Knowledge Domains

1
Knowledge Domains Communities of Practice

• Science TechnologySocial Sciences

2

• science objectively establishes truth, but does
  not control the context in which the scientific
  discovery will assist in the creation of
  knowledge

3
the nature of knowledge
realist
social
4
Science TechnologySocial Sciences

• Realist nature of knowledge world is completely
  objective (pure realism)
• Social nature of knowledge there is no
  foundation to knowledge apart from the perception
  of humans (purely socially determined)

5
Science TechnologySocial Sciences

• critique of pure realist perspective
• If scientific truth is objective and universal,
  it ignores the social context in which knowledge
  is circulated (power dynamics, multiple
  perspectives)
• How individuals beliefs are formed is based on
  information supplied by others (second-hand
  knowledge, cognitive authority, contentious
  nature of truth)
• Practical implications scientific data may be
  used / misused to justify social stratification
  and prejudice presenting certain groups as
  inferior (e.g. behavioral research, studies of
  heredity and human behavior, genetics, race and
  IQ, psychobiology, or sociobiology)

6
Science TechnologySocial Sciences

• critique of pure social perspective
• If everything is perspectival, then there is no
  immanent truth, knowledge (as justified true
  belief) is not possible
• Truth-claims are only procedures and discourse
• Knowledge lost in overall relativism

7
Science TechnologySocial Sciences

• veritistic epistemology
• veritistic epistemology introduced by Alvin
  Goldman, Knowledge in a Social World (1999)
• Knowledge is related to negotiation processes
  that are social in nature through argumentation
  within institutional fields (education,
  democracy) higher and lower truth-value
  (veritistic claims) can be assigned to distinct
  arguments
• Therefore, truth cannot be a thing in itself - it
  is always rooted in social negotiation and tied
  to value (e.g. distriminating and legitimating
  what is most efficient)

8
Science TechnologySocial Sciences

• S/R Standards of evidence are not hopelessly
  culture-bound, though judgments of justification
  are always perspectival (e.g. knowledge is
  truth-indicative but not absolute)
• Knowledge is built through the perspectives of
  disciplines (processes of cultural selection,
  institutional arrangements that shape knowledge)

9
Science TechnologySocial Sciences

• Important to understand how disciplines structure
  knowledge
• Disciplinary domains are formed by communities
  of practice
• how do they circulate information?
• what are the rules of engagement? culture of
  disciplines
• recognition of social structure of research

10
Science TechnologySocial Sciences

• Knowledge entails cognitive effort within
  scholarly communities to arrive at consensus
• Consensus of communities achieved through
• attribution of authority
• division of opinion
• Public mechanism for forming consensus (scholarly
  journals)
• establish a knowledge base of the field
• select what is to be communicated in the field

11
Science TechnologySocial Sciences

• Knowledge claims form an important part of
  journals content based on
• Epistemology logical argument, testimony,
  empirical evidence
• Rhetoricpersuasion

12
Science TechnologySocial Sciences

• Journal content reliability attribution
• Reliability
• Source of the claim (speaker)
• Bodies of evidence supporting claims
• Perspectival processes shaped by social forces
  (gender, national origin, social structures of
  scholarship and research - does it embrace
  multiple perspectives on which knowledge claims
  are based)

13
Science TechnologySocial Sciences

• Journal content reliability attribution
• Attribution (realized through citation of
  published work)
• epistemic (new idea is incorporated)
• procedural (authors work is cited as proof that
  researcher has that knowledge -- association)

14
Science TechnologySocial Sciences

• LIS literature (Budd) Information policy
  literature (Rowland) Leyersdorff (IS)
• ISI citation indexes to define document test
  collection
• Assumption authors interact with existing
  knowledge through referencing behavior (use of
  the accumulating body of recorded literature)

15
Science TechnologySocial Sciences

• Accumulation of a body of recorded literature
  varies according to subject area (how older
  materials are incorporated in more recent
  publication through citation)
• Science and technology select nucleus of
  specific journals brief span of time covering a
  few current years
• Social sciences humanities greater dispersion
  of publications in different forms, on different
  subjects over a comparatively long span of time
• Ephemeral vs. classical literature

16
Science TechnologySocial Sciences

• Comte (1798-1857) taxonomy of sciences
• science (physics, biochemistry)
• soft science (social science)
• non-science (humanities)
• Price (1970) - Prices index
• how references are distributed over an archive of
  material
• hard sciences cite works in the last 6 years

17
Science TechnologySocial Sciences

• Cole (1983)
• fundamental differences between disciplines lie
  not in citation habits but in the structure of
  their knowledge systems (cognitive)
• how empirical knowledge is codified into succinct
  and interdependent theoretical statements
• Cozzens (1985)
• periods of intellectual focus
• reception - obsolescence of literature

18
Science TechnologySocial Sciences

• Bradford (1934)
• core zones
• core - scatter determine the structure of
  knowledge in a discipline (older,
  institutionalized have core)
• Nadel (1980)
• catholicity of interests is a function of the
  maturity of a specialty (institutionalization
  level) the more mature the more diversity and
  multiple views can be recognized in the structure
  of the discipline

19
Science TechnologySocial Sciences

• Other observations
• less / highly structured or specialized
  disciplines people read widely outside their own
  current areas of concern (arts and humanities -
  information from a wide variety of sources)
• co-authoring sciences (apparatus for
  experimentation) social sciences (division of
  labor as strategy) humanities (coauthoring not
  practiced)

20
Science TechnologySocial Sciences

• Other observations
• Institutionalization processes define dynamics of
  fields
• Indicators of the degree of institutionalization
  professional associations, specialist journals
• Institutional arrangements define support
  encourage research
• Establishment of new forms of institutional
  knowledge and established academic fields debated