The tacking knowledge strategy claudio ciborra, konrad lorenz and the ecology of information systems

Abstract

This work focuses on an issue that Lorenz identifies as fundamental among human cognitive strategies: what we could call the tacking knowledge strategy. Knowledge doesn't go on straight: like a sailing boat coursing against the wind, it must turn and turn again, frequently changing its approaches. This strategy implies that rationality is not, according to Lorenz, the apex and the fulfilment of a linear improving process in biology of knowledge; it is a phase and an instrument, transitory as all the others are. Studying the swinging strategies of human knowledge, in effects, Lorenz gets to several issues which seem peculiarly useful to cope with Ciborra's concerns about the complex, unforeseeable and social nature of Information Systems. © 2008 Physica-Verlag Heidelberg.