III. HERMENEUTICS AND INFORMATION
SCIENCE
1.
Recent Studies
Several
authors,
information scientists as well as
philosophers, have considered the
relationship between hermeneutics and
information science. Having the honor to
held this lecture in Stockholm I would
like to mention first the work of Börje
Langefors. The following quotation may
give a general idea about his infological
approach:
"If data are what is
handled by computers and information is
what is to be served to people, then
information is totally distinct in kind
from data. Information is of the same
kind as knowledge and data must form
sentences in some language. Data inform
if they bring about changes in the
knowledge of the users. This will only
happen if the data (or sentences) are
formed in correspondence with the
knowledge structure (S) of the user.
Data, or sentences, do not 'contain'
information, they only 'represent'
information fragments and the
information becomes established only if
these fragments are brought into
connection with a knowledge 'whole'.
This was brought out in terms of the
'infological equation' (Langefors
1966):
I = i (D,S,t)
Where
I
ist the information (or knowledge
change) established by the transfer of
some data (or signs) D. The equation is
meant to stress that to obtain
information (I) from certain data (D),
an information process (i) is needed and
the process requires a certain time (t).
Furthermore the outcome of the process
(I) is whole dependent on the
'pre-knowledge' structure S available to
the process (thus to the data user). To
'understand' the data or receive the
information will mean to conceive of a
situation or event observed by somebody
else and recorded as D. A deeper
understanding may then result by the
process (user) drawing all sorts of
conclusions from the information
received. All this, clearly, will depend
on (other parts of) S. It is immediately
obvious that the knowledge structure S
implies all the kinds of problems
recently articulated under 'buss words'
such as paradigms, world-view, language
games, ideology, personal styles and
hermeneutics. It should also be clear
that the data D are, basically, any
real-life pattern that may be not only
perceived but also 'understood' or
interpreted in some way." (30)
Langefors
has
successfully integrated the concept of
pre-understanding in a theory of
information science. However, the question
still remains as how far he still
conceives human existence under the
premise of a capsule-like subjectivity.
Nevertheless, intersubjectivity and the
idea of a community of interpreters play a
central role in his infology.
Alwin
Diemer and Norbert Henrichs, founders of
the philosophy documentation center at
Düsseldorf University, have made important
contributions to an information
science hermeneutics (31).
Following Husserl's phenomenology - and
particularly the terminology of knower/"noesis"
and its correlate the known/"noema"
-, Diemer calls thought content being
transmitted in the information process "Informem".
Informemes are constituted by the
intersubjective process of understanding
and they are identified in different ways
through the processes of indexing and
abstracting. The core of Diemer's information
science hermeneutics can be seen in
the phenomenological relationship between
the informemes and the
interpretation community(ies). Informemes
are constituted through the mediation of
the interpreter's pre-understanding which
is itself part of the of pre-understanding
of a scientific community. The computer
processes only data or tokens.
Diemer's approach was, as far as I know,
the first attempt to consider the whole
information field from the point of view
of hermeneutics. Some of his ideas were
further developed by Henrichs.
Henrichs'
approach
(32) is based on hermeneutics as well as
on Peirce's semiotics. Object, sign and
interpreter, Peirce's central categories,
constitute the underlying structure of the
information field. If we consider the
information concept from a semiotic
perspective, we can distinguish between
the meaning or content of the messages,
the signs used to represent it, and the
interpreters (producer, mediators,
recipients). A characteristic of Peirce's
semiotics as well as of Henrichs' approach
is the non-separability of these three
elements. It would be absurd to speak, for
instance, of meaning (or knowledge)
in itself, i.e., without any
relation to an interpreter as well as to
signs denotating it.
The
production of meaning and the processing
of linguistic signs becomes informational
when we regard them within the horizon of
a community of interpreters. Information
is a social category. Characteristic of
this approach is the close relationship
between hermeneutic and semiotic
categories. These ideas were applied at
the philosopher's documentation center of
the University of Düsseldorf. This system
is based on a non-standardized indexing
method without taking into account the
disadvantages of free-text. The fidelity
to the sign level is compensated by a
special consideration of the user's
pre-understanding at the retrieval side.
Henrichs' paradigm of information science
is still a torso.
Finally
I
will mention the ASK-theory developed by
N.J. Belkin, R. N. Oddy and H. M.
