The "two cultures" and scientific information

Abstract

Owing to the revival of an old debate on the “two cultures” in the Times Literary Supplement, this article is also concerned with the problem of the separation of the two cultures, i.e. the sciences and the humanities, from the aspect of scientific information. It raises the question what role the theory and practice of scientific information may play in bridging the gap between these two cultures.

1. In context of what is called “information deluge”, informatics as the theory of scientific information deals with the problems of redundancy and reduction. By exploring and explaining the laws of redundancy and reduction, informatics promotes the development of scientific literature free from redundancy. Such a scientific and technical literature not only facilitates the orientation within any one branch of science, but also tends to build up new lines of communication among the individual branches of science and scholarship.

2. In the praxis the creative scientific work and the establishment of relationship between the two cultures may help scientific information by elaborating and organizing new forms of oriented interdisciplinary information and

3. by elaborating and organizing the interdisciplinary forms of heuristic information. Interdisciplinary information forms a pre-requisite for creative work in science, it uses the results of the latter, and, at the same time, reacts to it. Heuristic successfulness may encourage scientists to search for information even in fields which are essentially new for them.