Search results

The purpose of this paper is to critically evaluate the state of the art of applications of organisational systematics and manufacturing cladistics in terms of strengths and weaknesses and introduce new generic cladistic and hierarchical classifications of discrete manufacturing systems. These classifications are the basis for a practical web-based expert system and diagnostic benchmarking tool.

There were two stages for the research methods, with eight re-iterative steps: one for theory building, using secondary and observational data, producing conceptual classifications; the second stage for theory testing and theory development, using quantitative data from 153 companies and 510 manufacturing systems, producing the final factual cladogram. Evolutionary relationships between 53 candidate manufacturing systems, using 13 characters with 84 states, are hypothesised and presented diagrammatically. The manufacturing systems are also organised in a hierarchical classification with 13 genera, 6 families and 3 orders under one class of discrete manufacturing.

This work addressed several weaknesses of current manufacturing cladistic classifications which include the lack of an explicit out-group comparison, limited conceptual cladogram development, limited use of characters and that previous classifications are specific to sectors. In order to correct these limitations, the paper first expands on previous work by producing a more generic manufacturing system classification. Second, it describes a novel web-based expert system for the practical application of the discrete manufacturing system.

The classifications form the basis for a practical web-based expert system and diagnostic benchmarking tool, but also have a novel use in an educational context as it simplifies and relationally organises extant manufacturing system knowledge.

The research employed a novel re-iterative methodology for both theory building, using observational data, producing the conceptual classification, and through theory testing developing the final factual cladogram that forms the basis for the practical web-based expert system and diagnostic tool.

The purpose of this paper is to establish pluralism as the basis for bibliographic classification theory and practice and examine the possibility of establishing trustworthy classifications.

The paper examines several key notions in classification and extends previous frameworks by combining an explanation‐based approach to classification with the concepts of cognitive authority and trust.

The paper presents an understanding of classification that allows designers and editors to establish trust through the principle of transparency. It demonstrates that modern classification theory and practice are tied to users' activities and domains of knowledge and that trustworthy classification systems are in close dialogue with users to handle bias responsible and establish trust.

The paper establishes a foundation for exploring trust and authority for classification systems.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an answer to a critique put forward by Szostak against a paper written by the present author.

The paper is based on a literature‐based conceptual analysis based on Hjørland and Nissen Pedersen and Szostak. The main points in a core theory of classification are outlined and Szostak's criticism is examined and answered.

The paper demonstrates theoretical differences between the views adduced by Hjørland and Nissen Pedersen on the one side and by Szostak on the other.

Theoretical clarification is important for the future development of the field.

The paper should be seen as one among others developing an argument for a theoretical foundation of classification informed by the theory of knowledge.

Classification is an important process in making sense of the world, and has a pronounced social dimension. This paper aims to compare folksonomy, a new social classification system currently being developed on the web, with conventional taxonomy in the light of theoretical sociological and anthropological approaches. The co‐existence of these two types of classification system raises the questions: Will and should taxonomies be hybridized with folksonomies? What can each of these systems contribute to information‐searching processes, and how can the sociology of knowledge provide an answer to these questions? This paper aims also to address these issues.

This paper is situated at the meeting point of the sociology of knowledge, epistemology and information science and aims at examining systems of classification in the light of both classical theory and current late‐modern sociological and anthropological approaches.

Using theoretical approaches current in the sociology of science and knowledge, the paper envisages two divergent possible outcomes.

While concentrating on classifications systems, this paper addresses the more general social issue of what we know and how it is known. The concept of hybrid knowledge is suggested in order to illuminate the epistemological basis of late‐modern knowledge being constructed by hybridizing contradictory modern knowledge categories, such as the subjective with the objective and the social with the natural. Integrating tree‐like taxonomies with folksonomies or, in other words, generating a naturalized structural order of objective relations with social, subjective classification systems, can create a vast range of hybrid knowledge.

The purpose of this article is to introduce, describe, and critically examine the IBM and Hewlett‐Packard PANOSE systems of (electronic) font classification. Microsoft's TrueType Font (TTF) file format allows font developers the option of classifying their fonts according to one or both systems, and writing that information into a special location in the TTF file for use by other software.

A comprehensive survey of 13,000 TTF files was examined for information about their use of either classification system.

The classification systems are intended to help perform font substitution, as used when (part of) a document asks to be displayed in a font that is not present on the user's computer system, in which case the next nearest font is automatically chosen. However, of the nine sources of font compendia examined, only three had supplied adequate information about their fonts’ classifications in order to make this process workable. The other six sources had almost no coverage. When a font was classified by both classification systems, the two systems mapped poorly on to each other, suggesting that at least one system must be ill‐specified. PANOSE, the more detailed and slightly more popular system, showed poor internal consistency.

