Re: Foundations of Information Science

Dear Birger,

your question is (partly) an ontological question! It is indeed
necessary to talk about terms (semantic) and about things (ontology).
The problem with the information concept is that if you apply this
concept to non-human domain, you have to set many " " in case you use
a human terminology. But this is not just a problem of: let us just
say: we use the concept like this or that. If we try to think about
'unity of science" or about a "unified theory of information science"
then is this a question of semantics and - ontology. As far as I can
see the problem of the concept of information from a subjective and
objective point of view has been treated very convincingly by Carl
Friedrich von Weizs�cker. I will try to summarize his view in a
posting soon.
Kind regards,
Rafael

Date: Tue, 16 Dec 1997 11:19:28 +0100 (MET)
Reply-to: fis@listas.unizar.es
From: Hj�rland Birger <BH@db.dk>
To: Multiple recipients of list <fis@listas.unizar.es>
Subject: Foundations of Information Science

Dear Colleges,
the current discussion between Soren and Rafael is interesting, but
seems for me more an discussion of ontology than information science.
For me a basic question is: Is information something human or something
physical. Or rather: because a definition is not true or false but more
or less purposefull, I would like to ask: what are the consequences for
a science of information to define "information" in one way or the
other. What are the dilemmaes in defining the concept of information for
a information science?

My own answer so far: What we call information science (a lot of the
journal called information science) developed from documentation and are
today related to "library and information science". The object of this
must be "documents" or "texts" in a very broad meaning. If we define
information i a physicalist way (like e.g. Dretske), then "information
science is not concerned with human communicative processes, and would
be extremely vague. Can you folle me so far?

kind regards,
Birger

Kind regards,

Birger Hj�rland

Head of Department, Ph.d.
Royal School of Library and Information Science
6 Birketinget
DK-2300 Copenhagen S, Denmark

Phone: +45 32 58 60 66
Fax: +45 32 84 02 01
e-mail: bh@db.dk
homepage: http://www.db.dk/nhs/bh/home_uk.htm
Received on Wed Dec 17 10:40:23 1997