Information Science as an Interscience

Rethinking Science, Method and Practice

Fanie de Beer

• Publisher: Chandos Publishing
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780081001400
• eBook ISBN: 9780081001837
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Library & Information Science
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Science is first and foremost an intellectual activity, an activity of thought. Therefore, how do we, as information scientists, respond intellectually to what is happening in the world of information and knowledge development, given the context of new sociocultural and knowledge landscapes? Information Science as an Interscience poses many challenges both to information science, philosophy and to information practice, and only when information science is understood as an interscience that operates in a multifaceted way, will it be able to comply with these challenges. In the fulfilment of this task it needs to be accompanied by a philosophical approach that will take it beyond the merely critical and linear approach to scientific work. For this reason a critical philosophical approach is proposed that will be characterised by multiple styles of thinking and organised by a compositional inspiration. This initiative is carried by the conviction that information science will hereby be enabled to make contributions to significant knowledge inventions that may bring about a better world. Chapters focus on the rethinking of human thinking, our unique ability that enables us to cope with the world in which we live, in terms of the unique science with which we are involved. Subsequent chapters explore different approaches to the establishment of a new scientific spirit, the demands these developments pose for human thinking, for questions of method and the implications for information science regarding its proposed functioning as a nomad science in the context of information practice and information work. Final chapters highlight the proposed responsibility of focusing on information and inventiveness and new styles of information and knowledge work.- focuses on rethinking information science to achieve a constructive scientific approach- provides an alternative methodological approach in the study of information science- shows how a change in scientific approach will have vast implications for the understanding and dissemination of knowledge- presents the implications of a new approach for knowledge workers, and the dynamics of their work- explores the future of thinking about science, knowledge and its nature and the ethical implications

1

An acritical philosophy of information

The project of an acritical philosophy of information is nothing but a defence of the necessity for the philosophical element in our cognitive, epistemic and informational endeavours, and simultaneously a manner of refusing the formalist, criticist or ideological marginalisation of the philosophical. This underlines the fact that there are many things that the disciplinary discourses do not or cannot know, not even when these discourses accumulate into a huge pile of knowledges.

This project poses many challenges to both information science and philosophy. Only when information science is understood as an interscience that operates in a multi-faceted and interconceptual and even interdiscursive way, as it is suggested here, will it be able to comply with the challenges. In the fulfilment of this task it needs to be accompanied by a philosophical approach that will take it beyond the mere critical and linear approach to scientific work.

For this reason an acritical philosophical approach is proposed that will be characterised by multiple, complex and inventive styles of thinking, organised by a compositional rather than an oppositional inspiration. This initiative is carried by the conviction that information science will hereby be enabled to make contributions to significant knowledge inventions that may bring about a better world.

Keywords

acritical thinking; complexity; compositional thinking; interconcepts; interscience; invention; knowledge ecology; multiple; wisdom

1.1 Introduction

Reflection on knowledge, information, the sciences, philosophy and literature always takes place in a biospheric, technological, economic and cultural environment, from which it draws its resources and on which it will produce its effects. This situation of intellectual activity in a complex and multi-layered environment can be referred to as knowledge ecology. This term refers to the network of relations linking human activity to a natural environment that both constrains it and is altered by it, and by which specific activities such as intellectual interventions or interferences take place in a dynamic, situational relation to socio-cultural contexts.

The production and forms of knowledge or scientific developments and the character and role of cognitive activity have neither existence nor meaning outside their relation to this techno-economico-cultural environment. This contextualisation is itself a form of knowledge, designated in different sites and situations by terms such as ecology, context theory, cybernetic holism, complex adaptive systems or actor-network theory. The project of an acritical philosophy of information is nothing but a defence of the necessity for ‘the philosophical’ in our cognitive, epistemic and informational endeavours, and simultaneously a manner of refusing the aestheticist, formalist or ideological marginalisation of the philosophical. This underlines the fact that there are many things that the disciplinary discourses do not or cannot know, not even when these discourses accumulate into one huge pile of knowledges.

