Source (information)

See also: Source

A source or information source indicates the origin of a Information.

Oral and written sources

The trades of the Research, the Information and the Communication call upon various sources to obtain information or to check it. The oral sources and the written sources are generally distinguished.

  • the oral sources are the remarks made by the witnesses of an event, the specialists in a subject or the personalities concerned with information.

  • the written sources consist of original texts (handwritten, correspondence, account-returned, etc), of official documents and works (Autobiographie S, memory S of research, exposed scientific, etc), said Référence, which make it possible to validate the authenticity of information. These texts, called “bibliographical sources”, are generally quoted notes some by the author or the journalist. One then speaks “to quote his sources”.

Categories of sources

According to its nature, a written source can belong to three categories:

  • that of the primary sources, which are first hand documents
  • that of the secondary sources, which are the work of synthesis based on primary sources
  • and that of the tertiary sources, which are a selection and a compilation of primary and secondary sources.

Quality of the sources: seek and interpretation

The quality of the sources is important: their origin can be debatable and the manner of interpreting them can lead to Contresens or Manipulation S.

In particular, the oldest texts, like the Bible or the mythological accounts, are often prone to polemic for questions of translation, method and interpretation: it was seen, about the passages Cosmologique S of the First Will, with the Controverse ptolemeo-copernician. One can today see it in the debates on the Théories of the evolution which can require to seek the sources of the religious texts, in particular of the Livre of the Genesis.

The research of the sources of the crowned Textes is the subject of the Exégèse , while the interpretation of these sources is the subject of the Herméneutique . An interpretation of these sources exclusively in a literal Sens can lead to serious errors of interpretation, because these texts generally have hidden significances. The traditional methods of interpretation distinguish Four directions from the Writing.

For example, the following extract of the Genesis " Be fertile, multiply, fill the ground and subject it, and dominate over fish from there sea, the birds of the sky and any animal which is driven on the ground. " () can lead to mistakes in interpretation (see the interpretation that probably made Descartes of it).

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