 In classical philosophy “information” was a technical notion associated with a theory of knowledge and ontology that originated in Plato’s (427–347 BCE) theory of forms, developed in a number of his dialogues (Phaedo, Phaedrus, Symposium, Timaeus, Republic). Various imperfect individual horses in the physical world could be identified as horses, because they participated in the static atemporal and aspatial idea of “horseness” in the world of ideas or forms. When later authors like Cicero (106–43 BCE) and Augustine (354–430 CE) discussed Platonic concepts in Latin they used the terms informare and informatio as a translation for technical Greek terms like eidos (essence), idea (idea), typos (type), morphe (form) and prolepsis (representation). The root “form” still is recognizable in the word in-form-ation (Capurro &amp; Hjørland 2003). Plato’s theory of forms was an attempt to formulate a solution for various philosophical problems: the theory of forms mediates between a static (Parmenides, ca. 450 BCE) and a dynamic (Herakleitos, ca. 535–475 BCE) ontological conception of reality and it offers a model to the study of the theory of human knowledge. According to Theophrastus (371–287 BCE) the analogy of the wax tablet goes back to Democritos (ca. 460–380/370 BCE) (De Sensibus 50). In the Theaetetus (191c,d) Plato compares the function of our memory with a wax tablet in which our perceptions and thoughts are imprinted like a signet ring stamps impressions in wax. Note that the metaphor of imprinting symbols in wax is essentially spatial (extensive) and can not easily be reconciled with the aspatial interpretation of ideas supported by Plato.