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INFORMATION SCIENCE: DISCIPLINE OR DISAPPEARANCE

WILLIAM GOFFMAN
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WILLIAM GOFFMAN, (1970),"INFORMATION SCIENCE: DISCIPLINE OR DISAPPEARANCE", Aslib
Proceedings, Vol. 22 Iss 12 pp. 589 - 596
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 INFORMATION SCIENCE:
DISCIPLINE OR DISAPPEARANCE
WILLIAM GOFFMAN
Director, Centre for Documentation and Communication Research
School of Library Science, Case Western Reserve University

Paper presented at the 44th Aslib Annual Conference, University of Aberdeen,

20th-23rd September 1970

IT IS NOW some twenty years since the activity which has come to be known
as information science had its discernible origin as one of the so-called new
interdisciplinary fields that emerged in the post-war proliferation of scientific
activity. This scientific revolution which also produced such new fields as
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operations research, game theory, systems engineering, cybernetics and so forth

can for the most part be traced to the war itself in that they were attempts
to develop general methods for dealing with problem areas, the likes of which
were encountered during the conduct of the war. The origins of information
science, for example, can be directly traced to the war during which the efficient
and knowledgeable handling of masses of information was necessary. Because
these tasks were generally assigned to undermanned staffs, it was natural for
people to believe that the solution to problems relating to information process-
ing lay in the supply of necessary manpower to carry out a sequence of clerical
tasks. With the immediate post-war proliferation of scientific publications which
in no small degree resulted from the demonstration of the value of science in
the war and hence the ensuing formation of new areas of activity, it was no
wonder that scientists began to feel that (1) an information explosion was taking
place and (2) critical communication problems were arising in the scientific
community due to this information explosion.
Simultaneous with this development was the fact that digital computing
machines were becoming accessible to the scientific community. Consequently,
based on wartime experiences, it was believed that solutions to problems created
by the information explosion were obtainable by replacing large staffs of human
processors by computing machines which could carry out the needed clerical
tasks more accurately and more efficiently. It soon became evident, however,
that there was something wrong because, although it is indisputable that
computing machines can in fact perform clerical tasks very rapidly and accurately,
solutions were not forthcoming. Some blamed this on the computing machines
themselves; they weren't big enough or fast enough. Others came up with get
rich schemes: it's all a coding problem; it's only a problem in linguistics or
mathematics or logic or indexing and so forth. Thus, this activity which came to
be called at various times, without differentiation, documentation, information
retrieval, information sciences and finally information science, passed through
a parade of clever schemes each of which was proclaimed by its inventor as the
answer to the problem. Little progress was made because first of all it was not

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known whether a physical problem did in fact exist and if so what was the nature
of this problem.
Meanwhile, the feverish activity, spawned by large government grants,
particularly in the United States, continued. Professional societies were formed
and a hierarchy of elder statesmen developed. Although much was contributed
to the literature proliferation as if to demonstrate that an information explosion
did indeed exist, there was little of importance or lasting interest produced.
What was produced was a diffuse body of literature whose members showed
little, if any, relation to each other.
Nevertheless, there soon began to appear on the scene an endless stream of
curricula and the establishment of a discipline was proclaimed. At first such
curricula were most likely to be found in schools of library science since it was
said that the library as the institution most concerned with information is the
place where the revolution in information processing and handling should
become manifest. However, inroads of information science into the library
curricula were short lived, mainly for two reasons. First, library schools were
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more concerned with training traditional librarians for which there was a great
demand and second, they rightly were not ready to accept areas of activity
whose relevance to them was not clear. However, library science itself was much
in the same position as information science in that it has not yet adequately
defined for itself a set of principles which distinguish it as a discipline among
the others in the academic community. If a discipline is defined by its problems,
and to my knowledge the problems of library science have yet to be defined,
then library science itself has yet to emerge as a discipline. Hence, in recent
years library science has turned back to information science as a means of
obtaining the academic respectability which it lacks. But, a scientific discipline
cannot be wedded to any specific institution such as the library which by its
very nature is so restrictive as to preclude the possibility of the formation of the
very principles upon which a discipline must rest.
It is for this reason that the recent new and even more restrictive association
of information science with computing machines is also doomed from the start.
Not unlike the librarians, the computing people in seeking academic respect-
ability had established curricula which they similarly called computing science.
They also have not been able to define the problem areas of their activity. Hence,
we see the bizarre situation of two physical facilities vying for academic re-
spectability by capturing a name (information science) which represents as
elusive an intellectual content as they do. It is doubly amusing since in a sense
libraries and computing machines are equivalent, i.e., one can think of a com-
puting machine as a special highly restrictive type of library in that its functions,
namely the acquisition, organization and dissemination of information, are
identical with those of a library. Hence the competition over information
science. Clearly, the development of a genuine discipline which can be called
information science could be highly beneficial both for libraries and computing
machines. But, by its very nature, such a discipline cannot be strictly associated
with either as it will become strangled by the rigid restrictions imposed on it
by its area of application. Thus, information science must transcend libraries
and computing machines and must develop its principles independent of these

