KNOWLEDGE, THEORY, AND CLASSIFICATION

Scholars in many fields, from philosophy to cybernetics, have long discussed the concept of knowledge and the problems of representing knowledge in information systems. The distinction is drawn between merely observing, perceiving, or even describing things and truly knowing them. To know implies a process of integration of facts about objects and the context in which the objects and processes exist. Even in colloquial usage, knowledge about someone or something is always expressed in terms of deep relationships and meanings as well as its place in time and space. To know cars means not only understanding car mechanics but also knowledge of the interplay of the mechanical processes and perhaps even factors such as aesthetics, economics, and psychology.

The process of knowledge discovery and creation in science has traditionally followed the path of systematic exploration, observation, description, analysis, and synthesis and testing of phenomena and facts, all conducted within the communication framework of a particular research community with its accepted methodology and set of techniques. We know the process is not entirely rational but often is sparked and then fueled by insight, hunches, and leaps of faith (Bronowski, 1978).

Moreover, research is always conducted within a particular political and cultural reality (Olson, 1998). Each researcher and, on a larger scale, each research community at various points must gather up the disparate pieces and in some way communicate what is known, expressing it in such a way as to be useful for further discovery and understanding. A variety of formats exist for the expression of knowledge--e.g., theories, models, formulas, descriptive reportage of many sorts, and polemical essays.

Of these formats, science particularly values theories and models because they are a "symbolic dimension of experience as opposed to the apprehension of brute fact" (Kaplan, 1963, p. 294) and can therefore be symbolically extended to cover new experiences. A theory thus explains a particular fact by abstracting the relationship of that fact to other facts. Grand, or covering, theories explain facts in an especially eloquent way and in a very wide (some would say, universal) set of situations. Thus, Darwinian, Marxist, or Freudian theories, for example, attempt to explain processes and behaviors in many contexts, but they do so at a high level of abstraction. There are relatively few grand theories, however, and we rely on the explanatory and descriptive usefulness of more "local" theories--theories that explain a more limited domain but with greater specificity.

(from The Role of Classification in Knowledge Representation and Discovery - 1

Library Trends, Summer, 1999 by Barbara H. Kwasnik )

Task 15.Choose and write down 5 – 10 key-terms useful for your research from the article you have read. Give their definitions. Describe their sphere of application, prove your choice of the terms with the the examples. Draw a diagrammatic classification of your research. Present the terms to your partners.