[Fis] Fis Digest, Vol 10, Issue 11

Pedro C. Marijuan pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es
Thu Jan 22 16:58:55 CET 2015


Dear Moises, Guy, Stan---and colleagues,

I would not agree with the "silo" interpretation of scientific domains, 
at least that's not the way Rosenbloom and many others (myself included) 
understand them. See the reference mentioned below by Moises and my own 
(Scientomics: An emergent perspective in knowledge organization. Pedro 
C. Marijuán, Raquel del Moral and Jorge Navarro. /Knowledge 
organization/ 2012, 39 (3), 153-164.) About the subsumption hierarchy 
that Stan introduces, in what extent is it a relevant trait? 
Compositionally, the main objects of those big sciences conform to it, 
but the disciplines themselves? I doubt. Besides, along that view a new 
form of reductionism creeps in: "everything from bit". Hierarchy between 
domains? Just a look at the background map of the sciences in the figure 
below, empirically obtained from citations, shows an amazing dispersion 
and inter-penetration of disciplines between the four Great Domains. 
There appear hundreds of disciplines in the figure but the overall 
tallying may escalate to several thousands (between 5,000 and 10,000 
depending on the criteria).

An interesting question: Why do we create such an astonishing  number of 
disciplines? Methodologically it is unclear that the creation, growth 
and stagnation of disciplines respond to single logic criteria. Rather, 
we have suggested a massive "social" communication between disciplines 
that conduces to "recombination phenomena" of knowledge bodies among 
them. For instance, influential bodies such as Euclidian geometry, 
Newtonian mechanics, differential equations, genetics, and so on (and a 
multitude of other minor modules), would have generated the history of 
sciences, not only “developmentally” inside their own fields, but even 
more “combinatorially”, propelling the multidisciplinary evolution and 
cross-fertilization among scientific disciplines.

In the main track of the current discussion (It was nice hearing from 
Koichiro!) we are establishing the boundaries or interfaces between the 
nuclear information science and thermodynamics, but the relationship 
with physics is far more complex, as we must establish the interfaces 
with quantum information, physics of self-organization and emergence, 
and with cosmological information too. It is impossible to mix together 
all these discussions (as Terry remarked a few days ago concerning the 
relationships with quantum information). In the extent  to which  some 
of these particular discussions become particularly fertile, new fields 
will emerge within the overlap of physics and information domains.

Some comments in Rosenbloom's book on the relationship between 
information and computing are quite interesting for this discussion and 
for interlocking with the main discussion track... but this message is 
becoming too long.

