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The Blind Men and the Elephant: Towards an Organization of Epistemic Contexts

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Introduction to Cybersemiotics: A Transdisciplinary Perspective

Part of the book series: Biosemiotics ((BSEM,volume 21))

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Abstract

In the last two decades of knowledge organization (KO) research, there has been an increasing interest in the context-dependent nature of human knowledge. Contextualism maintains that knowledge is not available in a neutral and objective way, but is always interwoven with the process of knowledge production and the prerequisites of the knower. As a first step towards a systematic organization of epistemic contexts, the concept of knowledge will be considered in its ontological (WHAT) and epistemological (WHO) including methodological (HOW) dimensions. In current KO research, however, either the contextualism is not fully implemented (classification-as-ontology) or the ambition for a context-transcending universal KOS seems to have been abandoned (classification-as-epistemology). Based on a combined ontology and epistemology it will be argued that a phenomena-based approach to KO as stipulated by the León Manifesto, for example, requires a revision of the underlying phenomenon concept as a relation between the known object (WHAT) and the knowing subject (WHO), which is constituted by the application of specific methods (HOW). While traditional subject indexing of documents often relies on the organizing principle “levels of being” (WHAT), for a future context indexing, two novel principles are proposed, namely “levels of knowing” (WHO) and “integral methodological pluralism” (HOW).

This chapter was original published as an article in the journal Knowledge Organization under the following reference: Kleineberg, M. (2013). The Blind Men and the Elephant: Towards an Organization of Epistemic Contexts, in Knowledge Organization. 40(5), 340–362. The text is reproduced with the publisher permission and the author supervision.

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  1. Berlin School of Libary and Information Science, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Michael Kleineberg

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  1. Michael Kleineberg
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  1. University of Guadalajara, Guadalajara, Mexico

    Carlos Vidales

  2. Copenhagen Business School, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Søren Brier

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Kleineberg, M. (2021). The Blind Men and the Elephant: Towards an Organization of Epistemic Contexts. In: Vidales, C., Brier, S. (eds) Introduction to Cybersemiotics: A Transdisciplinary Perspective. Biosemiotics, vol 21. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52746-4_7

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