a blind monk named Jorge of Burgos. The room is, however, octagonal in shape.
*[[Umberto Eco]]'s postmodern novel ''[[The Name of the Rose]]'' (1980) features a labyrinthine library, presided over by a blind monk named Jorge of Burgos. The room is, however, octagonal in shape.
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*Russell Standish's ''Theory of Nothing''<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.hpcoders.com.au/nothing.html|title=Theory of Nothing|publisher=Hpcoders.com.au|date=May 29, 2011|access-date=May 10, 2018}}</ref> uses the concept of the Library of Babel to illustrate how an [[ultimate ensemble]] containing all possible descriptions would in sum contain zero information and would thus be the simplest possible explanation for the existence of the universe. This theory, therefore, implies the reality of all universes.
*In "The Net of Babel", published in ''[[Interzone (magazine)|Interzone]]'' in 1995, [[David Langford]] imagines the Library becoming [[computer]]ized for easy access. This aids the librarians in searching for specific text while also highlighting the futility of such searches as they can find anything, but nothing of meaning as such. The sequel continues many of Borges's themes, while also highlighting the difference between [[data]] and [[information]], and [[satire|satirizing]] the [[Internet]].
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*''[[The Unimaginable Mathematics of Borges' Library of Babel]]'' (2008) by [[William Goldbloom Bloch]] explores the short story from a mathematical perspective. Bloch analyzes the hypothetical library presented by Borges using the ideas of [[topology]], [[information theory]], and geometry.<ref>{{cite book|author=Bloch, William Goldbloom|title=The Unimaginable Mathematics of Borges' Library of Babel|title-link= The Unimaginable Mathematics of Borges' Library of Babel |year=2008|publisher=Oxford University Press}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://wheatoncollege.edu/academics/faculty-directory/bill-goldbloom-bloch/|title=William Goldbloom Bloch's home page|publisher=Faculty.wheatoncollege.edu|access-date=May 10, 2018}}</ref>
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*[[Russell K. Standish|Russell Standish]]'s ''Theory of Nothing''<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.hpcoders.com.au/nothing.html|title=Theory of Nothing|publisher=Hpcoders.com.au|date=May 29, 2011|access-date=May 10, 2018}}</ref> uses the concept of the Library of Babel to illustrate how an [[ultimate ensemble]] containing all possible descriptions would in sum contain zero information and would thus be the simplest possible explanation for the existence of the universe. This theory, therefore, implies the reality of all universes.
⚫
*In [[Greg Bear]]'s novel ''[[City at the End of Time]]'' (2008), the sum-runners carried by the protagonists are intended by their creator to be combined to form a 'Babel', an infinite library containing every possible permutation of every possible character in every possible language. Bear has stated that this was inspired by Borges, who is also namechecked in the novel. Borges is described as an unknown Argentinian who commissioned an encyclopedia of impossible things, a reference to either "[[Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius]]" or the ''[[Book of Imaginary Beings]]''.{{Citation needed|date=March 2023}}
*[[Michael Ende]] reused the idea of a universe of hexagonal rooms in the ''Temple of a Thousand Doors'' from ''[[The Neverending Story]]'', which contained all the possible characteristics of doors in the fantastic realm. A later chapter features the [[infinite monkey theorem]].
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*[[The Library of Babel (website)|The Library of Babel]], a website created by [[Jonathan Basile]], emulates an English-language version of Borges' library. An algorithm he created generates a "book" by iterating every permutation of 29 characters: the 26 English letters, space, comma, and period. Each book is marked by a coordinate, corresponding to its place on the hexagonal library (hexagon name, wall number, shelf number, and book name) so that every book can be found at the same place every time. The website is said to contain "all possible pages of 3200 characters, about 10<sup>4677</sup> books".<ref>{{Cite web |last=Sturgeon |first=Johnathon |date=2015-04-23 |title=Brooklyn Author Recreates Borges' Library of Babel as Infinite Website |url=https://www.flavorwire.com/515783/brooklyn-author-recreates-borges-library-of-babel-as-infinite-website |access-date=2020-11-22 |website=Flavorwire}}</ref> For example, a coordinate may look like "389fj39l-w4-s5-v32" where, "389fj39l" is the hexagon name, "w4" specifies wall 4, "s5" specifies shelf 5, and "v32" specifies volume 32.
*[[Terry Pratchett]] uses the concept of the infinite library in his ''[[Discworld]]'' novels. The knowledgeable librarian is a human wizard transformed into an orangutan.
*In [[Steven L. Peck]]'s novella ''A Short Stay In Hell'' (2009), the protagonist must find the book of his life's story in a library containing every possible book. Borges' story is mentioned directly, although the library is structured very differently. It is also explicitly finite in size, though it is more than a million [[orders of magnitude]] larger than the [[observable universe]].
