The place of informatics in the system of science
Abstract
In our modern age of the rapid differentiation and integration of the individual branches of science and scholarship, an unambiguous systematization of sciences is an ever more difficult task. Despite this fact, it is not useless to try to find a proper place for any one dicipline within the system of the sciences.
Scientific infcrmation activity as such had been brought about by actual social needs earlier than its theoretical foundations were laid down and analyzed. This may certainly be one reason for the fact that information specialists in increasing numbers seek to define the subject, scope, content and theory of scientific information (or information science, informatics, documentation and information, as it is usually called). The subject of informatics is not the information itself but the process in the course of which information gets through from its transmitter (i. e. the source of information) to its receiver (i. e. its user), as well as the system in which this process goes on, involving all means and ways, methods and operations which form the constituents of the information system.
It was in the course of the evolution of society and of the division of labour that informatics has developed into a scientific discipline in its own right. A scientific discipline evolves only at a time when a large enough group of phenomena has become known whose interdependences and regularities are characterized by one and the same chief contradiction.
As regards informatics the contradiction lies here between the objective need for information on the part of society (individuals and organizations) and the relatively uninformed state of society in spite of the abundance of information.
lnformatics as a scientific discipline dealing with scientific information examines one highly specialized field of social communication, and as such forms a part of communication sciencee, thus belonging to the sphere of social sciences.
lnformatics tends to make use of the achievements of sociology, psychology, pedagogics, linguistics, semantics and semiotics. This fact, however, makes it necessary to examine the relation of informatics to the rest of the social sciences. Thus, placing informatics in the system of the sciences also permits certain practical conclusions. Those erroneous views, which tended to narrow down informatics to the content analysis of information transmitted in the process of scientific information or to the examination of the technical methods and devices used in each field of information work, have led to certain inadequacies in such branches of informatics as the research of social demands, the sociology and psychology of the producers, transmitters and users of information, resulting, at the same time, in certain mistaken trends in the training of information specialists.
The study is completed by a review of and some criticism on studies and papers in this subject.
Scientific infcrmation activity as such had been brought about by actual social needs earlier than its theoretical foundations were laid down and analyzed. This may certainly be one reason for the fact that information specialists in increasing numbers seek to define the subject, scope, content and theory of scientific information (or information science, informatics, documentation and information, as it is usually called). The subject of informatics is not the information itself but the process in the course of which information gets through from its transmitter (i. e. the source of information) to its receiver (i. e. its user), as well as the system in which this process goes on, involving all means and ways, methods and operations which form the constituents of the information system.
It was in the course of the evolution of society and of the division of labour that informatics has developed into a scientific discipline in its own right. A scientific discipline evolves only at a time when a large enough group of phenomena has become known whose interdependences and regularities are characterized by one and the same chief contradiction.
As regards informatics the contradiction lies here between the objective need for information on the part of society (individuals and organizations) and the relatively uninformed state of society in spite of the abundance of information.
lnformatics as a scientific discipline dealing with scientific information examines one highly specialized field of social communication, and as such forms a part of communication sciencee, thus belonging to the sphere of social sciences.
lnformatics tends to make use of the achievements of sociology, psychology, pedagogics, linguistics, semantics and semiotics. This fact, however, makes it necessary to examine the relation of informatics to the rest of the social sciences. Thus, placing informatics in the system of the sciences also permits certain practical conclusions. Those erroneous views, which tended to narrow down informatics to the content analysis of information transmitted in the process of scientific information or to the examination of the technical methods and devices used in each field of information work, have led to certain inadequacies in such branches of informatics as the research of social demands, the sociology and psychology of the producers, transmitters and users of information, resulting, at the same time, in certain mistaken trends in the training of information specialists.
The study is completed by a review of and some criticism on studies and papers in this subject.
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Published
2019-05-07
How to Cite
Szepesváry, T., Vajda, E. The place of informatics in the system of science, Scientific and Technical Information, 17(8-9), p. 613–638, 2019.
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