Dear Moisés André, Ken, Pedro, and FIS-colleagues, I think the proper position is not to extend the existing domains of science because the information is a phenomenon which exists in all already established domains of science. To illustrate this idea, let’s imagine the attempt to classify the sciences for real objects which we can see in daylight form light point of view. We will receive many different results but not the proper one which is that we have two absolutely different science domains : light and darkness. This cause very serious methodological problem: what is information and how it exists in the nature. Friendly regards Krassimir
From: Pedro C. Marijuan Sent: Friday, May 15, 2015 2:33 PM To: 'fis' Subject: [Fis] THE FOURTH GREAT DOMAIN OF SCIENCE: INFORMATIONAL? A Dialog on the Informational as the 4th Great Domain of Science Moisés André Nisenbaum & Ken Herold PART 1: Informational as the 4th Great Domain of Science (Moisés André Nisenbaum) To classify is human (BOWKER & STAR 2000). The organization of scientific knowledge is concern of scientists long ago. It started as a matter of librarianship and has evolved over time using various tools like enumerative classification, faceted classification, universal classification, controlled vocabulary, thesaurus, ontologies, Semantic Web. But how Information Science should organize scientific knowledge taking into account the dynamic behavior of disciplines and multi, inter and trans-disciplinary science of the twenty-first century (Information Society)? Rosenbloom (2012) proposed a model in which four great Scientific Domains - Physical (P) Life (L), social (S) and Computing (C) - can be combined to form any discipline. The first three (P, L and S) are "well known" domains and he proposes that the 4th is Computing. The small number of domains (compared with 10 of DDC and UDC) is offset by dynamic relationships between domains that can be written by Metascience Expression Language. Although the prerequisites of a Great Scientific Domain has been well developed, Rosenbloom does not explain why they are in number of four or why these specific four domains. NAVARRO, MORAL and Marijuan (2013) propose that the 4th Great Scientific Domain is the Informational (I) instead of Computing. However, the biggest proposal is that the Information Science needs to be rethought to support theoretically and methodologically this 4th Great Scientific Domain. At the end of the article, the authors propose the insertion of the four Great Scientific Domains in High-Resolution Map of Sciences (Bollen at all, 2009) The problem is that all this is still in its "philosophical field" and miss a more pragmatic approach. When I observed this map, I just thought about how to measure these four domains and, even without even knowing exactly how to do this, I asked Bollen the raw data of his research. My initial idea was to identify every scientific discipline by a mathematical entity, for example a digital 4x4 matrix representing quantitatively the four Great Scientific Domain components and their relationships. The problem how to establish the criteria (bibliometric) that would define the matrix elements. Once created, we can check if the matrices really come together as expected. Best, Moisés References: BOWKER, Geoffrey C.; STAR, Susan Leigh. Sorting things out: Classification and its consequences. MIT press, 2000. ROSENBLOOM, Paul S. On computing: the fourth great scientific domain. MIT Press, 2012. NAVARRO, Jorge; MORAL, Raquel del; MARIJUÁN, Pedro C.. The uprising of informational: towards a new way of thinking Information Science. Presented at 1st International Conference in China on the Philosophy of Information, Xi’an, China, 18 October 2013. BOLLEN, Johan et al. Clickstream data yields high-resolution maps of science. PLoS One, v. 4, n. 3, p. e4803, 2009. PART 2: Comments from Ken Herold I appear to be a fringe observer of the history of information science from within my professional (since 1984) domain of librarianship and information studies. [1] For a broader example, Chaim Zins conducted a multi-year study of information science internationally from 2003-2005. [2] My own edited works [3] in 2004 and 2015 reprise various works going back to Machlup from 1962 [4]. I am somewhat skeptical of the suggestion that recombining knowledge is new or previously critically not examined. The international documentation movement, predecessor to information science, has been shown by Buckland and Rayward [5] among others to be exactly the rich response to the global growth of knowledge 100 years ago. Bioinformatics should and does clarify and extend our perspectives, but I hesitate to accept its equivalence with von Neumann architecture or cultural heritage. Nevertheless, all the right questions are being asked in my opinion. Rosenbloom's interminable references to Wikipedia are off-putting, I am afraid. Also, he takes a rather narrow historical view of information science in chapter 1. Again, the trend seems correct to me as to the importance of computing. I just do not place as much value on an ad hoc relational approach with few links to the massive peer-reviewed literature available. I suppose I could best serve as the devil's advocate in this round? Sincerely, Ken References: [1] https://www.asist.org/?s=history+of+information+science http://www.uff.br/ppgci/editais/historyofis.pdf [2] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/asi.20505/abstract [3] https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/handle/2142/1034 http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/library_trends/toc/lib.63.3.html [4] https://archive.org/details/productiondistri00mach http://philpapers.org/rec/MACTSO-9 [5] http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~buckland/otlet.html http://people.lis.illinois.edu/~wrayward/otlet/otletpage.htm ------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ Fis mailing list Fis@listas.unizar.es http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
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