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*''[[The Unimaginable Mathematics of Borges' Library of Babel]]'' (2008) by [[William Goldbloom Bloch]] explores the short story from a mathematical perspective. Bloch analyzes the hypothetical library presented by Borges using the ideas of topology, information theory, and geometry.<ref>{{cite book|author=Bloch, William Goldbloom|title=The Unimaginable Mathematics of Borges' Library of Babel|title-link= The Unimaginable Mathematics of Borges' Library of Babel |year=2008|publisher=Oxford University Press}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://wheatoncollege.edu/academics/faculty-directory/bill-goldbloom-bloch/|title=William Goldbloom Bloch's home page|publisher=Faculty.wheatoncollege.edu|access-date=May 10, 2018}}</ref>
⚫
*In [[Greg Bear]]'s novel ''[[City at the End of Time]]'' (2008), the sum-runners carried by the protagonists are intended by their creator to be combined to form a 'Babel', an infinite library containing every possible permutation of every possible character in every possible language. Bear has stated that this was inspired by Borges, who is also namechecked in the novel. Borges is described as an unknown Argentinian who commissioned an encyclopedia of impossible things, a reference to either "[[Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius]]" or the ''[[Book of Imaginary Beings]]''.
*''Fone'', a short comic novel drawn by [[Milo Manara]], features a human astronaut and his alien partner stranded on a planet named Borges Profeta. The planet is overflowed by books containing all the possible permutations of letters.
*[[Steven L. Peck]] wrote a novella entitled ''A Short Stay in Hell'' (2012) in which the protagonist must find the book containing his life story in an afterlife replica of Borges' Library of Babel.
*The third season of ''Carmilla'', a Canadian single-frame web series based on the novella by [[Sheridan Le Fanu|J. Sheridan Le Fanu]], is set in a mystical library described as "non-Euclidean" and omnipotent. It contains a door that, depending on the knocking pattern on its panels, can be opened into any universe. It also creates a temporary parallel universe and is able to shift a character between the parallel and the original. As the parallel universe collapses, darkness falls, and a character perishes in the void after uttering the words, "O time thy pyramids," which are contained on the second-to-last page of a book in the Library of Babel.
*In [[Christopher Nolan]]'s film [[Interstellar (film)|''Interstellar'']], the protagonist, Cooper, played by [[Matthew McConaughey]], becomes trapped in a black hole which mirrors the Library of Babel; Cooper's universe consists of an infinitely extended [[tesseract]] consisting of the back-side of a specific bookshelf full of books in his former family home in all directions, but at different times in the bookshelf's history. This scene has been compared to the Library of Babel,<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/reviews-recommendations/review-interstellar|author=Pinkerton, Nick|title=Review: Interstellar|date=July 21, 2017|access-date=May 10, 2018}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2014/11/13/363444786/the-science-of-interstellar|title=The Science Of 'Interstellar'|publisher=[[NPR]]|date=November 13, 2014|access-date=May 10, 2018}}</ref> and Nolan cites Borges as an artistic influence.<ref>{{cite news|work=[[The Atlantic]]|url=https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/382636/|title=Interstellar Isn't About Religion (and Also It Is Totally About Religion)|author=Garber, Megan|date=November 12, 2014|access-date=May 10, 2018}}</ref>
⚫
*[[The Library of Babel (website)|The Library of Babel]], a website created by [[Jonathan Basile]], emulates an English-language version of Borges' library. An algorithm he created generates a "book" by iterating every permutation of 29 characters: the 26 English letters, space, comma, and period. Each book is marked by a coordinate, corresponding to its place on the hexagonal library (hexagon name, wall number, shelf number, and book name) so that every book can be found at the same place every time. The website is said to contain "all possible pages of 3200 characters, about 10<sup>4677</sup> books".<ref>{{Cite web |last=Sturgeon |first=Johnathon |date=2015-04-23 |title=Brooklyn Author Recreates Borges' Library of Babel as Infinite Website |url=https://www.flavorwire.com/515783/brooklyn-author-recreates-borges-library-of-babel-as-infinite-website |access-date=2020-11-22 |website=Flavorwire}}</ref>
*''The Library of Babel'' is a video game, based on the story, developed and published by Spanish [[Tanuki Game Studio]], with no announced release date.<ref>{{Cite web |title=The Library of Babel Release Information for PlayStation 5 - GameFAQs |url=https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps5/322125-the-library-of-babel/data |access-date=2022-03-28 |website=gamefaqs.gamespot.com}}</ref> It is described as “a tale revolving around a dark futuristic world, unfolding through [[Platform game|platformer]] elements, [[Stealth game|stealth]] and [[Adventure game|graphic adventure]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=The Library Of Babel |url=https://tanukigamestudio.com/our-games/the-library-of-babel |access-date=2022-03-28 |website=Tanuki Game Studio |language=en-US}}</ref>