A further perspective on these domains, sites and situations that lies beyond disciplinary exercises and that calls for another kind of investigation and reflection has been detected by the architect Bernard Tschumi (1998). He emphasises the importance of taking cognisance of the exterior of any discipline and its possible impact on the discipline. Martin Heidegger’s appeal for practising ‘adequate reflection’ links up with the view of Tschumi that there is something outside the generally accepted status of scientific endeavours. Heidegger (1977) refers to this reflection as the courage to turn the truth of our own presuppositions and the realm of our own goals into the things that most deserve to be questioned. Presuppositions, assumptions, prejudices and personal preferences play an immensely important role in what will eventually be considered to be scientific knowledge. Paul Ricœur (1991: 465) emphasises something similar in relation to language and poetry: ‘My philosophical project is to show how human language is inventive despite the objective limits and codes which govern it, to reveal the diversity and potentiality of language which the erosion of everyday, conditioned by technocratic and political [and scientific and professional] interests, never ceases to obscure.’ He sketches the responsibility of the philosopher as follows: ‘to preserve the varieties of the uses of language and the polarities between these different kinds of language, ranging from science through political and practical language and ordinary language, let us say poetry. And ordinary language mediating between poetry, on one hand, and scientific language, on the other hand’ (Ricœur, 1991: 448). Here the emphasis is on the dimensions of language that lie outside the disciplinary languages but which most certainly affect these languages.

Hans-Georg Gadamer, using statistics as an example, shows how the hermeneutical dimension encompasses the entire procedure of science. He points out that science always operates in definite conditions of methodological abstraction, and that the successes of modern sciences rest on the fact that other possibilities for questioning are concealed by this abstraction. In the process, truth becomes distorted and even obfuscated. Other facts will come to the fore if other questions are asked, questions he considers to be hermeneutic questions. Other questions might generate other meanings of the facts and other consequences. Here he invites the decisive function of fantasy or imagination to elaborate and connect facts, meanings and consequences (Gadamer, 1976: 11–13).

It should be clear from these few remarks that not only is the philosophical always with us but that there exists a central and fundamentally important place for it. But ‘the philosophical’, or philosophy, in what sense? There are so many different approaches.

1.2 Philosophy as an act of thinking

Philosophy and more specifically ‘the philosophical’ as a human characteristic or even disposition (and not philosophical schools) is about human thinking and how human thinking finds expression and fulfils an orientation function in many situations. Thinking remains very probably the most special capacity humans possess – all humans. Thinking, in as far as it is a noetic endeavour, teaches us the very art of living (Morin, 2004: 151–9; also see Morin’s studies on Ideas, 1991). Morin (1991: 12) writes: ‘Our most profound lack is the lack of wisdom.’ We need to revisit the idea of wisdom we inherited from the thought of antiquity but have lost in modern times.

‘The work of thinking well’ Pascal raised includes reflection: self-examination, self-critique that struggles constantly against internal illusions and lying to oneself, as well as the questioning of assumptions, prejudices and personal preferences. At the same time it entails the avoidance of unilateral ideas, mutilated conceptions and views regarding important matters, and the search to conceive of human complexity. The main challenge posed to our unique capacity to think is, then, think well, since this is our highest moral principle!

As such, philosophy is the human effort to delve deep, as deeply as possible, into the spiritual and mental activities of humans in all situations, not only in matters of life but also in matters of science and knowledge, matters of human creativity and inventiveness and human faults, failure and despair. All these activities inspire and motivate humans to act. Never are authentic philosophical investigations, although sometimes very critical, meant to be destructive. They support humans and they support and guide human endeavours such as science, culture and practices.

Philosophy does not take anything for granted. It questions everything in a search for truth and truthfulness. Humans reflect on their lives, their goals, their convictions, their beliefs. Serious reflection does not hesitate to delve deep into the origins and foundations that direct and guide these issues. Humans articulate, that is they put into words what they discover in these processes. In short, they try to give meaning to what they discover. This meaning-giving activity is called conceptualisation. Working with concepts, analysing concepts, organising and reorganising concepts comprise the work or activity of the philosopher or of the philosophical in us.

Philosophy does this in a structured and focused way. Deleuze and Guattari (1994) can help us greatly in this regard. I will briefly return to them at a later stage. No science, no writing, no thinking can happen without concepts. But concepts are relational, they relate all the time to domains other than the domains of their immediate activity. Concepts relate and connect the history of thought, history of science and history of human life. As such, when it is true to its nature, philosophy is much more of a compositional than an oppositional activity (Stiegler, 2003). Its critical function is a secondary and not an original function. It starts with and emerges out of a sense of wonder rather than an enthusiasm for critique and criticism. For Michel Serres, as he expressed it in an interview with Bruno Latour, knowledge has two modes: ‘The concern with verification and the burdens it requires, but also risk taking, the production of newness, the multiplicity of found objects – in short, inventiveness. It is better to avoid diminishing the second aspect in favour of the first. Begin with one, continue with the other’ (Serres, 1995: 126). This takes us beyond mere criticism.

