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A discussion of the nature of information is undertaken by bringing together the views of Brenda Dervin and Karl Popper on subjectivity and objectivity as these relate to information use. It is shown that while they take different routes, they come to similar positions. From the historical development of information science, some work on the problem of information management is selected to show the relevance of the philosophical discussion to the practice. The overall purpose is to establish information as an existent with which librarians and information scientists work in a peculiar way, resulting in the acts of classification and indexing as applied in information retrieval systems (or libraries). The nature of information and its relationship to human activities is seen to be fundamental to the practice and principles of the profession as well as the science. I use the word ‘librarian’ to indicate the intermediary since the word ‘intermediary’ can carry the meaning ‘human and/or non‐human’. Here we are concerned with human problems.

Keynes' criticisms of Tinbergen's pioneering econometric work are traced back to Keynes' concept of “inductive probability logic”. Induction had already been rejected by Popper as the basis of scientific method. He argued that theories could be corroborated but not proved by the failure of attempts to falsify them by observation and experiment. Economic theory is proto‐theory, which is not fully falsifiable, but which yields falsifiable results if appropriate econometric methods, or a method‐theory is applied to it. A useful method‐theory needs to go beyond description and forecasting to policy optimisation.

To develop a biological approach to the analysis of learning organisations based on complexity theory, autopoiesis, and evolutionary epistemology.

This paper synthesises ideas from disciplines ranging from physics, epistemology and philosophy of science to military affairs, to sketch a scientific framework in which the autopoietic status of any kind of complex system can be evaluated. The autopoietic framework also presents generic concepts of memory, learning and knowledge. The autopoietic status of human organisations is tested in relation to this framework, and some of the direct implications regarding organisational learning and adaptation are highlighted.

A new definition of autopoiesis adding sustainability to key requirements is developed. Theoretical ideas of Maturana and Varela, Popper, Pattee, Boyd, and Gould are synthesised and applied to large‐scale organisations to reveal their emergent, autopoietic, evolutionary (i.e. biological), and learning nature.

Many current studies and practices in knowledge management are based on only limited views of what constitutes knowledge in the organisation and have not been conducted within any visible framework for understanding the organisation's survival imperatives, or how the knowledge and processes being studied relate to the organisation's overall strategic aims. The framework presented here will lead towards the development of a sounder theoretical basis for studying knowledge and learning in organisations.

The author applies methodological concepts from The Poverty of Historicism to contemporary research in the area of entrepreneurship. This paper aims to explain why current theoretic models do not adequately explain entrepreneurial phenomena and to present outlines of a distinct entrepreneurship research paradigm.

The author examines the essay from the perspective of a historian and then summarizes its concepts. Next, the author reviews the current state of entrepreneurship research and theory and applies concepts from the essay to its contemporary challenges. Finally, the author presents five implications.

The five implications are that entrepreneurship research should include designs that predict failure, strive to develop theory that is distinct from other areas, emphasize novel arrangements of empirical elements that are also novel, utilize nonparametric statistics and case studies more fully, and push for a paradigmatic shift.

The contribution of this paper is useful to entrepreneurship scholars interested in developing and distinguishing their research area in a substantial and lasting way alongside other established research areas in the domain of business studies.

Introduction Economics has been defined and re‐defined several times in the past, and even within the dominant scientific orientation of the discipline, there are currently a number of alternative definitions. One of the definitions, which has been gaining increasing popularity in recent years is “economics as the science of choices.” This definition focuses on the fundamental objective of the discipline as currently formulated, namely, the optimum allocation of resources through appropriate choices, or in other words, the development of economic engineering based on science. We will use the concept of choices as the convenient point of entry into the exploration of the nature of economic reality, or its ontology.

