Interdisciplinarity and classification: a response to Hjørland

Let me first thank Birger Hjørland (2008) for his careful and constructive response to my paper (Szostak 2008). We agree that it is important to clarify the differences in our approaches to classification. I am particularly pleased to note that he appreciates the potential value of the sort of interdisciplinary system of classification that I have advocated. We could indeed then observe which sort of classification scholars found most useful. Hjørland does not appreciate why the literature on interdisciplinarity should inform information science in much the same way that the literature of science studies does. Yet interdisciplinarians must believe that different scholarly conversations are not incommensurate but rather can be integrated. This must imply some sort of common basis for understanding; this in turn can potentially support a non-discipline-based system of document classification (see the Leon manifesto, Hjørland doubts that a non-disciplinary classification can be pursued pragmatically. However the key to the pragmatic approach is an appreciation that classifications should be designed with user needs in mind. And interdisciplinary scholarship is crippled by disciplinary classifications. Can such a classification be pursued pragmatically? Hjørland is correct that recent scholarship has shown that we cannot define (all) phenomena in a completely objective fashion. But this does not mean that we need embrace complete subjectivity either. This point Hjørland appreciates – when he concurs that inductive and deductive approaches can usefully be combined, and when he recognizes that chemical elements lend themselves to a fairly objective classification. But his argument that we cannot be both interdisciplinary and pragmatic in classification rests on a false dichotomy between objective and subjective definitions. Interdisciplinarians believe that we can achieve enough commonality of definition for cross-disciplinary understanding. A pragmatic approach need not and should not leap to the conclusion that such commonalities in definition are impossible. A pragmatic approach should instead investigate the degree of divergence in definition, and also whether there are strategies for classification that would cope with such disagreements as do exist. As we shall see, within the classification I propose the sorts of differences across academic communities that Hjørland stresses can be captured through coding both relationships between phenomena and theories and methods applied. It is then an empirical question as to whether one can combine pragmatism and interdisciplinarity. In practice, most natural phenomena can be defined in terms of their natural essence, and most human phenomena in terms of their primary function. …