Information Science : Theory and Concepts.

[Guptnath Trivedi]

what is "Science" part in Information Science?

Rational Answers are expected.

[Siddhartha Shankar Ray]

Dear Sri Guptnath Trivedi,

Many thanks for your post and for raising an widely debated issue!

In our days during 80's we often faced the question Whither Library Science is SCIENCE or ARTS?? After many years, seeing the virtually same question I understood that the issue is still debated!!

Anyway, You have asked about INFORMATION SCIENCE.

In short, the analytical part of Information Science is Science beyond doubt.

The analytical part in my opinion is the part that deals with Scientometric Aspects. There might be other opinions (somebody can say of some other areas and can explain their points quite brilliantly!!) but as I feel, the analysis of Information, both qualitative as well as quantitative, can only be done Scientifically. Even Information forecasting (as used to be done routinely by Dr. Eugene Garfield in the 80's and 90's in exceptionally brilliant way for probable Nobel laureates) is based upon Scientific factual principles.

I have no idea of your age and type of employment/nature of job but if you can go through the old CURRENT COMMENTS appeared in weekly Current Contents throughout 1980-1999 or even later, and the issues of the Newspaper "The Scientist" published by the then ISI Press [As I can still recall it was at the address 3501, Market Street, University City Science Centre, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA in a Ware House designed cream Coloured Building] or the volumes of Essays of an Information Scientist you will certainly realize how Science helped I can refer one single article by Murray & Livney in the fitst issue of the Bulletin of the MLA, 1995 ( probably vol. 83; #1) and the references.

The article is available as an open source. If you read it and so also the articles in the references, you will understand my comments and statements.

Sincerely,

Siddhartha S. Ray, Calcutta

[Guptnath Trivedi]