The Structure of Concept and Its Connection To Sciences: Abstract

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THE STRUCTURE OF CONCEPT AND ITS CONNECTION TO


SCIENCES

gnes Hajdu Bart
University of Szeged, Hungary, hajdu@jgypk.u-szeged.hu


ABSTRACT:

This paper aims to explore the possibilities of Interdisciplinarity in knowledge
organization field as approaches of epistemology. My purpose is to find some examples
what give some new advances of the Concept.

In the first part I am exploring Interdisciplinarity and its necessary connection to the
theory of Knowledge Organization. I am attempting to survey the problem of concept-
building and extension, as well as the determination in different interdisciplinary
aspects.

I will survey controversies about Interdisciplinarity, Concepts in their historical
context, the representational theory of mind, conceptual representations;
epistemological approximations etc., then sketch the structure of Concept, make a
comparison between content and the dimension of Concept and semantic elements. I
will draw up unknown possibility when I point new correlation between Heisenberg
Uncertainty Principle and the components of the Concept studying content and the
dimension of the Concept is impossible same depth and accuracy in the same time.
The next part I would like to present some cases for universality of scientific laws,
particularly relations in linguistics.
My results attained are new approaches of the Concept - new correlation between
Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and the components of the Concept - and case studies
of scientific laws.

KEYWORDS:
Interdisciplinarity, Theory of Information Retrieval Language, Concept-building,
Structure of Concept, Heisenberg

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1. PREFACE

The biggest challenge in Information Retrieval is Concept identification in a specific
domain of interest! (Soergel et al., 2004). Therefore this article focuses on the
Definition of Concept, the Structure of Concept and its Approaches of Epistemology. If
we study connection of Concept to the different sciences our approximation should be
interdisciplinary and try to adopt different tools in the field of Knowledge Organization.
There are two viewpoints according to the Interdisciplinarity:
- how can we use rules, laws, definitions, knowledge, Concepts, from different
sciences in the knowledge organization I am focusing in this field;
- how does concept of Interdisciplinary appear in Knowledge Organization,
classifying interdisciplinary knowledge.
My paper is dividing three main parts. My purpose is to find criteria for
Interdisciplinarity and give some new approaches of the Concept.
In the first part I am exploring Interdisciplinarity and its necessary connection to the
theory of Knowledge Organization. I am attempting to survey the problem of concept-
building and extension, as well as the determination in different interdisciplinary
aspects.

I will point the connection of Concept to the different sciences in second part of my
work. This paper examines some traditional approaches of the Concept (Carnap,
Church, Wittgenstein, Horwich, Dahlberg, etc.) and its circumstances on the basis of
different sciences (Philosophy, Epistemology, Psychology, Physics, Semantics, etc.). I
would like to conclude at the first step: one of the fundamental conceptions of
Knowledge Organization, the Concept itself is cross-science, a multidisciplinary and
interdisciplinary phenomenon.
Introduction of the next part I would like to present some cases for universality of
scientific laws, particularly physics ones. I will concentrate physics, because the
Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is only one possibility of universal laws.
I conclude at this step: one of the fundamental Conceptions of Knowledge Organization,
the Concept itself is cross-science, a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary phenomenon.

2. INTERDISCIPLINARITY AND KNOWLEDGE ORGANIZATION
Heisenberg, Boltzman and Shannon Principle
General recognition is: the boundaries between scientific disciplines disappear
gradually. There is not unequivocal that these properties how change the

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epistemological comprehensions. This approaches influence the conceptual nets,
learning outcomes, assessment strategies.
I have studied Concept of Interdisciplinary and Interdisciplinarity in Google at 2007.
The first examination was made by Sperber. (Hajdu Bart, 2007) I have repeated this
examination in this year. Generally the main number of hits reduced, but these results
also show the Interdisciplinarity is a huge part of scientific publications.

Table 1.- Hits of Interdisciplinarity in Google (2006, 2008)

Concept Hits
2006
% Hits
2008
%
Interdisciplinarity 751.000 363.000
and Library Science (LIS) 10.700

0,69 409.000 2%
and Knowledge Organization
(KO)
47.000

3,04 333.000 1,63%
and Epistemology (EP) 62.800 4,06 314.000 1,54%
and Cognition (CO) 85.300 5,51 959.000 4,71%
and Linguistics (LI) 103.000 6,65 1.510.000 7,41%
and Physics (PH) 139.000 8,98 412.000 2,02%
and Anthropology (AN) 144.000 9,3 2.230.000 10,95%
and Biology (BI) 151.000 9,76 3.950.000 19,4%
and Psychology (PS) 187.000 12,08 3.690.000 18,12%
and Philosophy (PH) 251.000 16,22 3.740.000 18,37%
and Economy (EC) 367.000 23,71 2.810.000 13,8%
Total hits 1.547.800 20.357.000


