The Selective Control Of Knowledge In Chinese Traditional Society

Literature organization and knowledge organization are important contents of library science study. Most previous studies of literature organization form the literature carrier order as the goal and rarely involve the issue of literature internal content control. The object of this paper is to discuss the performances and the mechanisms for literature organization for achieving the purpose of controlling the knowledge in traditional Chinese society. Throughout Chinese traditional society, rulers have attached great importance to knowledge and literature activities to constructing knowledge order, more important, to educate the members of society, in order to ensure the stability of the ruling order. Therefore, the ruling class often uses their own strengths to advocate the thought of Confucianism which can provide "legitimacy" ideas to support its power, and intervenes the constructing process of knowledge order under the guidance of such ideas, in order to regulate the rule of value judgment and behavior of the members of society. The process of the power intervening knowledge mainly represents in four aspects: the structure of the literature classification; the structure of the Chinese ancient encyclopedia; the choice of the content in ancient China imperial examination system; the choice of the literature by literary inquisition and banned books. These four forms of literature are restricted by Confucianism when constructed, and act as an effective learning and research tool for the ruling class. In addition, the widely spread and recognition of these mechanisms strengthen Confucianism and the power.The purpose of this study is to explain how knowledge and power influence and construct with each other by analyzing the performance of the selective control of knowledge in Chinese traditional society. and to further reveal the construction logic behind the Chinese ancient literature, namely, the "allowing-forbidden" mechanism, the important degree of sorting mechanism, the “Officials as Teachers” mechanism, and the talent selection mechanism of "path dependence", to construct literature order to consolidate thought order, and to maintain the ruling order.