Re: social epistemology

From: rhinoceros (rhinoceros@freemail.gr)
Date: Fri 10 Jun 2005 - 19:00:41 GMT

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    Scott Chase wrote:
    > Has anyone heard of Jesse "The Mind" Shera a well
    > known guru of Library Science from yesteryear that had
    > some notion of social epistemology and some serious
    > opinions on classification? I've been reading some
    > books by him and I've been saying to myself "Man this
    > stuff, though dated, is really relevant to memetics.'
    >
    > I think one of his peeves with the Dewey and Library
    > of Congress systems was that they don't represent
    > knowledge in a natural manner. They pretty much
    > suffice for locating a book, but that's about it. It's
    > something like imposing a unidimensional tag upon a
    > polydimensional object (ie- a book) that has more
    > aspects than can be addressed (pun intended) with
    > these extant classification systems. From what I hear
    > those in the know prefer LC to Dewey.
    >
    > A book tends to be hybrid of multiple thought strands,
    > so how the heck do you adequately represent that with
    > an address label that will reflect its proper place in
    > the natural order of human thought? Should a book on
    > computer software applications for business be placed
    > with the computer books or the business books?

    I am not sure if "social epistemology" was the right term for this. It makes me think of Kuhn's writings or historicist approaches to rationality such as the one here http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationality-historicist/ But it is really interesting. Recently I stumbled on a couple of related writings.

    1. The Semantic Web, Syllogism, and Worldview http://www.shirky.com/writings/semantic_syllogism.html

    Here, the author criticizes the "Semantic Web" project as inadequate and/or misleading, following a similar reasoning.

    2. Ontology is Overrated: Categories, Links, and Tags http://shirky.com/writings/ontology_overrated.html

    Same author. He criticizes all taxonomies and argues that "There is no shelf." He also give a link to the following:

    3. Metacrap: Putting the torch to seven straw-men of the meta-utopia http://www.well.com/~doctorow/metacrap.htm

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