Sampling of the universe of fonts was opportunistic, and avoided expensive font developers who may be more conscientious adopters of the classification systems. The reliance on historic secondary data means that it is not always possible to distinguish between limitations of the systems per se and limitations of the users of the systems. This article's arguments are based on data derived from difficult‐to‐picture distinctions.

Fonts are rarely classified at the source of manufacture or distribution. To compensate for this shortcoming, software tools are required that can classify TTF files at the point of use (i.e. on one's own system) and fill in the information which is missing from the TTF files found there. Furthermore, a better classification of fonts is required, in particular one that does justice to the variety and richness of display fonts. This should break free from the hard‐to‐perceive minutiae of traditional, historically‐derived methods. Instead, it should be psychologically grounded in the distinctions that people (i.e. the users) see in fonts, rather than those taught to graphic designers.

Provides an examination of font classification in TTF files from three angles and calls for an empirically‐driven font classification.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the conflicting varieties between cognitive linguistics and animal motivation on one hand and between emotions and motivations on another, and to show how the construction of an artificial personality led to understanding the differences from a cybernetic perspective, and to reconcile and benefit from them.

The design of the artificial personality is built on a core of dual regulator structure as a model of motivation and cognition. The regulating core does not address areas of linguistics and emotions, thus the need to interface with functions from well-researched disciplines in these areas as peripheries to the core. Different disciplines were viewed from a cybernetic perspective, where the variety of categories primarily used in these disciplines was compared numerically and the problem was defined as a search for methods to reducing the varieties between disciplines.

The interfaces between the core of artificial personality and the peripheries are seen as either regulators, which reduce variety, or generators of variety.

The approach to reconcile cross-disciplinary differences based on comparing the numerical variety of categories is understood to be original. The reduction of comparison to numerical counts removes hard-to-reconcile qualitative differences and retains the simplicity of quantitative differences. Qualitative cross-disciplinary differences benefit the specialists and protect them from competition with each other. By reconciling cross-disciplinary differences the artificial personality develops across disciplines and achieves multi-disciplinary transparency. The specialists may not welcome the competition but science, technology and society in general will benefit from reduced duplication, improved information flow and integration. This work is a small step in understanding and learning to reconcile differences between disciplines.

Prior research has shown the effectiveness of inquiry education in increasing content knowledge and motivation. Improving learners’ epistemologies is an additional component that should be examined when considering inquiry effectiveness. The basis for students’ participation in inquiry-based science education (IBSE) is to emulate the scientific process in classroom learning – and, by extension, to alter their scientific epistemologies. In this chapter, we discuss the challenges associated with the construction and assessment of IBSE. First, despite it being a common underlying theoretical framework of inquiry units, assessments of learning outcomes rarely reflect a consideration of students’ changing epistemologies. Second, we examine whether inquiry practices in the classroom are constructed to alter students’ epistemologies. We integrate preliminary research findings from a week-long, researcher-taught ecology inquiry unit with urban adolescents, reporting on posttest assessments of students’ thoughts on sources of knowledge, their ecology content knowledge, and their understanding of the nature of science. While we expected this unit to foster learner epistemology, our results did not confirm our expectations. In fact, students who participated in the inquiry unit were outperformed by a comparison group matched on age and ethnicity in several unexpected areas relevant to learner epistemology. This chapter explores explanations of unexpected findings and recommendations for the future assessment and practice of inquiry couched in challenges associated with current challenges to instructing and assessing learner epistemology.

The purpose of this paper, which increases and deepens what was expressed in a previous work (Mazzocchi et al., 2007), is to scrutinize the underlying assumptions of the types of relations included in thesauri, particularly the genus-species relation. Logicist approaches to information organization, which are still dominant, will be compared with hermeneutically oriented approaches. In the light of these approaches, the nature and features of the relations, and what the notion of a priori could possibly mean with regard to them, are examined, together with the implications for designing and implementing knowledge organizations systems (KOS).

The inquiry is based on how the relations are described in literature, engaging in particular a discussion with Hjørland (2015) and Svenonius (2004). The philosophical roots of today’s leading views are briefly illustrated, in order to put them under perspective and deconstruct the uncritical reception of their authority. To corroborate the discussion a semantic analysis of specific terms and relations is provided too.

All relations should be seen as “perspectival” (not as a priori). On the other hand, different types of relations, depending on the conceptual features of the terms involved, can hold a different degree of “stability.” On this basis, they could be used to address different information concerns (e.g. interoperability vs expressiveness).

