[Fis] THE FOURTH GREAT DOMAIN OF SCIENCE: INFORMATIONAL?

Fri May 15 13:33:26 CEST 2015

*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 
<http://moisesandre.com.br/FIS/debate/images/rosembloom-figure-2.1-domains-composing-disciplines.jpg>.  
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 
<http://moisesandre.com.br/FIS/debate/images/Rosenbloom-figure-2.9-relationships.jpg> 
relationships 
<http://moisesandre.com.br/FIS/debate/images/Rosenbloom-figure-2.2-domains-simple-relations.jpg> 
between domains that can be written by Metascience Expression Language 
<http://moisesandre.com.br/FIS/debate/images/Rosenbloom-table-2.1-ME-Language.jpg>. 
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 
<http://moisesandre.com.br/FIS/debate/images/Map-Pedro.jpg> in 
High-Resolution Map of Sciences (Bollen at all, 2009) 
<http://moisesandre.com.br/FIS/debate/images/Map-Bollen.jpg>

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. 
<https://books.google.com.br/books?id=xHlP8WqzizYC&lpg=PR9&ots=Mz3xtCt2nE&dq=Sorting%20things%20out%3A%20Classification%20and%20its%20consequences.%20&lr&hl=pt-BR&pg=PR9#v=onepage&q=Sorting%20things%20out:%20Classification%20and%20its%20consequences.&f=false>

ROSENBLOOM, Paul S. On computing: the fourth great scientific domain. 
MIT Press, 2012. 
<https://books.google.com.br/books?id=WGfxkn8OkwAC&lpg=PP1&dq=On%20computing%3A%20the%20fourth%20great%20scientific%20domain.%20google%20books&hl=pt-BR&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q=On%20computing:%20the%20fourth%20great%20scientific%20domain.%20google%20books&f=false>

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. 
<http://moisesandre.com.br/FIS/debate/articles/pedro-article.pdf>

BOLLEN, Johan et al. Clickstream data yields high-resolution maps of 
science. PLoS One, v. 4, n. 3, p. e4803, 2009. 
<http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0004803>

*/
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.ischool.berkeley.edu/%7Ebuckland/otlet.html>
http://people.lis.illinois.edu/~wrayward/otlet/otletpage.htm 
<http://people.lis.illinois.edu/%7Ewrayward/otlet/otletpage.htm>

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