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 DECEMBER 1970 INFORMATION SCIENCE

or any other physical system involving the notion of information while at the
same time being applicable to all of them. That is, we must begin seriously to
question the foundations of the entire area of activity now called information
science.
The aim of a discipline of information science must be that of establishing
a unified scientific approach to the study of the various phenomena involving
the notion of information whether such phenomena are found in biological
processes, human existence or the machines created by human beings. Conse-
quently, the subject must be concerned with the establishment of a set of funda-
mental principles governing the behavior of all communication processes and
their associated information systems.
It is very important to distinguish between processes and systems for much
confusion may result by failure to do so. In general, a process is a time depend-
ent phenomenon, i.e., a sequence of actions leading to some result. A communi-
cation process is thus a sequence of events resulting in the transmission of
information from one object to another. The first object is called the source and
the latter the destination. A system, on the other hand, is the mechanism by
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means of which a process is realized. More precisely, a system is a collection of

elements interacting to perform a specific function for a specific purpose.
Systems whose functions are the carrying out of communication processes
are known as information systems. Such a system will take the information at
the source and operate on it in some way to produce a signal suitable for trans-
mission on some channel to a receiver at the destination. With every communi-
cation process there is associated a set of information systems, namely those
systems capable of carrying out the particular process. Such systems need not
be unique since a given process may be realized by a variety of mechanisms.
The notion of designing and building systems for the purpose of carrying out
unknown processes does not seem to be a sound basis on which to erect a field
of scientific inquiry. It is evident that the failure of large scale automatic informa-
tion systems to a great degree is due to a lack of understanding of the processes
which such systems are supposed to carry out. Thus, a primary task of informa-
tion science is the study of the properties of communication processes which
may then be translated into the design of the appropriate information system
for a given physical situation. Hence, a host of new problem areas directed
towards the establishment of the fundamental principles governing the be-
haviour of all communication processes must be opened up.
The major difficulty in any scientific treatment of communication processes
arises from the fact that the concept of information, although intuitively under-
stood, can neither be formally defined nor precisely measured. However, when
considering processes whose outcomes are governed by the transmission of
information, the information transmitted can be evaluated in terms of these
outcomes. Hence, the study of communication processes and information
systems may be approached in this way.
There seem to be three broad problem areas relating to the outcome of a
communication process. These are:

1. The behaviouralproblem which deals with the success with which information
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conveyed from a source to a destination effects the desired outcome at the

destination.
2. The representation problem which is concerned with all aspects of representing
information to be conveyed so that it will be correctly understood at the
destination.
3. The technical problem which is concerned with the accuracy of transmitting
the information from the source to the destination.