At the end of the European Middle Ages, as the Church slowly lost its monopoly held on truth and meaning, the traditional foundations of knowledge crumbled, initiating an epistemological crisis that continues to haunt Western thought. The problem became how can we have confidence in our theories and beliefs. What grounds their validity? Bacon's empiricism and Descartes' rationalism were the most concerted and influential early attempts to resolve the crisis. But their resolutions were soon found inadequate, and ever since, the search for a way to provide a solid foundation for our knowledge has been the dominant concern of philosophy. The last grandiose and influential attempt at resolution was positivism. But positivism too has fallen into disfavor. The epistemological crisis endures.

Should information science ever succeed in establishing itself as a scientific discipline distinguishable from the other sciences which have already contributed to its presumed field of study, then Robert Fairthorne will be recognized as among its founders. His primary contribution was to define its scope, to clarify its terminology, and to establish its fundamental principles. Maintaining close sceptical watch over the information scene for more than twenty years, Fairthorne dissected the problems of this period of development by applying to them the keen cutting edge of his logic, mathematics, and Shannon information theory. He applied these instruments of analysis and criticism with firmness of purpose, clear insight, and meticulous precision and so evolved a theory of documentation.

This article presents a theoretical investigation of the concept of ‘subject’ or ‘subject matter’ in library and information science. Most conceptions of ‘subject’ in the literature are not explicit but implicit. Various indexing and classification theories, including automatic indexing and citation indexing, have their own more or less implicit concepts of subject. This fact puts the emphasis on making the implicit theories of ‘subject matter’ explicit as the first step. A very close connection exists between what subjects are, and how we are to know them. Those researchers who place the subjects in the minds of the users have a conception of ‘subject’ different to that possessed by those who regard the subject as a fixed property of the documents. The key to the definition of the concept of ‘subject’ lies in the epistemological investigation of how we are going to know what we need to know about documents in order to describe them in a way which facilitates information retrieval. The second step therefore is an analysis of the implicit epistemological conceptions in the major existing conceptions of ‘subject’. The different conceptions of ‘subject’ can therefore be classified into epistemological positions, e.g. ‘subjective idealism’ (or the empiric/positivistic viewpoint), ‘objective idealism’ (the rationalistic viewpoint), ‘pragmatism’ and ‘materialism/ realism’. The third and final step is to propose a new theory of subject matter based on an explicit theory of knowledge. In this article this is done from the point of view of a realistic/materialistic epistemology. From this standpoint the subject of a document is defined as the epistemological potentials of that document.

1. Reason as the Source of Knowledge For medieval men, the existence of a personal and acting God was beyond any doubt. They were convinced that God intervenes into and interferes with the course of the world. The acting of God was a main factor for the explanation of natural phenomena. But with the passing of time, the understanding of nature improved and more and more phenomena could be explained by appeal to reason only and without recourse to actions of God. It became the general opinion that natural phenomena are subject to invariable natural laws. This clear departure from the God‐related understanding of nature happened when modern philosophy emerged in the 17th and 18th century. This modern philosophy saw nature as a mechanic construction. One of the leading philosophers of that period, Rene Descartes, argued that the laws of mechanics are the laws of nature. Descartes, the founder of rationalistic philosophy, was no atheist, but when he referred to God, it was only to become sure that what is clear (and rational) is also true.

This chapter documents an exchange between Leonard Savage, founder of the subjective probability approach to decision-making, and Karl Popper, advocate of the so-called propensity approach to probability, of which there is no knowledge in the literature on probability theory. Early in 1958, just after being informally tested by Daniel Ellsberg with a test of consistency in decision-making processes that originated the so-called Ellsberg Paradox, Savage was made aware that a similar argument had been put forward by Popper. Popper found it paradoxical that two apparently similar events should be attributed the same subjective probability even though evidence supporting judgment in one case was different than in the other case. On this ground, Popper rejected the subjective probability approach. Inspection of the Savage Papers archived at Yale University Library makes it possible to document Savage’s reaction to Popper, of which there is no evidence in his published writings. Savage wrote to Popper denying that his criticism had paradoxical content and a brief exchange followed. The chapter shows that while Savage was unconvinced by Popper’s argument he was not hostile to an axiomatically founded generalization of his theory.