Some arguments that the paper puts forth at the conceptual level need to be tested in application contexts.

This paper considers that the standpoint of logic and of hermeneutic (usually seen as conflicting) are both significant for information organization, and could be pragmatically integrated. In accordance with this view, an extension of thesaurus relations’ set is advised, meaning that perspective hierarchical relations (i.e. relations that are not logically based but function contingently) should be also included in such a set.

The current field of systems thinking consists of a variety of views, methods and a number of organisations involved with these views which suggests a state of confusion and fragmentation of the field which fundamentally is supposed to be a uniform view of structures or systems. This can be interpreted as a “crisis situation”. A resolution of the crisis in the form of a “new science of systems” is proposed. Assuming this new science becomes part of the field of systems thinking, a debate of the elements of the field is suggested with a view to consider its current state and future developments. “Crisis - resolution - debate” is the central theme of the paper.

The field of current systems thinking is described in terms of views, methods and organisations and is seen as the “problematic issue”. A “new science of systems” strongly rooted in natural language as its primary symbolism and consisting of three general principles of systems and linguistic modelling is outlined to be considered as the resolution of the crisis. A set of criteria is discussed for use of judging the quality of models and element of the field of systems thinking including the “new science of systems”. To demonstrate a preliminary use of these criteria, the same example is worked out using both, the “soft systems methodology” and “linguistic modelling” for comparison.

The universal view of parts of the world as structures or systems is inconsistent with the multiple methods basically pursuing the same purpose: modelling aspects of systems which prevail in current systems thinking. To try to resolve this anomaly an equally universally applicable approach, the “new science of systems” is proposed which can also serve as an aid to problem solving, in particular to an integrated systems and product design. This approach is to be part of the suggested debate of the field of systems thinking. In general, there is no alternative to the structural view.

The “new science of systems”, if found acceptable, can offer research opportunities in new applications of accepted branches of knowledge like logic, linguistics, mathematics of ordered pairs, uncertainties and in the philosophy of science. New teaching schemes can be developed at classroom level combined with engineering as creator of novelties with linguistics as the symbolism to supplement mathematics. Further considerations can be given to current methodologies of systems thinking as part of a debate with a view of future developments in exploring pioneering ideas. New software is needed for working out the dynamics of scenarios.

The debate, if it takes place, should result in new developments in the field of systems thinking such as concepts accepted as fundamental in the discipline of systems. Applications of the “new science of systems” to larger scale scenarios and organisations guided by the universal scheme in Figure 1 and linguistic modelling with software are needed for development of schemes for problem solving schemes “utilising” or “producing” products.

The “new science of systems” is rooted in accepted branches of knowledge; it is highly teachable at school and university levels and should lead to use by professionals and in everyday life activities once found acceptable. The use of the scheme in Figure 1 should help in clarifying confusing scenarios and to aid problem solving.

The suggestion of a debate is an original idea. The “new science of systems” consists of three general principles of systems implemented by linguistic modelling of static and dynamic states. Mathematics of uncertainty and topics from conventional science at the object level supplement the “new science” which together form the “scientific enterprise”. The notions of cognitive value and informative content of models are introduced for evaluating their cognitive worth.

Several bibliographical citation systems are in regular use in scholarly literature, associated with various intellectual disciplines. The aim of this paper is to document an analysis of their designs in the biosciences in order to construct a classification and to assess their comparative effectiveness for information transfer.

A historical survey of communications between scholars, including the reasons why authors cite others' works, was completed. The development of citation systems, specifically the Harvard system and various numeric systems, was traced, following which a universal classification with a new descriptive terminology was constructed.

Citation systems are defined herein as direct (with citation and reference together in the text) or indirect (with citation within the text, and reference outside the text). Direct systems may be described as implicit (the Linnaean style with abbreviated, undated, conceptual reference) or explicit (with full, dated, bibliographical reference). All indirect systems are explicit: the text citation (the referens) may be alphabetic, symbolic, numeric or alphanumeric and the reference (the referendum) may be a marginal note, footnote or end reference. A survey of citation systems in 101 bioscience journals is presented. Within indirect systems, most biomedical journals use a numeric system, but most veterinary, zoological and general biological journals use the Harvard system, which is considered herein to be the most effective for information transfer.

No philosophical analysis of citation systems appears to have been carried out before. Based upon historical, conceptual and logical aspects, a robust universal classification with a new descriptive terminology is presented to facilitate the unambiguous discussion of the principles and designs of citation systems. The classification and terminology are applicable to citation systems in any discipline.