book: women, fire, and dangerous things

Lakoff, George. Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal About the Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.

I want to pull this book into the mix because classification and categorization is exactly what librarians do. How do these categories impact our understanding of knowledge and truth? Lakoff’s book is long and detailed, and he rails against objectivist perpectives. Yet, it’s facinating and useful for library and information thinkers to have this worldview as another tool in their kit. Early on in my MLIS program, I wrote a paper on postmodern criticisms of classification, so I probably won’t take that angle for this paper, but this would be a useful book if I come around to the topic again.

book: construction of social reality

Searle, John R. The Construction of Social Reality. New York: Free Press, 1995.

Searle is an important member of the philosophical community, and this book is an interesting one. In this text, Searle confronts postmodernism arguing for a objective reality. He argues for realism at the end of the text. This is a book that I will need to read in detail if I choose to approach the project from a postmodern angle.

book: the postmodern condition

Lyotard, Jean-François. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge.  Trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi. Theory and History of Literature. Eds. Wlad Godzich and Jochen Schulte-Sasse. Vol. 10. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984.
This classic is another book that I need to make time to read. I’m not sure it’ll directly relate to my project, but I plan on taking it on my vacation just-in-case. Lyotard argues that we are living in a postmodernist age. In this time, there is an “incredulity towards meta-narratives.” In postmodern though, these grand narratives are too broad to contain everyone, and lose the details. Postmodernists are aware of difference and diversity and realize that these cannot be contained in meta-narratives. What are the implications for online behavior? (Particularly given Turkle’s windows)

book: academic tribes and territories

Becher, Tony, and Paul R. Trowler. Academic Tribes and Territories: Intellectual Enquiry and the Culture of Disciplines. 2nd ed. Philadelphia: The Society for Research into Higher Education & Open University Press, 1996.
This book discusses how academics perceive themselves and disciplines. It also explores how the academic cultures and nature of disciplines are interconnected. The text covers areas from disciplines, overlaps and speciality, community, communication, career paths, wider context, and implications for practice. This book will be useful to my project if I choose to focus on interdisciplinary issues.

book:the structure of scientific revolutions

Kuhn, Thomas S. The Structure of Scientific Revolution. 3rd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.

This classic book grounds science in a social, temporal context. Kuhn suggest that some ideas are only available at certain times, that strategies that are available now weren’t always available, and, ultimately, science is a function of social contexts. Tangentially related to my interests in social epistemology in LIS, this text does discuss knowledge as a social phenomenon.

book: the philosopher’s toolkit

Baggini, Julian, and Peter S. Fosl. The Philosopher’s Toolkit: A Compendium of Philosophical Concepts and Methods.  Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing 2003.

I picked this book up in Borders over the weekend because it was the most thorough handbook I’ve seen on philosophical tools for argumentation. The book is fairly technical, covering “basic tools” such as deduction, validity, and tautologies to “tools at the limit” including Godel, impossibility, and underdetermination. This book seems to cover all the bits and pieces that went into my BA in philosophy, just in one handy volume. I plan to read it in depth over my vacation, to get a grounding in argumentation again. This book won’t be helpful in furthering established arguments, but will be helpful in reminding me how to approach arguments and what tools I can use to make my own arguments.

book: The Production and Distribution of Knowledge in the United States

Machlup, Fritz. (1962). The Production and Distribution of Knowledge in the United States. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

I was drawn to this title because it includes distribution in its examination of knowledge. Production is really interesting to me, but it’s covered in many areas of research. People study and theorize about how science creates a specific type of knowledge, they consider the implications of political, economical, and societal forces in the creation of knowledge, they discuss the publication process for academics. It’s much less common for people to theorize about how distribution effects knowledge. I think that this is an extremely important aspect of knowledge to consider, especially in the internet age. We face a journals crisis, university presses are closing down, yet it’s easier than ever to publish your opinions for the world to see via blogs and wikis. This book was written in 1962, long before anyone even though of blogs or the web as we know it.

Machlup covers the topics of types of knowledge, knowledge producing industries, education, research & development, media & communication, information machines, information services, total production of knowledge & the national product (he’s an economist), and knowledge production and occupational structure.