Clearly, these three problem areas are not independent of each other because
the question of behaviour depends to some degree on the other two. It would
seem, however, that the representation and technical problems relate more
directly to information systems, i.e., to the realization of communication pro-
cesses rather than to such processes themselves. The mathematical theory of
communication as developed by Claude Shannon and others1 deals chiefly
with the technical problem and, although very profound, is thereby limited.
It is of little value, therefore, in approaching the problems of communication
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from a general point of view. That is, the Shannon theory is of little value in the
development of a discipline of information science.
The fundamental notion underlying the behavioural problem in communica-
tion is the notion of effective contact between the information source and the
destination. For example, effective contact is clearly the governing factor in the
outcomes of the two most familiar communication processes, namely the trans-
mission of knowledge and the transmission of disease. It is thus not surprising
to find a striking parallel between these two processes. An excellent detailed
discussion of this analogy can be found in Siegfried.2 In the case of disease we
are dealing with infectious material which can be transported and transmitted,
whereas in the case of knowledge we are dealing with the transport and trans-
mission of ideas, benevolent or malevolent, depending on one's point of view.
In either case, for diffusion to take place, there must be an individual who puts
forth the infectious material or idea, a carrier who transfers it and receptive
surroundings. The extent of diffusion in both instances is then a matter of effec-
tive contact between the agents transmitting the infectious material or ideas and
those individuals coming in contact with them. The human being, in the case of
ideas, is the propagating agent either by word of mouth or through the medium
of books, articles, pamphlets and so forth, just as he causes the spread of germs
either by direct contact or through intermediate hosts. Ideas, moreover, are
propagated along the same routes as germs, namely the world's transportation
routes. The routes of ancient caravans, for example, which provided the instru-
ment of communication were also the routes travelled by disease. Furthermore,
the vocabulary which normally comes to mind when talking about the spread of
ideas is that of medicine. One often hears such expressions as 'that's a contagious
idea' or 'he's not too susceptible to that idea' and so forth.
Just as society fights against the invasion of disease, so it defends itself against
subversive ideas. Its most decisive action is to destroy the infectious material
or idea at its source. This is often difficult since, in both cases, one does not
always know exactly where to find it. Another defence consists of suppressing
the carrier or at least preventing him from entering the territory one wishes to

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preserve. The most prudent procedure is to take preventive measures. Censor-

ship, police supervision and religious persecution are all examples of this
approach. In the defence measures that human societies adopt against the attacks
and penetrations of new ideas, mechanisms similar to immunization and vac-
cination likewise exist. A given reform, subtly inspired by the menace itself, will
often prevent the new ideas from spreading when they appear locally. A healthy
society has its own defences against such infections which might endanger the
integrity of its personality. On the other hand, an unhealthy society will catch
all of the illnesses. Rome, for example, was not able in its decline to defend itself
against Christianity.
As an example of the spread of ideas in the intellectual world, consider the
development of psychoanalysis in the early part of this century. Freud was no
less host to the infectious material of the disease psychoanalysis than the person
carrying the organism capable of transmitting a cold, nor are his writings less
an intermediate host carrying infectious material than is the mosquito a carrier
of the agent of malaria. Moreover, Abraham, Ferenczi, Jung and Jones were no
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less infected by the ideas of Freud than are those individuals infected by the
agent transmitted by the cold carrier. After a certain period of time, i.e., a
latency period, Freud's disciples were themselves in a position to transmit
infectious material to others. Jung might represent an example of acquired
immunity to the disease whereas the resistance of the medical community of
Vienna might represent innate immunity. The development of the psycho-
analytic movement in the early part of the twentieth century was in its way no
less an epidemic than was the outbreak of influenza in 1917 and 1918. It was not
surprising that the psychoanalytic epidemics took place in Protestant countries
which provided more receptive surroundings for the infectious material, i.e.,
Freud's ideas, than the Roman Catholic countries. Psychoanalysis is an example
of an intellectual epidemic instigated by an individual. Such epidemics are not
unusual in the world of scientific thought. One may cite many other well-known
occurrences, e.g., Darwin and evolution, Newton and mechanics, Cantor and
set theory, Boole and symbolic logic and so forth.
It is thus apparent that the process of transmitting infectious diseases and the
process of transmitting knowledge have many common characteristics. In fact,
the primitive notions of knowledge, information and ideas stand in the same
relation to each other in the one case as do the primitive notions of disease,
agent and infectious material in the other. In the transmission of knowledge
the idea plays the role of the infectious material; information corresponds to the
agent by means of which the infectious material is transmitted and the interaction
between an individual and an idea may or may not result in the acquisition of
knowledge, just as the interaction between an individual and infectious material
may or may not result in a case of disease.
Because the principles underlying the spread of infectious diseases also govern
the diffusion of information and the spread of knowledge, a communication
process can be represented as an epidemic process. Consequently, epidemic
processes can be used as models to develop understanding of communication
processes. That is, we can replace the study of communication processes of which
little is known by the study of epidemic processes for which a theory exists and

