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Library and information science and the philosophy of science

Birger Hjørland
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INTRODUCTION TO THE SPECIAL ISSUE Library and

information
Library and information science science
and the philosophy of science
5
Birger Hjørland
Royal School of Library and Information Science, Copenhagen, Denmark
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this article is to introduce the special issue of Journal of Documentation
about library and information science (LIS) and the philosophy of science.
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Design/methodology/approach – The most important earlier collected works about metatheories

and philosophies of science within LIS are listed.
Findings – It is claimed that Sweden probably is the country in which philosophy of science has the
highest priority in LIS education. The plan of the guest editor was that each epistemological position
should be both introduced and interpreted in a LIS context together with a review of its influence
within the field and an evaluation of the pros and cons of that position. This was only an ideal plan. It
is argued that it is important that such knowledge and debate are available within the LIS-literature
itself and that the answers to such questions as “What is positivism?” are not trivial ones.
Originality/value – The introduction is written to assist readers overviewing the issue and share
the thoughts of the editor in planning the issue.
Keywords Libraries, Information science, Philosophy, Epistemology
Paper type Viewpoint

This issue is concerned with metatheories in library and information science (LIS) and
especially with the philosophy of science of LIS. Metatheories are theories about the
description, investigation, analysis or criticism of the theories in a domain. They are
mostly internal to a domain, and may also be termed “paradigms”, “traditions” or
“schools”[1]. The present issue is termed “library and information science and the
philosophy of science”[2] to indicate that the emphasis is on basic approaches
developed and generally well known outside of LIS (such as critical realism,
empiricism, hermeneutics and pragmatism). Here these general views are interpreted
and investigated within the context of LIS. Such approaches deal with how knowledge
is understood and acquired and are important in discourses of the foundations of any
domain.
In the LIS community the interest in the philosophy of science has so far been
limited. There are of course exceptions from this general tendency. Patrick Wilson
(1927-2003) is an outstanding example of a person who was able to address specific
research problems in LIS and to widen the horizon of understanding such problems
considerably on the basis of a broader philosophical horizon. There are of course other
examples, but they are few in number. Those of us who think that the philosophy of
science have potentials to contribute to the further development of LIS as a field of
inquiry as well as a professional field have to argue and demonstrate that this is indeed Journal of Documentation
Vol. 61 No. 1, 2005
the case. This special issue is intended to contribute to that aim. pp. 5-10
The dominant view concerning the role of the philosophy of science in any q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0022-0418
special field (such as biology, LIS, nursing, physics, sociology or teaching) is DOI 10.1108/00220410510577970
 JDOC probably that its role is very limited. One may ask what the relations are between
61,1 philosophy as a discipline and other disciplines such as LIS? One common answer
to this question has been that philosophy is about theory and rational methods,
while the special sciences are only concerned with empirical investigations. This
view is obviously not true today because most theory in special fields is developed
by the field itself (or inspired from other special fields in interdisciplinary
6 research) and is not imported from philosophy understood as a special discipline.
In the history of science philosophy and philosophers have played a dominant
position until the time of Kant. After this period the sciences[3] became much
more “independent”, and the cognitive authority of philosophers decreased. In the
