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Philosophy: Underpinnings of Knowledge Organization

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The Elements of Knowledge Organization

Abstract

As we saw in the chapter just past, the province of knowledge organization is much broader than many suspect. It is not simply the matter of indexing documents for retrieval. As Hjørland (2008) points out so eloquently, knowledge organization is closely related to the theory of knowledge itself, in a primary way. If the essential phenomenon of our domain is knowledge, then obvious questions arise as to what is known, and how it is known. The fundamental question of knowledge organization brings us to an even more basic level as we seek always to ask “what is?” Therefore, it is essential that we have a proper grounding in ontology (the study of being) and epistemology (the study of knowing), and we are best served as a multidisciplinary science by turning to philosophy for answers unfiltered by the activities of scholars in other domains touching on our own. Here I begin with some basic definitions that will to understand the nature of knowledge, and therefore, of how it can be organized.

Portions of this text appeared as Chapter 1. Introduction: theory, knowledge organization, epistemology, culture. In Smiraglia, Richard P. and Hur-Li Lee eds. 2012. Cultural frames of knowledge. Würzburg: Ergon Verlag, pp. 1–17. Reprinted by permission.

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  1. University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI, USA

    Richard P. Smiraglia

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Smiraglia, R.P. (2014). Philosophy: Underpinnings of Knowledge Organization. In: The Elements of Knowledge Organization. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09357-4_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09357-4_3

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