This book is volume 7 of the series Information Science and Knowledge Management. It is about a new classification system of sciences, including natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. With the idea of a unified "science enterprise," the author proposes a set of typologies to reveal the internal structure of all scientific disciplines. This classification system first divides all scientific investigations into four constituent elements of the phenomena and data investigated, the theories employed, the methods adopted, and the practices of scientists. It then provides a list of potentially exhaustive subcategories of each of these aspects. By doing so, the author hopes to promote an interdisciplinary perspective, revolutionize scientific document organization, and advance curriculum reform. This endeavor embodies most of Professor Szostak's research in the past several years of developing a "map" of the scholarly "enterprise" that bridges the gaps among all disciplines. Many arguments can also be found in his previous papers and articles.
Because science in Western tradition has been divided along strict disciplinary lines, it has tended to develop a subject-oriented vertical classification that reveals its limitations. Each discipline tends to develop its own favored theories and methods, and jargon makes crossdisciplinary communication difficult. Also practitioners in different disciplines study the same phenomena and causal links in isolation and reach different interpretations. Further, scientists continue to reinvent the wheel because of the extreme difficulties of identifying literature of other disciplines. Nowadays with science evolving and scientific study going beyond disciplinary boundaries, a "horizontal view" has emerged, and the relationships of research across disciplines have received more and more attention. This timely book focuses on this need and makes a serious attempt to fill the knowledge gap with an exhaustive classification system that is based on a common series of questions and criteria for all scientific investigations.
In Chapter 1, the author introduces his fundamental method, the 5W questions (What?, Why?, When?, Where?, and Who?), and applies them to the general process of a scientific investigation to make his "first cut": what produces the answers of phenomena (pertaining to human science) and data (pertaining to natural science), why generates the answer theory, how (where and when) is the method, and who refers to scientist, whose practice brings individuality to the investigation. The 5W questions are also used in the following chapters to classify each of the five elements further.
Chapter 2 classifies phenomena, and then data, and discusses the advantages of these classifications. Phenomena are defined as "enduring aspects of human existence or natural occurrence"; data, mostly pertaining to natural sciences, are defined as "what can be observed by the five senses of man." The author argues that there is a lack of meaningful classification across the lines of most disciplines, which results in no logical division of disciplines. Gaps occur when several disciplines study the same phenomena in isolation or a phenomenon is ignored by all. In this chapter, the author proposes to divide all phenomena of human science into 10 categories. This typology, along with two more levels of subcategories, is presented in table fashion. According to the author, this typology spans the spectrum of the human