I-school
Science is developed in its own paradigm. So my question is if i‐science is a new paradigm. If it is a paradigm then which paradigm does it replace? What are the fundamentals shared by i‐scientists? From the philosophy of IST's I, T and P triangle, it seems to me that i‐science is not trying to replace previous paradigm. Instead, i‐science is aimed at integrating existing paradigms to form an integrated paradigm called i‐science. After a close look at the philosophy of other schools in the i‐community, we can find that although i‐schools claim to that they "are interested in the relationship between information, technology, and people", they have different approaches to study this relationship. This could also be proved from the curriculum design. It could be found that different ischools have different curriculum design, which means that so far there is not a philosophy or method that is shared by all the ischools. In this sense, i‐schools are pre‐mature as a paradigm.
On the flip side, there is another possibility that i‐science may not be a new paradigm. It is possible that i‐science is just a new development of a normal science. Having no shared philosophy of ideas and method is really very dangerous for the development of a new paradigm. A case in point is the field called "Artificial life"[1]. During the heydays of the "artificial life" movement in the 1980s and 1990s, although there were two or three pieces of strikingly successful work, no people would like to consolidate them. Everyone was trying to do things from scratch in their own way. Without shared philosophy and methods, it is inevitable that the development of this field stops. From the analysis above, we can see that right now the most important thing for i‐science promoters to think is to identify i‐science, to see what the fundamentals of i‐science are, so as to have a shared philosophy among i-schools.
The thing that i-school that attracts me is the fact that i-school is very interdisciplinary. Here, I can have the opportunity to train myself from the angles information, people and technology, to make myself a well developed i-scientist.
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Good!
Hi Honglu,
I liked your blogpost. however, i just have one question. down the line, if ischools go about integrating different paradigms and methods, bringing forth a new 'ischool paradigm', then does that paradigm again creates its own 'boundary' and stop being inclusive? is it better to continue in a state of flux (which some call it as pre-mature), than trying to derive an *i-school paradigm*?
Hi Arvind,
That is a good question. To answer this question, let's consider that is a paradigm, and why paradigm is necessary and important.
According to Kuhn, "A paradigm is what members of a scientific community, and they alone, share.” Basically, people in the same paradigm have basic assumptions that they all share. Based on these agreements, science is developed. Otherwise, the only things can grow are conflicts.
When it comes to the point that when people in the same paradigm can not agree with each other, which probably means that some one finds that there are some errors in the assumptions that they previously agreed upon, and these people insist that these assumptions impede the development of science, then, at this time, a phenomenon called paradigm shift takes place. And science is developed further.
So back to your question,a quick answer would be that science needs to be developed within a paradigm,(that is why always "pre-mature" is not good) and scientific breakthroughs take place when paradigm shifts.