Abstract: New abstractions and new procedures for abstraction are needed in information science. Some of them should concern the nature and function of knowledge regarding the adaptability of complex, informational entities. Knowledge “in action” manifests itself as an improved adaptability of the informational entity to its environment, and as a redirection and enlargement of its self-construction processes. If taken beyond its usual anthropocentric conception, knowledge not only underlies the guidance of human actions and perceptions within appropriately restricted cognitive settings (or disciplinary fields), it also orientates –among others– the biomolecular happenstances of cells, and the processual workings of individual nervous systems. And it does so, as will be argued here, by incurring in a peculiar dynamics of similar recombination processes performed upon heterogeneous repositories of very different physical nature, which factually increase the cognizing reach of the concerned informational entity and leverage the conquest of further adaptability niches and complexity developments. Actually the growth of informational complexity of cells, nervous systems, and societies along their respective evolutionary, ontogenetic, and historical trajectories has been based on the cumulative consequences of knowledge recombination phenomena. However, the recognition of this commonality has been obscured, among other causes, by the structural and dynamic heterogeneity of repositories in the different informational entities, and by being subject of quite separated scientific disciplines: molecular and evolutionary biology, cognitive neurodynamics, philosophy of science/”geography” of science. In the extent to which such commonalities may be elucidated from a new vantage point, it would help in the development of information science itself, as well as in the pragmatics of education, in the social organization of science, and in the research effort of contemporary societies. Finally, the new term of “scientomics” is proposed in order to capture the knowledge combinatory processes and disciplinary mixings within the sciences.

Keywords: Information science, Knowledge recombination, Cells, Nervous systems, Neurodynamic central theory, Scientific recombination, Scientomics

Link:

KNOWLEDGE RECOMBINATION ON THE INFORMATIONAL ADAPTABILITY OF CELLS, NERVOUS SYSTEMS, AND SOCIETIES

Pedro C. Marijuán

http://www.foibg.com/ijita/vol18/ijita18-1-p01.pdf