Cognitive science and science dynamics. Philosophical and epistemological issues for information science

Abstract

This paper focuses primarily on cognitive science contributions to the study of scientific knowledge. Scientific knowledge is highly reputed and considered the most genuine kind of knowledge available, and science has a well established system of communication and information services. As such, they constitute a prototypical information system, if not the prototypical information system. If traced back to the scientific revolution in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the advent of science is closely linked to a major technological innovation: the printing press, upon which the entire information system is still based. I shall first consider some cognitive aspects of the introduction of the printing press along the lines of Eisenstein's (1979) notion of ‘collective cumulative advance’. Then, I shall briefly explore what such a progressive development could mean in terms of one of the favourite models of scientific advance—the gestaltswitch type of discovery—and what ‘cognitive’ and the role of knowledge means in the cognitive trend expressed in artificial intelligence and cognitive science of the last decade. In a detailed analysis of a process of puzzle solving, I shall consider how various segments of knowledge are brought to bear upon a specific task of puzzle reconstruction. Application to a case dealt with by Eisenstein should permit assessment of both her claim with respect to representation technology and claims for more dynamic models of information-seeking and knowledge construction (including novice-expert transition and machine learning).