twentieth century logical positivism became influential and admitted only a limited
role for philosophy. The crisis in the positivist movement called for alternatives
such as more hermeneutical, pragmatic, critical and realist philosophies, which call
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for a renewed consideration of the relation between philosophy and science (as
well as between sociology, history and the politics of science, among other fields).
What the actual role of the discipline of philosophy is today may be further
investigated by, among others, bibliometrical methods. Such methods cannot,
however, describe what kinds of philosophical theory are needed as a consequence
of theoretical re-orientating within special fields such as LIS.
This view about the growing relevance of metatheory and the philosophy of science
has partly been verified by the growing interest in this subject in most academic fields
(perhaps especially in Europe). This can be seen from the growing popularity of
courses in this area as well as the steadily increasing number of textbooks and other
kinds of publications published about the philosophy of science in many specific fields
such as economics, law and medicine. Particularly in LIS education in Sweden in
general and at the Swedish School of Library and Information Science (SSLIS) in Borås
in particular the philosophy of science seems to have a strong position. This is reflected
in the authorship of the present issue. Of the eight papers in this issue three are
authored from SSLIS, and additionally one to two authors have formerly been
employed at this department and one has been guest researcher there.
To say that the philosophy of science has potentials of contributing to the
development of a special field like LIS is not to say that the needed kind of knowledge
is easily identified and applied. Dominant positions in the philosophy of science may
turn out to be less fruitful, and therefore it may be a time-consuming investment to
identify, understand and apply the views that have those potentials. In order to make
valuable contributions, we need people who have competencies in both the philosophy
of science or a particular metatheory and LIS. Unfortunately these kinds of double
qualifications are still rare in our field. This special issue is an attempt to make those
people and their arguments more visible in order to strengthen the cooperative work
towards a better theoretical foundation of LIS. An attempt has been made either to
invite those people as authors or referees or to cite them in the references in order to
strengthen our future cooperation. It is the aspiration of the editor that this collective
work may stimulate the further development of works that illuminate the connection
between the philosophy of science and LIS (and hopefully manifest itself in, among
other things, a more comprehensive collected work on this topic).
One may ask the opposite: “Has important research been done in LIS without
considering epistemological problems?” Of course we have important work in, for
 example, The Cranfield experiments, in the British Classification Research Group, in Library and
bibliometrics and so on. However, my claim is that even those examples tend to be too information
narrowly and unsatisfactorily based. It has been said about Ranganathan, for example,
that he only considered the strong sides of his own system and refused to consider the science
relative contributions of other approaches (Miksa, 1998). His approach seems unrelated
to general views about language and meaning, and his school seems somewhat
sectarian. I believe that this will always be the case if research traditions in LIS are too 7
narrow and uninformed by more broadly accepted theories. So, my claim is that we in
LIS really need to consider the theoretical and philosophical basis of our field. If this
was not my opinion, I would not recommend spending more time on such problems
because our field is in strong need of an improved knowledge base, and we have a
serious lack of researchers to build that base.
This issue is a part of the collected publications addressing the basic
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epistemological approaches to LIS. The most important collective predecessors were