==See also==
==See also==
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[[Category:Fictional universes]]
[[Category:Fictional universes]]
[[Category:Thought experiments]]
[[Category:Thought experiments]]
[[Category:Works set in libraries]]
[[Category:Short stories set in libraries]]
[[Category:Argentine speculative fiction works]]
[[Category:Argentine speculative fiction works]]

Revision as of 08:34, 17 June 2024

For the website created by Jonathan Basile, see The Library of Babel (website).
"The Library of Babel"
Short story by Jorge Luis Borges
English language cover
Original titleLa biblioteca de Babel
Translatornumerous
LandArgentinien
SpracheSpanish
Genre(s)Fantasy
Publication
Published inEl Jardín de senderos que se bifurcan
PublisherEditorial Sur
Publication date1941
Published in English1962

"The Library of Babel" (Spanish: La biblioteca de Babel) is a short story by Argentine author and librarian Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986), conceiving of a universe in the form of a vast library containing all possible 410-page books of a certain format and character set.

The story was originally published in Spanish in Borges' 1941 collection of stories El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan (The Garden of Forking Paths). That entire book was, in turn, included within his much-reprinted Ficciones (1944). Two English-language translations appeared approximately simultaneously in 1962, one by James E. Irby in a diverse collection of Borges's works titled Labyrinths and the other by Anthony Kerrigan as part of a collaborative translation of the entirety of Ficciones.

Plot

Borges' narrator describes how his universe consists of an enormous expanse of adjacent hexagonal rooms. In each room, there is an entrance on one wall, the bare necessities for human survival on another wall, and four walls of bookshelves. Though the order and content of the books are random and apparently completely meaningless, the inhabitants believe that the books contain every possible ordering of just 25 basic characters (22 letters, the period, the comma, and space). Though the vast majority of the books in this universe are pure gibberish, the library also must contain, somewhere, every coherent book ever written, or that might ever be written, and every possible permutation or slightly erroneous version of every one of those books. The narrator notes that the library must contain all useful information, including predictions of the future, biographies of any person, and translations of every book in all languages. Conversely, for many of the texts, some language could be devised that would make it readable with any of a vast number of different contents.

Despite—indeed, because of—this glut of information, all books are totally useless to the reader, leaving the librarians in a state of suicidal despair. This leads some librarians to superstitious and cult-like behaviors, such as the "Purifiers", who arbitrarily destroy books they deem nonsense as they scour through the library seeking the "Crimson Hexagon" and its illustrated, magical books. Others believe that since all books exist in the library, somewhere one of the books must be a perfect index of the library's contents; some even believe that a messianic figure known as the "Man of the Book" has read it, and they travel through the library seeking him.

Themes

Borges in 1967

The story repeats the theme of Borges' 1939 essay "The Total Library" ("La Biblioteca Total"), which in turn acknowledges the earlier development of this theme by Kurd Lasswitz in his 1901 story "The Universal Library" ("Die Universalbibliothek"):

Certain examples that Aristotle attributes to Democritus and Leucippus clearly prefigure it, but its belated inventor is Gustav Theodor Fechner, and its first exponent, Kurd Lasswitz. [...] In his book The Race with the Tortoise (Berlin, 1919), Dr Theodor Wolff suggests that it is a derivation from, or a parody of, Ramón Llull's thinking machine [...] The elements of his game are the universal orthographic symbols, not the words of a language [...] Lasswitz arrives at twenty-five symbols (twenty-two letters, the space, the period, the comma), whose recombinations and repetitions encompass everything possible to express in all languages. The totality of such variations would form a Total Library of astronomical size. Lasswitz urges mankind to construct that inhuman library, which chance would organize and which would eliminate intelligence. (Wolff's The Race with the Tortoise expounds the execution and the dimensions of that impossible enterprise.)[1]

