RE: [Fis] Consilience: Writing on the Clouds

Dear John, Pedro, and colleagues,

I agree with John that citations are a mixed bag because citation is a
complex indicator. In some cases it provides mainly a link between authors
(colleagues, competitors, etc.) and in other cases it provides a relation
between two texts without the authors necessarily knowing each other. One
can cross-table citing/cited texts and citing and cited authors and then
distinguish four types of citation with four respective selection
environments. [See my paper with Olga Amsterdamska, "Dimensions of Citation
Analysis," Science, Technology and Human Values 15 (1990) 305-335; at
http://www.leydesdorff.net/sthv90/ ]

At the higher level of aggregation of inter-journal relations, however,
specific selection mechanisms can be expected to prevail in the
distributional patterns. The networks among the journals provide us with a
kind of baseline which is beyond control for individual authors. This
structure is reproduced at the level of the journal system with remarkable
stability, but it also exhibits change in the longer run. One can consider
this as a prime example of the self-organization of communication at the
supra-individual level. The codes of the communication in the discourse at
the journal level guide the underlying selection processes by individual
agents and contributors.

A special issue about "Theories of Citation" was published by the journal
Scientometrics in 1998, Vol. 43, no. 1.

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
loet@leydesdorff.net ; http://www.leydesdorff.net/