The project of an acritical philosophy is inspired by Bruno Latour’s essay on the philosophy of Michel Serres in which he distinguishes between a ‘critique’ tradition of philosophy and an acritical philosophy approach while characterising Serres’ philosophy as acritical: ‘The Enlightenment Without the Critique: A Word on Michel Serres’ Philosophy’ (Latour, 1987). This should be read together with the very enlightening section on ‘The End of Criticism’ in the conversations of Serres (1995) with Latour. Being fascinated by Serres’ philosophy anyhow, especially in view of his focus on information and knowledge networks and interdisciplinarity, the philosophy of information, which provides an excellent focus for information science as interscience, and furthermore frustrated by philosophies, philosophical systems and the general attitude of the ‘critique’ tradition that drives them, this acritical disposition and what it entails becomes a tempting project. And for this reason, it also focuses on ‘the philosophical’ as a fundamental human dispositional entity, instead of ‘philosophies’ and their ideological obsession with critique and the absolutisation of criticism. Chapter 9 deals with this in much more detail, although with a different focus and context in mind, with the excellent differentiation between the two modes of philosophising as made explicit by Latour and the usefulness of the acritical approach not only as a characterisation of Serres’ philosophy, but also as a philosophical approach generally detectable in the work of various other philosophers and as an exceptionally suitable approach for information science.

In this way philosophy can contribute immensely to the inventive endeavours of the sciences, especially when it is embraced for what it is worth and if philosophy itself lives up to its true expectations.

1.3 Philosophy and science

Does this general understanding of philosophical activity relate to something such as a scientific discipline, for example information science? As it delves into the depths of human reality it delves equally deeply into the depths of scientific reality. The intriguing phenomenon of paradigms demonstrates exactly how deeply scientific reality is seated and anchored in human reality (see Morin, 1983). We must never forget that the reality of science is part of human reality. And as such it is and will always be affected by the depths of this reality. Beliefs, convictions, assumptions and prejudices that colour our very lives cover the endeavours we are involved in. Science undeniably forms one of these endeavours.

The surroundings of science, the milieu in which scientific work proceeds, are equally important. For this reason the ecology of science and of scientific knowledge is similarly of central importance (see Kuhlen, 2004). Ideological, political, socio-cultural and religious issues play a significant role in the construction of the sciences. Isabelle Stengers (2000) suggests, for example, that we might interpret the tension between scientific objectivity and belief as a necessary part of science, central to the practices invented and reinvented by scientists. This takes us far beyond the ‘critique’ tradition, the disciplinary tradition, in the direction of the interdisciplinary and the interscientific.

The terminology of science, its vocabulary and its language require philosophical and conceptual accompaniment. Diverse dimensions of language fall outside the disciplinary discourses but exercise considerable influence on the discourses of science. The scientist must be careful not to take possession and claim sole proprietorship of terminology and concepts derived from the history of thought as if they are creations of science. This is highlighted in the work by Sokal and Bricmont (1998) on the use and abuse of concepts and the debate between Debray and Bricmont (2003) on the same theme. Human rationality in all its forms and in all its ambiguities forms the basis of the debate. Another example is the work of Isabelle Stengers (1997). She makes a case for the concept of complexity that transcends the conventional boundaries of scientific discourse, of the ‘critique’ tradition, and that clearly exposes the risks of scientific thinking.

1.4 Philosophy and information science

The uniqueness of information science does not exempt it from the above remarks. In fact it reinforces the above in relation to the informational context and milieu and therefore calls for a unique kind of philosophical approach and input. If information science is understood as an interscience (see Chapter 2), then the suggestions by Gernot Wersig (1992, 1993) about the role of interconcepts makes a good deal of sense and needs to be caref...

Table of contents

• Cover image
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Copyright
• About the author
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. An acritical philosophy of information
• 2. Towards the idea of information science as an interscience
• 3. Information science in a post-scientific position: Part 1: The limitations of science and information science
• 4. Information science in a post-scientific position: Part 2: The conditions for an alternative
• 5. Method/beyond-method: the demands, challenges and excitements of scholarly information work
• 6. Methodology and noology: Amazing prospects for library and information science
• 7. Let the new knowledge come: the atlas of knowledges
• 8. The contemporary knowledge worker (the troubadour of knowledge): comprehensive and exciting challenges
• 9. A proposed philosophico-ethical approach towards the electronic information era
• Index