Organization of Knowledge in Light of Egan and Shera’s Social Epistemology and Elias’ Symbol Theory

Abstract

Knowledge organization or information organization, in a narrower sense, is an area of Library and Information Science (LIS) concerned with activities such as document description, indexing, and classification performed in bibliographic and cybergraphic repositories for their rapid and economic retrieval for use by society. Knowledge organization is an essential second level knowledge product; while a first level knowledge production studies the scientific phenomenon via general social epistemology, especially in the guise commanded by Steve William Fuller’s program. In this second level, knowledge organization studies the problem of mechanisms and existing bibliographic systems and the extent to which they are congruent with the realities of the communication process and the findings of epistemological research via special social epistemology, an academic discipline created by Jesse Shera and Margaret Egan. Additionally, the definition of “symbol” as the essential object of information science is examined, following the theoretical foundation of information developed by Norbert Elias’ “The Symbol Theory”.