the CoLIS conferences (Vakkari and Cronin, 1992; Ingwersen and Pors, 1996;
Aparac-Gazivoda and Saracevic, 1999; Bruce et al., 2002), papers in Library Quarterly
(including: Benoit, 2002; Budd, 1995, 2001; Burnett, 2002; Dick, 1995; Radford, 1992;
Trosow, 2001), a special issue of the journal Social Epistemology (Fallis, 2002) and most
recently an issue of Library Trends devoted to “The philosophy of information”
(Herold, 2004). There have also been some initiatives at the ASIS&T conferences, for
example, sessions on critical theory with contributions from Ronald E. Day and others
(see Day, 2001). The special aim of the present issue is the attempt to relate issues in
LIS more systematically to major philosophical movements from outside LIS. It may
well be the most systematic attempt made so far to present and discuss basic
epistemological issues in LIS.
In planning the issue, I have tried to identify authors who stand out as main
representatives of an important specific view within the LIS community (my own
paper on positivism is an exception). The plan was that each position should both be
introduced and interpreted in a LIS context together with a review of its influence
within our field and an evaluation of the pros and cons of that position. This was an
ideal plan, which did not turn out to be completely obtainable. It was also a plan to
which some authors and referees made the objection that standard sources were
available in which this kind of information can easily be found. I believe, however, that
it is important that such knowledge and debate are available within the LIS literature
itself, and not just in the literature of other disciplines. I also believe that the answers to
such questions as “What is positivism?” are not trivial ones and that we have to know
how they are used by the persons who use them in a LIS context.
The first two papers in the issue contain, from the point of view of the editor,
metatheoretical positions that are especially important. Marianne Wikgren’s short
paper introduces “Critical realism”, while Olof Sundin and Jenny Johannisson, in a
longer paper, introduce “Pragmatism, neo-pragmatism and sociocultural theory” with
the subtitle “Communicative participation as a perspective in LIS”. Wikgren has a PhD
and has a research background in both biology and in information science. Sundin has
a PhD in LIS and epistemological issues in relation to information needs, seeking and
use is a continuous interest in his research. Johannisson majored in philosophy and
cultural studies, but is currently a PhD-student in LIS. Both papers argue in a clear
way for the relevance of their respective positions. While many people find that there is
 JDOC a contradiction between a realist and a pragmatic position, I believe that both are
61,1 necessary and important (see Hjørland, 2004a, b). In realism, especially the view that
reality is stratified seems important. In the sociocultural theory especially the
non-reductive nature of social and cultural reality seems important. In spite of the
expression of explicit disagreement with realism by Sundin and Johannisson the two
papers should in my opinion be able to contribute to LIS without too much conflict.
8 Whether this is right or wrong is, of course, for the future to decide. One of the points in
which I see a similarity between critical realism and pragmatism is that critical realism
involves an emancipatory dimension and pragmatism is based on democratic values.
John Budd’s paper “Phenomenology and information studies” presents a position
that many regard as the most fruitful foundation for LIS. Gary P. Radford and Marie
L. Radford’s paper “Structuralism, post-structuralism, and the library: de Saussure and
Foucault” presents another “classical” view. Both papers have been written by authors
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with a long and dedicated engagement in those important views within a LIS context.
Their strength is the presentation of the positions rather than their analyses of specific
implications for LIS.
Sanna Talja, Kimmo Tuominen and Reijo Savolainen’s paper “‘Isms’ in information
science: constructivism, collectivism and constructionism” is somewhat different from
the rest of the papers in this issue. The focus is here more on the identification,
presentation and evaluation of what the authors see as three main approaches in LIS
today than it is a description of a classical external position and a discussion of its
reception and importance for LIS.
Joacim Hansson’s paper “Hermeneutics as a bridge between the modern and the
post-modern in library and information science” has been written by a person who
applied a critical hermeneutical perspective in analysing the Swedish classification
system SAB in his PhD. It is not focusing on discussing theoretical points within
hermeneutics, but rather on the reception of hermeneutics within LIS. Similarly Lars
Seldén’s paper “On Grounded Theory – with some malice” is based on an approach
applied in the author’s dissertation. From an epistemological point of view it is
interesting because Grounded Theory is an attempt to combine two rather different
epistemologies. The theoretical problems by doing this caused some problems in using
Grounded Theory in practice.
Finally Birger Hjørland’s paper “Empiricism, rationalism and positivism in library
and information science” presents and discusses epistemological positions that may be
seen as more classical and influential, and as positions which other positions very often
relate to – explicitly or implicitly.
Some important positions are not included in this issue. The decision to exclude
them has partly been taken because good papers are already available (e.g. Trosow
(2001) on “standpoint epistemology”) and partly because of space limitations.
Finally the Afterword looks at what has been accomplished in this issue and what
still need to be done.

Notes
1. Today there is no consensus in the use of terms such as paradigms, approaches,
methodologies and techniques, neither in LIS nor in general. (One suggestion of the mapping
of the relations between these terms is provided by Hvari et al. (2001)). At the general level
metatheories in LIS are, of course, related to the philosophy of science and to other
 philosophical subjects such as epistemology and ontology. It is outside the scope of this issue Library and
to address the meaning and relations of these terms, but there is a clear need for more papers
like the one cited above. information
2. In Scandinavian the terms “videnskabsteori” (theory of science) and “kunskapsteori” (theory science
of knowledge) are common. These terms may better reflect the content of this issue because
the Anglo-Saxon “philosophy of science” may be slightly differently understood.
3. Later on also the social sciences and partly the human sciences became “independent”. 9

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