The three worlds of health information

Bawden, David

doi:10.1177/016555150202800106

Cited by 13 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 65 publications

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“…The numbers measure attributes of people and groups, cognition and networks, collections and activities; all three of Popper's Worlds, for those who like that ontology as a basic for the subject (Bawden and Robinson, 2012B;Bawden, 2002).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Information’s Magic Numbers: The Numerology of Information Science

Bawden¹,

Robinson²

2016

Theories of Informetrics and Scholarly Communication

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regularities of nature can be captured by simple mathematical relationships is a long way from Blair's (1976, p. 81) notion that "numbers, quite distinct from their empirical use, become a language, as full of metaphor and dimension as poetry". However, before sneering at the idea that numbers in themselves can have a significance, we should remember that the long-standing, and still influential, Platonic tradition within science views numbers as having their own objective existence, and indeed that the physical universe and everything in it is, at root, a mathematical structure made of numbers (see Tegmark [2014] for a recent and accessible account of this position).As well as numbers per se, numerology is often also taken, usually critically, to mean an enthusiasm for simple numerical formulae, usually involving integers, capturing some significant aspect of reality. These have been seen in both the sciences and the social sciences: notoriously, the British physicist and astronomer Sir Arthur Eddington spent many years seeking simple integer relationships as the clue to the universe (Kilmister, 2005). It is clear that there are strong relations between numbers, the physical world and cultural issues, as is clearly shown by the sequence of "kissing numbers," the number of spheres which in any space exactly bound a further identical sphere (Weisstein, n.d.); two points on a one dimensional line bound a third point, six circles circumscribe a seventh, and twelve balls circumscribe a thirteenth. The resultant sequence-three, seven, thirteen-captures the principle significant/lucky/unlucky numbers in numerous cultures, and is numerologically present in the 'leader with twelve followers' meme of Christ, Osiris, King Arthur, and others (Blair, 1976). 4 Therefore, despite the dangers of slipping into a facile numerology, simple numbers and integer relations may still be worth investigating, in science, in the social sciences, and specifically in LIS.There are, in fact, relatively few such simple numbers and number relations in our discipline and what there are have come in from adjacent disciplines. We will consider seven, a suitably magic number in itself, of these. In truth, they are not all very simple: one is very large, some have alternatives, one is a sequence, and one is infinite. These numbers encapsulate a variety of issues: how much information there, or could be; the optimal size of communicating groups; the structure of information networks; the distribution of information activities; and the 4 It would have been nice if the four-dimensional kissing number, which was not known until 2003 (Pfender & Ziegler, 2004) and cannot be intuitively grasped like the small dimension equivalents, had also related to some culturally significant number. Disappointingly, it was shown to be 24, and 25 does not appear to have significance in any culture.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Information’s Magic Numbers: The Numerology of Information Science

Bawden¹,

Robinson²

2016

Theories of Informetrics and Scholarly Communication

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“…However, its impact has been limited: although it has been popular as a pedagogical model in LIS, and some writers have made more detailed use of it in an LIS context -see, for example, Bawden (2002), Abbott (2004), and Spink and Cole (2004) -it has not generated much in the way of either detailed conceptual insight or practical guidance, being silent on crucial issues such as information ethics and information quality (Bawden and Robinson 2016). It is interesting to note that Floridi (2002A, 2002B) regards Popper's conception of a third world as an example of the evolution of PI prior to the digital revolution, and that he himself was influenced by Popper ideas of knowledge (Warburton 2015).…”

Section: Alternatives To Pi "[Lis] Researchers" Wrotementioning

confidence: 99%

Curating the infosphere

Bawden

Robinson

2018

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“…It seems that Neill was correct, for Brookes' views have been widely cited and generally supported (see, for example, Neill [31], Abbott [32,33], Bawden [34], Spink and Cole [35], Ingwersen and Järvelin [27], and Zins [11]), though some have dissented (see, for example, Rudd [36] and Capurro [37]), and some have used the concepts of information spaces and Popper's worlds without reference to Brookes (see, for example, Boisot [38]).…”

Section: Foundations Of the Disciplinementioning

confidence: 99%

Smoother pebbles and the shoulders of giants: the developing foundations of information science

Bawden

2008

Journal of Information Science

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Citation: Bawden, D. (2008). Smoother pebbles and the shoulders of giants: the developing foundations of information science. Journal of Information Science, 34(4), pp. 415-426. doi: 10.1177/0165551508089717 This is the unspecified version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Keywords: information science; information history; journal of information science; information professions; education Permanent IntroductionThe Journal of Information Science (JIS) was first published in 1979, replacing The Information Scientist (TIS) which -though described as the 'Journal of the Institute of Information Scientists' -was not generally regarded as a true academic/professional journal. The intervening period of nearly thirty years, a time span commonly taken as equivalent to a 'generation', gives the opportunity to consider the issues covered in the early issues of JIS, to set them into the context of the development of the information science discipline over time, and to assess the significance of some of the main contributions and contributors. This is done by focusing on some of the articles and editorials published in the first two volumes of JIS, covering the years 1979 and 1980, tracing some of the preceding treatment of the issues, and following later developments, particularly -though not exclusively -through the pages of TIS and JIS. The set of literature cited is selected to show the origins and development of the issues, and is in no way intended to be comprehensive.The discussion is focused around five main, albeit overlapping, themes. An initial consideration of the information science discipline itself leads fairly naturally to thoughts on the foundations of the discipline, and David Bawdenthat in turn to the central question of the nature of information. There follows a consideration of the relation between discipline and profession, and in particular the role of research, and the closely associated question of the most appropriate form of education for information science. As we shall see, all of these themes are represented in the first issues of JIS, and all have remained 'live' topics 2 to the present day.

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The three worlds of health information

Cited by 13 publications

References 65 publications

Information’s Magic Numbers: The Numerology of Information Science

Information’s Magic Numbers: The Numerology of Information Science

Curating the infosphere

Smoother pebbles and the shoulders of giants: the developing foundations of information science

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