“How didst thou come beneath the murky darkness?”: sense-making in light of the ancient Greeks and in the spirit of Hegel

PurposeThis piece explores the philosophical origins of sense-making as defined in Brenda Dervin’s methodology.Design/methodology/approachThis conceptual paper locates the origins of sense-making's rich ontological, epistemological and etymological heritage to the Classical Greece and the Pre-Socratic period. The Greek origins of sense-making‘s philosophical undercurrents surface again in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit before the idea is picked up again in twentieth century philosophy and library science.FindingsThis is a conceptual paper and no empirical findings are presented.Originality/valueThis paper makes an original contribution to the study of information seeking and to sense making theory and methodology.