Information Science

Published 13 March 2009

Scientific information

Emilia Curras
University Professor
AHDI. Honorary Member 2003. IIS Fellow
Medalla de Oro. Foundation Prof. Kaula
SEI, Honorary Professor

From my point of view, the concept of “scientific information” requires certain a bit of explanation for proper comprehension. In previous publications, I have made several references to the adjective “scientific”, I believe that it comes from the word “science” which implies the use of a logical and coherent method of work.

Therefore, whenever this form is adopted, one can refer to something as “scientific”. Any information prepared, be it by manual or automatic methods, will be “scientific information”, no matter what subject it is applied to. In other words, we shall speak equally of scientific information when we refer to history, law, or physics.

It is true, however, that if we consider science to be the process by means of which we achieve knowledge of real things according to their origins and causes, we exclude here any branch of human learning that refer to abstract reasoning of mental discourse. Therefore, we treat only the subjects of the experimental sciences, such as, chemistry, physics, medicine, biology, geology, and technology.

Even though this latter concept is more restrictive than the former in that it reduce its sphere of action, its attribute, peculiarities, characteristics and methodology are similar and can be applied equally in either case.

It would perhaps be convenient to remember how the concept of scientific information has changed over the ages.

The term “information” has always existed, even though its existence was not known consciously, nor was it studied outside the sphere of linguistics. With the arrival of the Modern Age, man became conscious of everything that it meant, not only of its terminology, but also of its content, of its importance in the development of industrial processes, and of the experimental sciences themselves. More or less coinciding with the so called industrial revolution, the expression “scientific information” began to appear, referring to the subject it dealt with. Its methods of elaboration was manual. As society continued to evolve, the mass media became popular and referred to information. The difference between mass information and scientific information is accentuated. But halfway through the 20th century, semiconductors have made their appearance on the social and scientific scene, and with them computers, cybernetics and computing. Machinery has replaced much manual work. Documentation techniques are not applied solely to the experimental sciences, but are progressively and successively used in every branch of human learning. It is now though that scientific information must refer to the method used and not to the subject. In certain Anglo-Saxon countries where computing is becoming common, this idea is becoming even more accentuated and is used almost exclusively as a synonym for documentary computing or automatized information.

We have now arrived at a point of coexistence between these three meanings of the expression “scientific information”.

In the present paper, we study the influence of science on the global processing of information. We cannot conceive that there could be any difference between the three meanings of scientific information, although for reason of explicitness, our reflections will be centred upon scientific information referring to matters related to the experimental sciences, where we shall include technology as an applied subject.

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