Chapter 7, “The Media of Communication” will be most useful to my topic, as I’m using the lens of media as a way of examining the social structure of knowledge. Again, I’d like media to include (or focus on) technology, and this book does not do that, but it does provide a useful context. Machlup’s coverage of media includes books and pamphlets, periodicals, newspapers, and “all printing and publishing” which includes photography and phonography, stage & cinema, broadcasting (via TV and movies), advertising & PR, telephone, telegraph, and postal service. Again, this is entirely before information technology (as we know it today) entered the scene, and most of the content is examined through the lens of economics. Still, this will be a useful context chapter for my research.

books: Knowledge: It’s Creation, Distribution, and Economic Significance

I was excited to check out this book, the title is really impressive and seems closely tied to my subject.  However, when I found it I found three volumes.  The first is Knoweldge and Knowledge Production.  The second is The Branches of Learning.  The thirds is The Economics of Information and Human Capital.  All look facinating.  The set is huge and dense, and published in the 1980s. I’d be interested in what Machlup would have to say about the impact of electronic information in the context of his research.

All-in-all, for the scope of this project, these will serve more as reference resources than texts I spend time with and reflect on.  Nevertheless, they’ll serve as good resources.

book: Knowledge and Knowing

Budd, John. Knowledge and Knowing in Library and Information Science: A Philosophical Framework. Lanham, MD:Scarecrow Press. 2001.

Notes from my reading:

The book’s introduction includes the following quote, one that partially explains my interest in the topic:

“Pragmatism, however, does not mean a dismissal of thought and reflection.  Some philosophers, most notably Richard Rorty, claim that, effectively, pragmatism trumps epistemology, that there is no point to a theory of knowledge; what is important is discovering what works.  The error in this claim is the assumption that epistemology cannot be pragmatic, that examining knowledge cannot help us find the most effective action.  The thought and reflection in LIS contributes to effective praxis.  Throughout this book I’ll explore the essential relationship between thought and praxis”  (page 3).

I am specifically interested in philosophical issues surrounding information literacy.  A better understanding of truth and knowledge is helpful when guiding people to the information they need.  Understanding the social, political, and economic dynamics of information are necessary in a field that colleges, organizes, classifies, provides, and instructs people in their quest for information.  This introductory statement grounded the book, for me, in a way that made it appear useful for my research interests.

The book is arranged in two major parts.  One is exploring the genealogy of ideas.  The very first chapter was essentially a recap of my modern philosophy course in college, but without the depth.  The book also touches on a number of interesting disciplines including sociology, biology, psychology, and economics. The second section of the book rejects the use of scientism in LIS and makes an argument that LIS work should be done in the school of hermeneutical phenomenology.

I felt that this book is a great introduction for someone with little philosophy or epistemology background.  For those with a background in the fields, it’s a little too lacking in some areas and could go more in depth.  I also felt that in some areas he displayed plenty of rigor in making his arguments, but in others, the rigor was lacking.  I missed my philosophy (proper) texts, where arguments are clearly laid out, and each point is decisively proven or disproved.   Part of the problem might have been that the audience of the book was too broad.  It was for both theoretical and practical LIS workers, coming from any academic background.  This problem could have been partially solved had the book been broken into several books, each chapter been longer (the book was under 400 pages), or if a good use of footnotes was provided with references for further information.

Despite my minor complaints, I feel this book was an excellent starting point for my project.  It was good to have a refresher course in the appropriate philosophers.  It was a quick read.  And it did give me a good grounding.

Chapter 5, “Knowledge and Knowing in LIS,” was the most appropriate for my topic. Budd starts by explaining that LIS is seen as a social science, but has argued through the book that scientism isn’t the most appropriate method for LIS.  This is where he argues for hermeneutic phenomenology.  He also specifically cites Jesse Shera and Margaret Egan, Patrick Wilson, and S. D. Neill as LIS writers who concern themselves with social epistemology.

Budd admits the topic  is esoteric but says, “If we are to comprehend fully why someone bothers to formulate a query, why people seek “information,” then we have to understand what it is we can know about the process of structuring a query aimed at finding a meaningful answer, and about the process of responding to the query.  In other words, it is knowledge that defines the activities that take place in libraries and other, similar, environments” (page 204).  And that’s a good enough argument for me to feel good about this independent study.