> -----Original Message-----
> From: fis-bounces@listas.unizar.es
> [mailto:fis-bounces@listas.unizar.es] On Behalf Of John Holgate
> Sent: Thursday, November 25, 2004 7:15 AM
> To: Pedro C. Marijuán; fis-listas.unizar.es
> Subject: RE: [Fis] Consilience: Writing on the Clouds
>
>
> Dear Pedro,
>
> <Could the "cloud" metaphor of citation networks be useful as
> an overall contemplation of science?>
>
> Without clouding the issue and without wishing to detract
> from Loet's impressive work, a colleague once described the
> practice of scientific citation as 'a sophisticated network
> of name droppers' (a bit like visitors to the Borgesian
> Library). And I fear you may be giving too much away to the
> 'particulate heresy' in the notion of 'pieces of knowledge'
> which can be 'managed'.
>
> But I do find it helpful to think of 'consilience' not as a
> representational entity but as a direction - vertical (within
> a discipline), horizontal (across disciplines) immanent
> (operating within a particular theory) or transcendent
> (having general validity).
>
> The major discoveries in science have occurred less as a
> result of geniuses 'jumping together' than an individual
> 'jumping to a conclusion' (spotting a similarity that makes a
> difference) - then bunji jumping with it off a wall of
> accepted inductive practise while hanging perilously over the
> scientific and lay communities. Archimedes' bath, Newton's
> putative apple, Descartes' crawling flies, Bohm's televised
> pair of goldfish, Nash's sophomores in a bar etc exemplify
> episodes of vertical consilience. Whereas Crick and Watson's
> double helix was possibly more the result of that horizontal
> cross-disciplinary fertilisation of ideas which characterises
> contemporary discoveries.
>
> One criticism of the Wilsonian consilience has been that (in
> the wake of the quasi-mystical pronouncements of European
> postmodernism) it would lead us back to the mechanistic
> rationality and certainties of the Enlightenment, his 'lawful
> material world'. This of course mirrors and supports the
> reductio-fundamentalism of contemporary politics and religion
> (our global colony of ants). Wilson tries to recoil against
> the tenses and tensions of our post-quantum world (Koichiro's
> 'present progressive' and 'present perfect) and would return
> us to the certainty of nouns and adjectives (those good ole
> boys, the -ences, -ities and -isms of received wisdom).
>
> <In this metaphor, analytical philosophy has been devoted to
> "within cloud"
> <processes and laws (inner conceptual structure), while
> continental <philosophy has approached (often ideologically)
> to the winds and currents <and other general climatic
> conditions. In info science, around the term <consilience,
> who knows whether we might put together a new vision
> <highlighting the ascend/descend crucial movements.
>
> Yes, IMO the Anglosaxon analytical philosophers (particularly
> Dretske et al) got lost in a cloud trying to graft Shannonist
> frequency onto the concept of 'natural information'
> (informationL) and by hanging on to 'belief' (and cognition
> as 'justified true belief'). Floridi's universe of alethic
> data, his constructivist 'infosphere', although highly
> original, is just another of our 'vertical theories' of
> information - one more 'it' to file with our 'bits'. When it
> comes to contemporary continental thinkers about the concept
> of information (except Rafael and Luciano) I have detected
> some wind but not much of a current. Hopefully this is just
> the lull before the storm which may unleash a new vision.
>
> What if were to fire those two overpaid CEO's Belief and
> Consciousness (along with their office boy Self) and allow
> Experience to run the show for a while?
>
> Here's hoping the real world FIS Conference gets off the
> ground next year.
> Have you considered Biarritz?
>
> John H
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: fis-bounces@listas.unizar.es
> [mailto:fis-bounces@listas.unizar.es]On Behalf Of "Pedro C. Marijuán"
> Sent: Wednesday, 24 November 2004 23:49
> To: fis-listas.unizar.es
> Subject: [Fis] Consilience: Writing on the Clouds
>
>
> Dear colleagues,
>
> Could the "cloud" metaphor of citation networks be useful as
> an overall contemplation of science? Let me try.
>
> Along that metaphor, we earthbound scientists find ourselves
> "writing on the clouds". It is not so easy getting access to
> that celestial quasi-Platonic realm, rather it becomes a hard
> work which involves crafting pieces of theoretical and
> experimental stuff into a consistent whole, maybe in
> cooperation with other parties (or very luckily, just
> "copy-paste"!), and then it has to pass the scrutiny of a
> publishing "jury", and if accepted it will appear somewhere,
> in one publishing fragment or chunk of those clouds, with the
> hope that future links of new arrivals to the cloud will
> strengthen it... otherwise it will evaporate into oblivion,
> though fortunately a written record grants some hope of
> long-lasting permanence.
>
> In this "ascension" of our individual piece of knowledge up
> to one of these clouds in the skies, quite many
> social-community aspects are involved --aren't they?
>
> Almost symmetrically, we might try to observe the "descend"
> of our piece of knowledge into the realms of social action.
> Perhaps a far bigger assembly of social-community processes
> get involved in this reverse motion. The social use of the
> stocks of knowledge appears far more haphazard, complex and
> branched than the relatively "simple" creation. For instance,
> Who makes use today of the stock of scientiific (technologic)
> pieces of knowledge?
> Depending on the concrete disciplinary cloud we watch
> (imagine some environmental issue, or climatic change), we
> could write down an unending list of other applied
> researchers, technologists, entrepeneurial, institutional,
> administration and political bodies... Luckily, our piece of
> knowledge will fertilize the action of a number of
> heterogeneous social parties. The bureaucratic fashion of
> today about that very "translation"
> ---how research becomes development and innovation.
> Contemporary societies, are loudly demanding that the clouds,
> both nationally and internationally, produce a lot of
> descends ("rain")...
>
> In this metaphor, analytical philosophy has been devoted to
> "within cloud"
> processes and laws (inner conceptual structure), while
> continental philosophy has approached (often ideologically)
> to the winds and currents and other general climatic
> conditions. In info science, around the term consilience, who
> knows whether we might put together a new vision highlighting
> the ascend/descend crucial movements.
>
> best
>
> Pedro
>
> _______________________________________________
> fis mailing list
> fis@listas.unizar.es
> http://webmail.unizar.es/mailman/listinfo/fis
>
> SOUTH EAST HEALTH CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE
>
> This email, and the files transmitted with it, are
> confidential and intended solely for the use of the
> individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you are
> not the intended recipient, you are not permitted to
> distribute or use this email or any of its attachments in any
> way. We also request that you advise the sender of the
> incorrect addressing.
>
> This email message has been virus-scanned. Although no
> computer viruses were detected, South East Health accepts no
> liability for any consequential damage resulting from email
> containing any computer viruses.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> fis mailing list
> fis@listas.unizar.es
> http://webmail.unizar.es/mailman/listinfo/fis
>

_______________________________________________
fis mailing list
fis@listas.unizar.es
http://webmail.unizar.es/mailman/listinfo/fis
Received on Thu Nov 25 09:07:27 2004