Conclusion
Naur’s pessimism about documentation is valid but narrower than often supposed.
What Naur Got Right
It applies specifically to technical documentation that describes artifacts while presupposing the theory needed to understand them.
Such documentation tells you WHAT and HOW but not WHY and WHEN. It serves those who already have the theory as a reminder. It fails those who need to acquire the theory as education.
What Naur Didn’t Foresee
Theory-focused documentation—the kind that has successfully transmitted philosophical, mathematical, and scientific understanding across generations—is not subject to the same critique.
Human-AI collaboration creates novel conditions that make theory transmission more likely:
- Forced articulation — The interlocutor makes implicit knowledge explicit
- Preserved dialogue — Reasoning is captured, not just conclusions
- Lower-friction iteration — Documentation can evolve with understanding
These don’t “solve” the documentation problem. They improve the odds.
The Challenge Remains
The challenge Naur identified remains: theory is built in minds, and documentation is at best material for theory reconstruction, not theory itself.
But with appropriate practices, we can create documentation that better supports this reconstruction—documentation that is theory-resilient in ways Naur could not have anticipated, even if it does not achieve the impossible goal of capturing theory completely.
The Light Through the Document
The document is not the theory. It is a medium through which light passes—imperfectly, with loss, but sufficiently for illumination on the other side.
Our goal is not to trap light in paper but to make the paper translucent enough that light can pass through.
This document is living. It evolves with our practice.