Saturday, January 15, 2005

is there a lack of philosophical grounding in information science/studies ?

The following few paragraphs where prompted from a discussion with a colleague of mine about the philosophical link to/from information science.

Well, I think that any practical disciplines or field of study is definitely informed by some philosophical discourse, even when the discipline itself does not acknowledge it, or does not seem to see it. In this sense, the field of Information Science(s)/Studies seems to lack an acknowledged philosophical grounding, even thought there are some obvious links of philosophical discourse. Imagine, many books and articles regarding information science do not emphasize the philosophical links (or if they do, they do so scantly, superficially and individualistically), or just start with practical issues, as if the phenomena treated by information science become part of the discourse just like that? Part of the phenomena treated by a discipline or field of study do emerge from practical problem, however, we should not neglect the phenomena that could arise from the philosophical discourse. The philosophical link might not be an obvious one, or it might not seem as a valuable enterprise worth research, thus, what would be the point in pursuing such a link for scholarly work. However, there could as well be very beneficial links.

Understanding the philosophical fundamentals/groundings that have informed and are informing information science/studies (implicitly or explicitly) might lead to a better understanding of the common elements that give rise (or are constitutive elements) to the phenomena treated by information science, thus, might provide us with a more coherent framework to treat such phenomena... to be continued...
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