Many of Borges' signature motifs are featured in the story, including infinity, reality, cabalistic reasoning, and labyrinths. The concept of the library is often compared to Borel's dactylographic monkey theorem. There is no reference to monkeys or typewriters in "The Library of Babel", although Borges had mentioned that analogy in "The Total Library": "[A] half-dozen monkeys provided with typewriters would, in a few eternities, produce all the books in the British Museum." In this story, the closest equivalent is the line, "A blasphemous sect suggested [...] that all men should juggle letters and symbols until they constructed, by an improbable gift of chance, these canonical books." Borges makes an oblique reference to reproducing Shakespeare, as the only decipherable sentence in one of the books in the library, "O time thy pyramids", is surely taken from Shakespeare's Sonnet 123 which opens with the lines "No Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change, Thy pyramids...".

Borges would examine a similar idea in his 1976 story, "The Book of Sand", in which there is an infinite book (or book with an indefinite number of pages) rather than an infinite library. Moreover, the story's Book of Sand is said to be written in an unknown alphabet and its content is not obviously random. In The Library of Babel, Borges interpolates Italian mathematician Bonaventura Cavalieri's suggestion that any solid body could be conceptualized as the superimposition of an infinite number of planes.

The concept of the library is also overtly analogous to the view of the universe as a sphere having its center everywhere and its circumference nowhere. The mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal employed this metaphor, and in an earlier essay Borges noted that Pascal's manuscript called the sphere effroyable, or "frightful".

In any case, a library containing all possible books, arranged at random, might as well be a library containing zero books, as any true information would be buried in, and rendered indistinguishable from, all possible forms of false information; the experience of opening to any page of any of the library's books has been simulated by websites which create screenfuls of random letters.[2]

The quote at the beginning of the story, "By this art you may contemplate the variation of the twenty-three letters," is from Robert Burton's 1621 The Anatomy of Melancholy.

Philosophical implications

Infinite extent

In mainstream theories of natural language syntax, every syntactically valid utterance can be extended to produce a new, longer one, because of recursion.[3] However, the books in the Library of Babel are of bounded length ("each book is of four hundred and ten pages; each page, of forty lines, each line, of some eighty letters"), so the Library can only contain a finite number of distinct strings. Borges' narrator notes this fact, but believes that the Library is nevertheless infinite; he speculates that it repeats itself periodically, giving an eventual "order" to the "disorder" of the seemingly random arrangement of books. Mathematics professor William Goldbloom Bloch confirms the narrator's intuition, deducing in his popular mathematics book The Unimaginable Mathematics of Borges' Library of Babel that the library's structure necessarily has at least one room whose shelves are not full (because the number of books per room does not divide the total number of books evenly), and the rooms on each floor of the library must either be connected into a single Hamiltonian cycle, or possibly be disconnected into subsets that cannot reach each other.[4]

Quine's reduction

W. V. O. Quine notes that the Library of Babel is finite, and that any text that does not fit in a single book can be reconstructed by finding a second book with the continuation. The size of the alphabet can be reduced by using Morse code even though it makes the books more verbose; the size of the books can also be reduced by splitting each into multiple volumes and discarding the duplicates. Writes Quine, "The ultimate absurdity is now staring us in the face: a universal library of two volumes, one containing a single dot and the other a dash. Persistent repetition and alternation of the two are sufficient, we well know, for spelling out any and every truth. The miracle of the finite but universal library is a mere inflation of the miracle of binary notation: everything worth saying, and everything else as well, can be said with two characters."[5]

Comparison with biology

The full possible set of protein sequences (protein sequence space) has been compared to the Library of Babel.[6][7] In the Library of Babel, finding any book that made sense was almost impossible due to the sheer number and lack of order. The same would be true of protein sequences if it were not for natural selection, which has picked out only protein sequences that make sense. Additionally, each protein sequence is surrounded by a set of neighbors (point mutants) that are likely to have at least some function. Daniel Dennett's 1995 book Darwin's Dangerous Idea includes an elaboration of the Library of Babel concept to imagine the set of all possible genetic sequences, which he calls the Library of Mendel, in order to illustrate the mathematics of genetic variation. Dennett uses this concept again later in the book to imagine all possible algorithms that can be included in his Toshiba computer, which he calls the Library of Toshiba. He describes the Library of Mendel and the Library of Toshiba as subsets within the Library of Babel.