Brooks (33). ASK stands for anomalous
states of knowledge and means
that
"an information need
arises from a recognized anomaly in the
user's state of knowledge concerning
some topic or situation and that, in
general, the user is unable to specify
precisely what is needed to resolve that
anomaly." (34)
According
to
this theory the information retrieval
process should make possible to actively
interact with the requester's knowledge
structures, i.e., IR systems should be
able to initiate a dialogue with the
user's large-scale intentions without
asking him to specify first his
information need. Belkin stresses the
importance of the user's "conceptual state
of knowledge" which is in interaction with
his "image of the world". He writes:
"interactions of humans
with one another, with the physical
world and with themselves are always
mediated by their states of knowledge
about themselves and about that with
which or with whom they interact. The IR
situation is seeing as a
'recipient-controlled communication
system, aimed at resolving the expressed
information needs of humans, primarily
via texts produced by other human
beings." (35)
The
key
role
played by the recipient's knowledge
structure in this theory validates in some
way its designation as a hermeneutic one.
But the emphasis on the individual users
should be expanded to the user's community
with which he/she shares a similar
knowledge structure and from whom he/she
expects to get some help in order to solve
the anomalies.
Peter
Ingwersen (36) has recently related this
cognitive model to B. C. Brookes' fundamental
equation:
K (S) + D I = K (S + D
S)
Where
K(S) is an existing knowledge affected by
some increment of information D I, and K
(S+ D S) is the modified structure.
Brookes relates this equation to objective
knowledge in the Popperian sense of World
3. Ingwersen's adapts this model
within the cognitive paradigm relating
explicitly objective knowledge to a human
knowledge structure (Popper's World 2)
which it eventually modifies. But even in
this modification does not take
intersubjectivity into full consideration.
2.
A Hermeneutic Foundation of
Information Science
The
following is a rough outline of a
hermeneutic foundation of information
science that takes into account the
existential as well as the
contextual-critical discourses previously
explained. Information science is thus
delimited with regard to a general theory
of information and communication.
Delimitations are usually controversial.
The field of scientific and technical
information has proved to be too
restricted with regard, for instance, to
societal information and to all kinds of
professional information that are not
produced by research centers and the like.
I use the term specialized information
(Fachinformation) in this broad
sense. Three basic parameters are
necessary for its constitution:
professional communities, special fields
of research or action, a communication
process based mainly on represented
knowledge.
a)
Professional communities
Producers
and
users of specialized information are not
isolated individuals but belong to
professional communities. These share
common theoretical and practical interests
that build up their horizon of
pre-understanding. This specific
"in-between" of a professional community
belongs to the "'web' of human
relationships" (Arendt) as mentioned
above. Thus, problems and questions are
interrelated in different ways within the
whole of the existential structure as well
as within the concrete personality system
of the individual user, i.e., of his/her
social, cultural, political, geographical,
linguistic etc. system of reference. One
major aim of information science is the
study of users not as isolated individuals
but as members of professional
communities. Information science is (so
far) particularly concerned with the study
of how scientists obtain information. The
concept of specialized information refers
then to the communication of knowledge
contents to one (or several) professional
communities. Information in information
science is a social category. The term professional
points to a more general target as the
term scientific community. This
is, I believe, a necessary and useful
extended sense as it takes into
consideration the whole range of
theoretical and practical issues that
constitute the core of advanced
technological societies.
We
usual think about professionals as people
with an in-depth knowledge in one specific
field. The physicist Werner Heisenberg has
a different view. For him a professional (Fachmann)
is a person who knows some important
mistakes in his/her field, and how to
avoid them (37). In other words,
professionals are conscious of some major
anomalies in their fields. They
have a questioning attitude, as they have
learned to be cautious. This means,
paradoxically, that we should look upon
professionals from the point of view of
their ignorance. A very Socratic viewpoint
indeed. The study of information processes
within professional communities are at the
core of information science. There is need
for research on a sociological theory of
professional communities, not just on a
sociology of science. We need to explore
the ways professionals gather and
interpret information in order to solve
their problems (38). To consider
hermeneutically professional
communities as a core issue of information
science means to criticize:
- an isolating view of
users and their cognitive structures,
- a restrictive view on
scientific communities,
- a purely objective
view of represented information.
b)
Special Fields of Research or Action
Special
fields
of research or action is the second
parameter necessary for the constitution
of specialized information. They are the
correlate of a professional community and
their pre-understanding. K. Popper is
right, on the one hand, when he states
that we do not investigate subject matters
or disciplines but problems (39). But
problems are, on the other hand, related
to specific frameworks of theories,
beliefs, traditions, interests and so on.
