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Abstract
Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to examine the importance and influence of the epistemologies: "empiricism", "rationalism" and "positivism" in library and information science (LIS).
Design/methodology/approach - First, outlines the historical development of these epistemologies, by discussing and identifying basic characteristics in them and by introducing the criticism that has been raised against these views. Second, their importance for and influence in LIS have been examined.
Findings - The findings of this paper are that it is not a trivial matter to define those epistemologies and to characterise their influence. Many different interpretations exist and there is no consensus regarding current influence of positivism in LIS. Arguments are put forward that empiricism and positivism are still dominant within LIS and specific examples of the influence on positivism in LIS are provided. A specific analysis is made of the empiricist view of information seeking and it is shown that empiricism may be regarded as a normative theory of information seeking and knowledge organisation.
Originality/value - The paper discusses basic theoretical issues that are important for the further development of LIS as a scholarly field.
Keywords Epistemology, Libraries, Information science, Philosophy
Paper type Conceptual paper
1. Introduction
Empiricism is the view that experiences, observations or sense data are the only or the most important way of acquiring knowledge. Rationalism is the view that rational intuitions are the most important way of acquiring knowledge. Positivism is today mostly regarded as a form of empiricism, but historically this is not the case. Logical positivism was a twentieth century attempt to combine empiricism and rationalism. In the social sciences and in library and information science (LIS) positivism has been associated with the question concerning the relative values of scientific versus humanistic approaches, although it is wrong just to associate positivism with scientific methods or interpretative methods with the humanities.
Empiricism, rationalism and positivism are important concepts in the philosophy of science and thus also in all specifie sciences including LIS. They are often interpreted differently and considerable variations exist in descriptions of their nature and their influence in LIS. This is the reason this paper takes a deeper look at these concepts and their meaning in general as well as in a LIS context.
One misunderstanding...