Influence on later writers

  • Umberto Eco's postmodern novel The Name of the Rose (1980) features a labyrinthine library, presided over by a blind monk named Jorge of Burgos. The room is, however, octagonal in shape.
  • Russell Standish's Theory of Nothing[8] uses the concept of the Library of Babel to illustrate how an ultimate ensemble containing all possible descriptions would in sum contain zero information and would thus be the simplest possible explanation for the existence of the universe. This theory, therefore, implies the reality of all universes.
  • The Unimaginable Mathematics of Borges' Library of Babel (2008) by William Goldbloom Bloch explores the short story from a mathematical perspective. Bloch analyzes the hypothetical library presented by Borges using the ideas of topology, information theory, and geometry.[9][10]
  • In Greg Bear's novel City at the End of Time (2008), the sum-runners carried by the protagonists are intended by their creator to be combined to form a 'Babel', an infinite library containing every possible permutation of every possible character in every possible language. Bear has stated that this was inspired by Borges, who is also namechecked in the novel. Borges is described as an unknown Argentinian who commissioned an encyclopedia of impossible things, a reference to either "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" or the Book of Imaginary Beings.[citation needed]
  • The Library of Babel, a website created by Jonathan Basile, emulates an English-language version of Borges' library. An algorithm he created generates a "book" by iterating every permutation of 29 characters: the 26 English letters, space, comma, and period. Each book is marked by a coordinate, corresponding to its place on the hexagonal library (hexagon name, wall number, shelf number, and book name) so that every book can be found at the same place every time. The website is said to contain "all possible pages of 3200 characters, about 104677 books".[11] For example, a coordinate may look like "389fj39l-w4-s5-v32" where, "389fj39l" is the hexagon name, "w4" specifies wall 4, "s5" specifies shelf 5, and "v32" specifies volume 32.
  • In Steven L. Peck's novella A Short Stay In Hell (2009), the protagonist must find the book of his life's story in a library containing every possible book. Borges' story is mentioned directly, although the library is structured very differently. It is also explicitly finite in size, though it is more than a million orders of magnitude larger than the observable universe.

See also

References

  1. ^ Borges, Jorge Luis. The Total Library: Non-Fiction 1922–1986. Allen Lane The Penguin Press, London, 2000. Pages 214–216. Translated by Eliot Weinberger.
  2. ^ See https://libraryofbabel.info/
  3. ^ Noam, Chomsky (1969) [1965]. Aspects of the theory of syntax (1st pbk. ed.). Cambridge: M.I.T. Press. ISBN 9780262030113. OCLC 12964950.
  4. ^ Hayes, Brian (January–February 2009), "Books-a-million (review of The Unimaginable Mathematics of Borges' Library of Babel)", American Scientist, 97 (1): 78–79, doi:10.1511/2009.76.78, JSTOR 27859279
  5. ^ W.V.O Quine. "Universal Library". Archived from the original on 2014-06-28. Retrieved May 10, 2018.
  6. ^ Arnold, FH (2000). "The Library of Maynard-Smith: My Search for Meaning in the protein universe". Advances in Protein Chemistry. 55: ix–xi. doi:10.1016/s0065-3233(01)55000-7. PMID 11050930.
  7. ^ Ostermeier, M (March 2007). "Beyond cataloging the Library of Babel". Chemistry & Biology. 14 (3): 237–8. doi:10.1016/j.chembiol.2007.03.002. PMID 17379136.
  8. ^ "Theory of Nothing". Hpcoders.com.au. May 29, 2011. Retrieved May 10, 2018.
  9. ^ Bloch, William Goldbloom (2008). The Unimaginable Mathematics of Borges' Library of Babel. Oxford University Press.
  10. ^ "William Goldbloom Bloch's home page". Faculty.wheatoncollege.edu. Retrieved May 10, 2018.
  11. ^ Sturgeon, Johnathon (2015-04-23). "Brooklyn Author Recreates Borges' Library of Babel as Infinite Website". Flavorwire. Retrieved 2020-11-22.
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