In Popper's words, we can say that as
there are no brute facts - facts
are always theory-impregnated - there are
also no brute problems. Special
fields of research and action are not
necessarily identical with subject
disciplines in universities. In
information science the question of
delimitation of a subject field plays a
significant role. Databases and expert
systems are basically always related to of
a scope or subject field. Some of
the empirical laws in our field, for
instance Bradford's law, refer to the
regularities of the core literature of a
subject field.
The
concept of subject fields has radically
changed with regard, for instance, to the
classification schemes of the 19th
century. We can call this change a
Copernican revolution. Instead of
considering knowledge something static and
permanent in the center of a (library)
system, we are now aware of the
constitutive role played by the
interpreter and user of such schemes. This
means a dynamic view of knowledge schemes
as something which is "in-between" the
members of a professional community, i.e.,
constituted by their horizon of
expectations. The delimitation of a
subject field also implies the use of a
specialized vocabulary or language
game (Wittgenstein). The study of
the structure and use of such vocabularies
including the use of logical devices in
modern expert systems is a major concern
of information science.
c)
Professional communication
Communication
is
a main concern of information scientists,
particularly with regard to modern
information technology. The technological
view leaves aside, as C. Shannon and W.
Weaver remarked, the semantic and
pragmatic levels of communication. These
levels are at the core of information
science research. From a comprehensive
view of human existence, communication, on
the one hand, cannot be reduced to the
physical process of sending and receiving
signals, but it is a specific human
phenomenon. Freedom of thought, on the
other hand, cannot be considered
idealistically, as something independent
from the ways of its communication. Kant
reminds us of this when he writes:
"But, how much and how
correct could we think, if we would not
do it together with other people, to
whom we can communicate our thoughts and
they theirs!" (40)
Communication
means
making knowledge publicly available. The
concept of information points to this
potential availability, adding a new
aspect to the concept of knowledge: information
is knowledge as seen form the point of
view of its capacity of being
communicated. Here is the place
where the concept of representation of
knowledge as used by modern cognitive
science becomes interesting for
information science. In fact, for some
information scientists such as B. C.
Brookes, information is identical
with objectivized knowledge. As
Ingwersen remarks (41) "objective
information" should not be separated but
dynamically integrated with the
intersubjective process of interpretation.
Information scientists are not interested
in building knowledge structures in
themselves in a pre-Copernican
manner, but they study the interaction of
represented knowledge with a user
community whose pre-understanding of a
specific field is supposed to be partially
objectivized.
The
concept of information in information
science includes these three dimensions: a
professional community, i.e. the
producers, interpreters and users of
specialized information, a specific field
of research or action to which
(objectivized) thought contents are
supposed to primarily refer, and a
communication process through which they
are shared by the community of
interpreters.
The
following quotation by Martha Williams
summarizes, I believe, this hermeneutic
paradigm of information science:
"Information science is
the quest to understand the nature of
information, man's interaction with
information, and the communication
process. It is a developing discipline
and, although it uses the tools and
techniques or technologies of many other
disciplines, it has its own subject
matter (information) and its own
problems (human communications)."
(42)
Information
and
meaning are, on the one hand, very close
concepts indeed, but they are not
identical, as the concept of meaning is
not usually related to that of
communication. Information, on the other
hand, should be potentially meaningful.
Fred Dretske argues in a recent study (43)
that the concept of information should not
be confused with meaning but that it
should be applied to all kinds of
communication mechanisms. From the point
of view of information science I agree
with Langefors' distinction between data
and information. Nevertheless, the
information concept, as we can see in its
history, is a very rich one. A broad
application can be useful in order to
stress the common ground of different
phenomena, as Dretske suggests. However,
unless we are monists, analogy does not
mean identity. As Bar-Hillel
remarked (44) we must be careful
with the "semantic traps".
3.
Hermeneutics and Information Retrieval
It is
not difficult to see now the relevance of
hermeneutics not only for information
science but also for the information
retrieval praxis.
Databases
(bibliographic,
numeric, factual etc.) and other forms of
knowledge representation such as expert
systems are objectivizations of specific
pre-understandings. Their scope or horizon
is supposed to be the correlate of the one
shared by a professional community. This
must be clearly stated before the input of
the information items into the computer
takes place. Information systems are
basically related to outside parameters.
There is no absolute system as there is no
absolute information. Classification
schemes, indexing methods etc. delimit the
possible horizon of interpretation of the
(bibliographic) items. The online dialogue
can be considered as a special kind of
hermeneutic process. On the one side we
have the fixed horizon of the system,
while on the other side there is the open
or existential horizon ofthe
inquirer. During the dialogue a "fusion of
horizons" (H.-G. Gadamer) takes place on
different levels (descriptors, descriptive
categories, contents of abstracts,
classification etc.). The partial identity
or "fusion" between the horizon of the
inquirer and the objectivized horizon of
the system is actively determined by the
pre-understanding of the searcher and by
his/her question and query formulation(s).
