Date: Fri 12 Nov 2004 - 12:44:45 CET
Dear Pedro,
If you wish to analyze knowledge as a complex phenomenon, it seems useful
first to distinguish between knowledgeable individuals and the communication
of knowledge. These are two different systems of reference. More generally,
it would be possible to span a three-dimensional system with on the one axis
agents and their aggregates (e.g., laboratories), on the second
communication and their aggregates (e.g., journals), and on a third axis
cognition and its aggregates. A journal is also an institution and thus, it
also has a value on the social axis, but lower than on the textual one. Each
event in science can be expected to have a value on these three dimensions.
For those who receive this email in html, I add the following picture:
I dashed the axis for the cognition because these cannot directly be
observed, but one can specify relevant cognitions as hypotheses and then
relate them to relevant domains of texts and authors.
Hopefully, this is helpful in organizing our thoughts about the sciences as
socially, textually, and cognitively constructed systems.
With kind regards,
Loet
_____
Loet Leydesdorff
Amsterdam School of Communications Research (ASCoR)
Kloveniersburgwal 48, 1012 CX Amsterdam
Tel.: +31-20- 525 6598; fax: +31-20- 525 3681
<mailto:loet@leydesdorff.net> loet@leydesdorff.net ;
<http://www.leydesdorff.net/> http://www.leydesdorff.net/
<http://www.upublish.com/books/leydesdorff-sci.htm> The Challenge of
Scientometrics ; <http://www.upublish.com/books/leydesdorff.htm> The
Self-Organization of the Knowledge-Based Society
