Library and Information Science

For most of its modern history library and information science has been governed by the mode of thinking best characterized as positivism. This epistemology, shared with most of the social sciences for some time, features the quest for universal laws and the reduction of all phenomena, including behavioral, cognitive, and so on, to the physical, among other elements. This means to knowledge is unworkable for this field; a proposed replacement for it is hermeneutical phenomenology. This article outlines the elements of a revised epistemological approach that seeks an understanding of the essences of things (such as the library) and that takes into account, among other things, the intentional stances of the human actors within the realm of library and information science. Such a re-formed epistemology allows for a different set of questions asked and a different approach to answering them.

John M. Budd

6/1995