All the best--Pedro


Moisés André Nisenbaum wrote:
> Hi Guy.
> It seams that you sent your message only to me :-)
> I am forwarding now to FIS
> By the way, "Domain Analisys" as in Knowledge Organization (Hjørland, 
> Birger. "Domain analysis in information science: eleven 
> approaches–traditional as well as innovative." Journal of 
> documentation 58.4 (2002): 422-462.) is also a good approach.
> Best
> Moises
>
>
> 2015-01-21 18:24 GMT-02:00 Guy A Hoelzer <hoelzer at unr.edu 
> <mailto:hoelzer at unr.edu>>:
>
>     Hi All,
>
>     “Domain” implies a kind of silo to me.  Information science is
>     emerging with intensive interaction among people in a relatively
>     small community of colleagues, which is indeed silo-like even
>     though we generally see it as a deep layer of scientific inquiry
>     that can unite traditional domains.  In other words, at least some
>     of us would like to see information science ultimately achieve
>     recognition as an higher order scientific enterprise within which
>     (all?) scientific domains are embedded.  This hierarchical view is
>     nicely captured with Stan’s subsumptive hierarchy scheme:
>
>     {information science {physics {chemistry {biology {social
>     sciences}}}}}
>
>     Of course, this view also suggests that the scientific disciplines
>     within information science are not, or should not be, domains,
>     either.  As an evolutionary biologist myself, that is exactly the
>     way I think about it.  I would not say that biology exists outside
>     of chemistry or physics, and I see the social sciences as
>     specialized sub-disciplines of biology.  The ‘domains of science’
>     illustration reveals a degree of isolation between the traditional
>     disciplines, but I think those boundaries are breaking down over
>     time and information science could help to speed up the
>     integration among disciplines.  I, for one, think that would
>     represent scientific progress.
>
>     Cheers,
>
>     Guy
>
>     Guy Hoelzer, Associate Professor
>     Department of Biology
>     University of Nevada Reno
>
>     Phone:  775-784-4860 <tel:775-784-4860>
>     Fax:  775-784-1302 <tel:775-784-1302>
>     hoelzer at unr.edu <mailto:hoelzer at unr.edu>
>
>>     On Jan 21, 2015, at 6:56 AM, Moisés André Nisenbaum
>>     <moises.nisenbaum at ifrj.edu.br
>>     <mailto:moises.nisenbaum at ifrj.edu.br>> wrote:
>>
>>     Pedro, this image is strongly related to my research.
>>     My graduation and master degree was in Physics. But now I am in
>>     IS world through PhD program of IBICT/UFRJ in Brazil.
>>     As you, Jorge and Raquel said (Navarro, Moral, Marijuan, 2013),
>>     IS is about to become one of four great scientific domains. Don't
>>     you think that one of the greatest reasons of it is the (big)
>>     interdisciplinar nature of IS? (Saracevic, 1995).
>>     Interdisciplinarity is in IS's "DNA" :-)
>>     I am investigating some aspects of interdisciplinarity between IS
>>     and Natural Sciences (Physics, Chemistry and Biology) (inspired
>>     by Capurros's work http://www.capurro.de/infoconcept.html).
>>     Some questions of this research are: 1) why (or how) a natural
>>     scientist enters in IS world? What are their motivations?; 2) how
>>     strong this interdisciplinarity is? (inspired by Loet's works on
>>     the theme - for example, Leydesdorff, Rafols (2011)); 4) How the
>>     physical concepts of information are present in IS articles.
>>     I believe that inside FIS I will find many answers to my
>>     questions. By observation of Scientific Communication and
>>     Bibliometrics and of course, if I have the opportunity, by
>>     interviewing the members of FIS :-)
>>     I can say that in only few weeks of FIS I already have learned a
>>     lot :-)
>>     Best,
>>     Moises.
>>
>>
>>     Navarro, J.; Moral, R; Marijuan, P; Uprising of the
>>     Informational: Towards a New Way of Thinking In Information
>>     Science. Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on
>>     Philosophy of Information, Xi'an (2013)
>>     Saracevic, Tefko. "Interdisciplinary nature of information
>>     science." Ciência da informação 24.1 (1995): 36-41.
>>     Leydesdorff, Loet, and Ismael Rafols. "Indicators of the
>>     interdisciplinarity of journals: Diversity, centrality, and
>>     citations." Journal of Informetrics 5.1 (2011): 87-100.
>>
>>
>>     2015-01-19 10:19 GMT-02:00 Pedro C. Marijuan
>>     <pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es <mailto:pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es>>:
>>
>>         Thanks Moises, here it is --in case the list server
>>         suppresses the image again, the dropbox link below contains
>>         the image too (at the end of the philoinfo paper, belonging
>>         to the Proceedings of the Xian Conference, 2013). best ---Pedro
>>
>>         https://www.dropbox.com/sh/wslnk41c3lquc55/AADpm_U6xuhm6jHK0esyN-29a?dl=0
>>
>>
>>
>>         *<clip_image002.jpg>*
>>
>>         *Figure 1. The Four Great Domains of Science*. The graphic
>>         shows the network of contemporary disciplines in the
>>         background (following Bollen /et al/., 2009); while the
>>         superimposed “four-leaf clover” represents the four great
>>         scientific domains: physical, biological, social, and
>>         informational.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>         Moisés André Nisenbaum wrote:
>>>         Hi, Pedro.
>>>         I didnt receive th image (Figure 1. The Four Great Domains
>>>         of Science)
>>>         Would you please send it again?
>>>
>>>         Thank you.
>>>
>>>         Moises
>>>
>>
>>
>>         -- 
>>         -------------------------------------------------
>>         Pedro C. Marijuán
>>         Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group
>>         Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud
>>         Centro de Investigación Biomédica de Aragón (CIBA)
>>         Avda. San Juan Bosco, 13, planta X
>>         50009 Zaragoza, Spain
>>         Tfno. +34 976 71 3526 <tel:%2B34%20976%2071%203526> (& 6818)
>>         pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es <mailto:pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es>
>>         http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/
>>         -------------------------------------------------
>>                 
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>     -- 
>>     Moisés André Nisenbaum
>>     Doutorando IBICT/UFRJ. Professor. Msc.
>>     Instituto Federal do Rio de Janeiro - IFRJ
>>     Campus Maracanã
>>     moises.nisenbaum at ifrj.edu.br <mailto:moises.nisenbaum at ifrj.edu.br>
>>     _______________________________________________
>>     Fis mailing list
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>>     http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
>
>
>
>
> -- 
> Moisés André Nisenbaum
> Doutorando IBICT/UFRJ. Professor. Msc.
> Instituto Federal do Rio de Janeiro - IFRJ
> Campus Maracanã
> moises.nisenbaum at ifrj.edu.br <mailto:moises.nisenbaum at ifrj.edu.br>


-- 
-------------------------------------------------
Pedro C. Marijuán
Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group
Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud
Centro de Investigación Biomédica de Aragón (CIBA)
Avda. San Juan Bosco, 13, planta X
50009 Zaragoza, Spain
Tfno. +34 976 71 3526 (& 6818)
pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es
http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/
-------------------------------------------------

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