As far
as the system corresponds to the user's
pre-understanding behind his/her
question(s) a partially positive answer or
"fusion" takes place, such as (part of)
the anomaly can be solved. In the case of
bibliographic databases such a solution
usually means some references to relevant
documents. Thus, bibliographic databases
only offer a very limited possibility for
a "fusion of horizons" with regard, for
instance, to expert systems. Our capacity
to build more intelligent information
systems depends on our insight on the
pre-understanding of a professional
community. As D. R. Swanson remarks, the
retrieval process can be compared to a
trial-and-error process in scientific
research. He states, following Popper's
ideas, the following analogy:
"Creative research does
not begin with a 'topic' but with a
problem - a researcher must be puzzled,
curious, in a sense 'bothered' about
something. Even this is not enough -
some initial conjecture as to the nature
of a possible solution to the problem at
least must also be present. Theories are
not synthesized form observations. Quite
the contrary; one cannot gather data or
make an observation without first having
a theory. (...) Analogously, we might
look upon the process of information
retrieval as a trial of a conjecture,
guided by some idea of what one is
seeking. The principle value of the
process lies not so much in the direct
use of the retrieved documents but
rather in the indirect function which
they serve of stimulating a
reformulation of the request. A request
(...) is a conjecture, which he tests by
examining the retrieved document." (45)
The
retrieval
process
can thus be primarily considered as a problem
oriented process and not as a purely
'objective' or 'topic oriented' one. But
it would be misleading, I believe, to
divorce the horizon of the inquirer from
the one he shares with other colleagues
and which is, of course, not something
definite or 'objective' in a
pre-Copernican way. The existential
ASK-situation considers the problem to
besolved as interrelated with the
pre-understanding of a professional
community as well as with problems, goals
and interests which are finally shared in
different ways by society in general. The
answers of the system are thus matched
against this complex background and just
against a query formulation or a
discipline, dissociated from the whole
existential structure.
The
question of relevance in information
retrieval must take these different levels
into account. T. Saracevic (46) has
summarized this matter some years ago. In
his excellent Introduction to Modern
Information Retrieval, G. Salton
states a difference between an objective
or system-oriented and a subjective or
user-oriented relevance (47) Of course it
would be wrong to identify the process of
information retrieval with the conception
of scientific research as a
trial-and-error process. Stephen P. Harter
(48) has recently emphasized the limits of
this analogy. The motivation and the
subsequent treatment of the results differ
significantly in online searching and in
scientific inquiry. He writes:
"the raison d'etre of
scientific research is its contribution
to knowledge, to our theoretical
understanding of ourselves and our
universe. The purpose of online
information retrieval is much less
grandiose. (...) The results obtained do
not ordinarily become part of a
knowledge base or larger theory, as do
the results of research." (48, p. 111)
With
regard
to
the problem-oriented and the
topic-oriented relevance we should avoid
to divorce them, as we can no less divorce
the individual inquirer from the
(professional) community.
F. W.
Lancaster (49) makes a
terminological difference between relevance
as the relationship between a document and
a request statement and pertinence
as the relevance to the requester
himself. Boths aspects are
"subjective and equivocal" though "no less
important in system evaluation". The
reason for this paradox is, I believe, a
(tacit) hermeneutic view of the
pre-understanding of a community,
subject matters being nothing objective or
in themselves, but a relative
horizon of such a community.
Finally
we
should be aware that the scientific
process of testing hypothesis is related
to truth and falsity of theories, while
there is no such specific intention in
online searching. The underlying purpose
is to search and find presumably relevant
information. The concepts of error and
truth as used in scientific methodology
would prove, in this context, to be
misleading. Online searching is not
restricted to scientific information but
concerns different kinds of pragmatic
interests. The concept of relevance has to
embrace all possible levels of the
process, which thus can only partially be
explained with the analogy of scientific
inquiry.
Pointing
to the role of the inquirer as a correlate
of a request, Swanson and Harper implicitly
stress the intersubjective nature of
information retrieval. Hermeneutics offers a
broad theoretical spectrum that enables a
more adequate analysis of the information
retrieval process as the specific model of
scientific inquiry. The dialectic of
pre-understanding and understanding, i.e.,
of the critical "fusion" between questions
and answers as a biased process is a process
that leads always to tentative or
conjectural knowledge. The present research
in information retrieval heuretics
should be considered with this broader
hermeneutic frame.