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which has certain important characteristics in common with the subject under
investigation. For an example of the application of epidemic theory to the trans-
mission of ideas see Goffman.3
The above discussion is but a crude example of the sort of activity required
before we can begin to think of a discipline of information science. As a further
illustration, consider the various schemes which saw the light under the guise of
information science called statistical association techniques for information
retrieval.4 Underlying all of these schemes was the assumption that the notion
of nearness of information as represented by documents exists and is measurable.
Thus, the literature abounds with such phrases as 'index space', 'vector' and so
forth whereas there has been no demonstration that such things exist relative to
the concept of information. A general theory on this topic could not only
produce each of these schemes as realizable examples but should have applica-
tion to situations involving communication processes other than recorded
discourse, e.g., neural networks and the transmission of disease. Thus each
special case could act as a model for the others and knowledge about each process
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may be gained which otherwise may be unobservable. I would like to show a

simple example of how such a general theory might be constructed.
Consider a literature L and the set of authors A who have contributed to L.
Let A00 represent an author in A selected at random. Furthermore, let A11,
A 1 2 , . . . , A 1n , be the set of all authors in A who have co-authored articles in L
with A 00 ; A21, A 2 2 , . . . , A2m the set of all authors in A who have co-authored
articles in L with the A1i authors, i = 1, 2 , . . . , n; A31, A 3 2 , . . . , A3k, the set of
all authors in A who have collaborated with the A2J authors, j = 1, 2 , . . . , m,
in producing publications in L and so forth. Continue this process until there
are no authors remaining in A who have collaborated in producing a publication
in L with any of the Aij, i, j = 0, 1, 2 , . . . , and denote this set by C1. By repeat-
ing this procedure on the remaining set of authors we obtain a partition of A
into disjoint classes of authors having the property that for any two authors
belonging to a given class there exists a chain of co-authorships connecting them.
It is moreover easy to show that the shortest chain connecting two members
of a given class defines a metric on the set of authors belonging to that class.
Let us now consider a set of information conveying objects. Suppose that
there is a conditional relevance measure defined on this set, i.e., a measure which
states the relevance of an object xj relative to an object xi, xi, and xj both being
members of X. In the case of co-authorships the conditional relevance measure
can be only zero or one, depending on whether or not two individuals have
collaborated on a publication. In general, however, we must assume that a
conditional relevance measure between two information conveying objects
can take on an infinite number of values. Hence, for convenience, it is customary
to take the conditional relevance measure to be a conditional probability. If we
assume the existence of a critical probability, i.e., a threshold condition which
differentiates between the barely relevant and the not quite relevant, then
given any collection of information conveying objects, a partition of this
collection into disjoint classes similar to the partitioning of co-authors can be
effected whereby a bona-fide distance function can be defined on the members
of each class. In this way it may be possible to talk about the nearness of infor-

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 DECEMBER 1970 INFORMATION SCIENCE

mation. If the information conveying objects are taken to be documents then

each of the so-called statistical association techniques could be used to obtain
estimates of the conditional relevance measures between the documents of a
given collection. If, on the other hand, the information conveying objects are
interpreted as neurons then the conditional relevance measures between neurons
are the conditional probabilities that given neurons will fire on the condition
that other neurons have fired. The resulting structure turns out to be a reason-
ably good model of neural networks, in some ways superior to the classic
McCulloch-Pitts model. Finally, if we interpret the information conveying
objects as symptoms and signs of disease states, then each chain might represent
a possible syndrome and we have a model for diagnosis which seems to be far
more realistic than the Bayesian models which have heretofore been proposed.
In summary, it is this type of activity, and only this type of activity, which can
lead to the formation of a legitimate discipline of information science. If such
activity is not forthcoming in the near future, in great abundance, then informa-
tion science is destined to become extinct in the evolutionary process of scientific
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thought.

