• DOI:10.1207/S15327000EM0303_3
• Corpus ID: 51851155

The Hidden Ontology: Real-World Evolutionary Systems Concept as Key to Information Science

@article{Hofkirchner2001TheHO,
  title={The Hidden Ontology: Real-World Evolutionary Systems Concept as Key to Information Science},
  author={Wolfgang Hofkirchner},
  journal={Emergence},
  year={2001},
  volume={3},
  pages={22-41}
}

• W. Hofkirchner
• Published 1 September 2001
• Computer Science
• Emergence

An as yet to be developed unified theory of information will have to be based on the most advanced insights into the evolution and order of what we perceive as our world Contributions to the development of a theory of such evolutionary systems often use concepts of emergence without elaborating the ontological dimension Particularly its presuppositions about causality and determinism remain unclear A less strict determinism in causal relationships as well as a concept of the stages of systemic evolution however will be shown to be prerequisites for a proper understanding of information phenomena The Quest for a Unified Theory of Information Since the nature of the global challenges facing the system of world society is widely recognized to be complex and all encompassing these challenges require to be approached in an as complex and all encompassing a way (Mainzer ) After centuries of predominance of the analytical ratio i e the modern Western controlled (natural) sciences critics like to call for a paradigm change in academic thinking in the direction of a synthetic overall view However this integrative view of what can be perceived by human intelligence does not need to indeed must not be a return to the pre modern vision of the speculative natural philosophy of Antiquity Rather it can and must assimilate the knowledge gained from research in all disciplines in an historical process which rises from the abstract to the concrete That is what philosophers aim at when they want science to revisit the ideas of the enlightenment with reason as a guide (see e g Schäfer ) Although the split into a number of disciplines which are both estranged and deaf to each other is still an obstacle to this development the urge to transcend the barriers between the disciplines the trend towards transdisciplinarity and the search for a base of understanding between the domains of science has been growing What is known as “sciences of complexity ” “theories of dynamic open non linear systems ” “second order cybernetics ” “self organization theories ” is one element if not the core of this overall shift (Laszlo ) The goal is therefore the compatibility of all theories in the field of science and the generalization of their results without however the benefit of a paradigm change in those disciplines that are concerned in one way or another with information processes i e cognition communication and cooperation processes in and outside of society There is no general theory of information that deserves the name Nonetheless a discipline that is based on a unified concept of information in order to enable us to cope with the challenges facing the emerging information societies on a global scale is about to take shape Whilst at the end of World War II the concept of information was still seen largely from a limited and one sided military point of view scientific debate on the topic has since been dominated by attempts to move away from these limitations and to adopt a different perspective Semiotic considerations entered into the discourse Shannon‘s syntactic definition was thus followed by attempts to formulate a semantically based concept (most notably by Carnap and Bar Hillel [ ]) and a pragmatically based concept (with E v Weizsäcker [ ] as its most prominent proponent) Since then there has been a search for a concept that is able to integrate the various aspects of information processes include useful discoveries owed to the old concept as special cases and develop the old information theory into a new one a universal theory Thus conceptualisations that date from the second half of the ’s mark the beginning a new period These are ( ) the hypothesis of the control revolution with which James R Beniger ( ) draws parallels between the breakthrough to the information society and former revolutions in the course of the development of life on earth and human culture; ( ) the hypothesis of the evolution of information processing systems put forward by Klaus Haefner ( ) which regards the information society as the end product of the evolution of systems we know in the universe capable of generating ever higher information levels These two outstanding contributions are the initial steps towards a single comprehensive information science Such a science–the term used hitherto to signify library science only is hereby redefined–is in fact the point where endeavours of scholars of various disciplines from Europe the USA Japan and other countries have been converging since the early nineties A series of conferences and publications on the foundations of information science has documented and presented this impending paradigm change to the scientific community (e g Hofkirchner a) Every scientific enterprise serves a particular purpose pursues research in a particular area and does so by applying a particular approach (Hofkirchner b) An Information science based on a unified theory of information ( ) would likewise aim at contributing toward what generally is called sustainable development of the global information society by means of “re engineering” the information infrastructure ( ) in keeping with true insights into how information is generated in cognitive communicative and cooperative processes in economic political cultural environmental and technological subsystems of world society ( ) which must be gained by transdisciplinary methods The focus of this paper will be on what is deemed to be a prerequisite for a unified theory of information as well as one for the shift towards a synthetic world view It is located at the second level and relates to how information generation is assumed in the context of causality and determinism Since this assumption deals with the object of the investigation and its mode of existence it is an ontological one and the discussion of this assumption will be an ontological one The Ontological Aspect of Emergentism