REFERENCES
1 SHANNON, C. E. The mathematical theory of communication. Bell System Technical Journal, 27,
1948, p. 379-423; 623-56.
2 SIEGFRIED, A. Germs and ideas. London, Oliver & Boyd, 1965.
3 GOFFMAN, W. Mathematical approach to the spread of scientific ideas. Nature, 212, 1966,
p. 449-52.
4 STEVENS, M. E. Automatic indexing: a state-of-the-art report. National Bureau of Standards
Monograph 91, Washington, 1965.

DISCUSSION
MR A. E. CAWKELL (Institute for Scientific Information) asked what effect the trend towards
multiple authorship had on co-author networks. Presumably there would be significant
differences between, say, a nineteenth-century article network (average number of authors per
article about 1.3), and a current article network (average number of authors per article probably
2.8). PROFESSOR GOFFMAN replied that he had taken co-author networks as a simple example
to illustrate the method. One of his students had worked out such a network based on the
Science Citation Index, and a physical model had been made, but he had forgotten what the
conclusion was.
MR R. R. WYNNE (British Titan Products Ltd) asked Professor Goffman whether, in research
on information processing, it was an advantage or disadvantage to understand the information
being processed. In other words should the research team consist of those with knowledge of
the subjects in the subject fields being studied as well as the information scientists. PROFESSOR
GOFFMAN replied that, in his opinion, this was not necessary.
MRR.A.FAITHORNE (Independent) suggested that when talking about 'knowledge' one should
be very careful to distinguish between knowledge and how it was talked about. The first was
what made the practitioner of the activity expert in his job; to do it one must know why things
were spoken of in a certain way by certain people. The second was 'book knowledge', demand-
ing knowledge of how these things were spoken of and by whom to whom. PROFESSOR GOFFMAN
had been careful to use 'information' in the sense of 'messages'. He distinguished it from
'knowledge', owned by author or reader, and from 'signals', the representations of those
messages.
MR CAWKELL suggested that an area of research fully justifying the label 'information science'
was the possible application of information theory (stemming from Shannon, 1948) to informa-

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tion content. In the early 1950s, Shannon's work, clearly explained as being concerned with the
correct receipt of symbols without regard to meaning, was misapplied in several areas of
science. More recently such misapplications had continued, but it had received proper considera-
tion, as applied to meaning, by Bar-Hillel, Carnap, McKay and others. McKay had suggested
(Information, mechanizationand meaning, MIT 1969) that further work awaited a better under-
standing of the 'human conditional probability matrix', whilst Longuet Higgins, in a recent
article ('The monkey's paw', New Scientist, Sept. 3, 1970) had wanted nothing to do with the
application of computers to the understanding of human language. Certainly any research
which held out the hope of a better understanding of human information processing would be
well worth undertaking. PROFESSOR GOFFMAN replied that there was a close relationship between
a signal and the resulting human behaviour but he did not know what it was.
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596
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[CrossRef]
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Documentation 65:4, 578-591. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
3. Bibliography and references 267-295. [CrossRef]
4. J. C. Mingers. 1996. An evaluation of theories of information with regard to the semantic and
pragmatic aspects of information systems. Systems Practice 9, 187-209. [CrossRef]
5. PETER INGWERSEN. 1992. Information and Information Science in Context. Libri 42. .
[CrossRef]
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7. Eliahu Hoffmann. 1980. Defining information: An analysis of the information content of

documents. Information Processing & Management 16, 291-304. [CrossRef]
8. N.J. BELKIN. 1978. INFORMATION CONCEPTS FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE. Journal
of Documentation 34:1, 55-85. [Abstract] [PDF]
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