Table 2.- Hits of Interdisciplinary in Google (2006, 2008)

Concept Hits
2006
% Hits
2008
%
Interdisciplinary 23.300.000

19.100.000
and Library Science (LIS) 309.000 0,72 124.000 0,61
and Knowledge Organization
(KO)
44.300 0,10 14.100 0,006
and Epistemology (EP) 564.000 1,31 243.000 1,19
and Cognition (CO) 899.000 2,08 767.000 3,78
and Linguistics (LI) 945.000 2,19 1.480.000 7,29
and Physics (PH) 11.700.000 27,12 1.480.000 7,29
and Anthropology (AN) 1.270.000 2,94 2.230.000 10,99
and Biology (BI) 10.900.000 25,27 3.930.000 19,36
and Psychology (PS) 6.120.000 14,19 3.610.000 17,78
and Philosophy (PH) 7.760.000 17,99 3.660.000 18,03

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and Economy (EC) 2.630.000 6,1 2.760.000 13,60
Total hits 43.141.300 20.298.100


Interdisciplinarity had become a hot topic in Economy, Philosophy and Psychology
earlier, and Interdisciplinary had combined with Physics, Biology and Philosophy
prominently. Now these topics are determined, but decrease of Economy and Physics is
remarkable.

The first table represents theory a little bit more than the second one. The second pillar
seems more empiric and applied. The role of Knowledge Organization is conspicuous in
theoretical relationships of Interdisciplinarity.
My opinion is the following: this establishment is right especially in Knowledge
Organization. Several Physical Principles, axioms can describe many relationships of
Information Retrieval Languages, like Entropy, Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle
One of the well known parallelisms between physics and LIS studies is Boltzman and
Shannon Principle.
I
(A)
= log P
(A)
This decision hasnt brought a lot of new solutions, but it means a special viewpoint to
see scientific and daily life. One of the well known parallelisms between physics and
LIS studies is Boltzman and Shannon Principle.
In the complex world of the late twentieth century, however, organizing information
from an interdisciplinary perspective may be more useful and closer to the way things
really are. Domains often cross boundaries, and to view knowledge as an organic whole
rather than as disembodied individual specializations seems more genuine, than placing
knowledge in unnatural or artificial divisions. Scholarly disciplines often consist of
interdisciplinary ways of thinking. (Mcinerney, 1997)

Do isolated sciences exist at all? Do sciences have identifiable borders? Are there
characteristics, elements of the Concept and can we see them from the different
viewpoints, research fields and study them with several methods?


3. THE CONCEPT

There are many philosophical, linguistic, psychological, epistemological approaches,
definitions of what Concept and concept-building are. "We might summarize the
present situation with regard to candidates for Concepts that have been discussed here
as follows: there is the token representation in the mind or brain of an agent, types of
which are shared by different agents. These representations could be words, images,

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definitions, or prototypes that play specific inferential roles in an agents cognitive
system and stand in certain causal and covariant relations to phenomena in the world.
[REY 1995, p. 192.]

Carnap introduced the Concepts of Classificatory, Comparative, and Quantitative
Concepts in The Logical Structure of the World (1928). Classificatory and Quantitative
features are similar to intension and extension.

Frege's directive between sense and reference of a singular term, and the traditional
distinction between the intension and the extension of a general term, apply also to
Concepts. Frege's criterion of distinctness for modes of presentation (in terms of
potential informativeness of an identity statement) can be adapted for distinguishing
general Concepts that have the same extension. Sameness of topic (referent) is not
sufficient for sameness of Fregean cognitive content. Frege showed that two singular
terms with the same reference may have different senses, and we know that two general
terms can have the same extension yet can differ in their intensions. Similarly with
Concepts: their contents must be sufficiently fine-grained so that thinkable differences
correspond to distinct Concepts. [http://www.bris.ac.uk/philosophy]

Reality







Information Concept
Figure 1.- Triangle for correlation among Reality, Information and Concept

I have surveyed controversies about Concepts in their historical context, the
representational theory of mind, conceptual representations; epistemological
approximations etc., then sketched the Structure of Concept, make a comparison
between Content and Dimension of Concept and Semantic Elements. I drew up
unknown possibility when I pointed new correlation between Heisenberg Uncertainty
Principle and Components of Concept.
The more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the momentum
is known in this instant, and vice versa. - Heisenberg, uncertainty paper, 1927
(Heisenberg, 2006)
Studying content and dimension of Concept is impossible same depth and
accuracy in the same time. (Hajdu Bart, 2007)

Dahlberg points up knowledge fields are interact and cross-boundaries. In addition to
Multidisciplinarity and Pluridisciplinarity, she describes a form of Cross-disciplinarity

453
where experts from varying disciplines come together, use their talents, methodologies,
and knowledge to conduct research or develop a new product. The experts not only
contribute; their collaboration actually produces something that reflects all the
contributing disciplines in some way. [Dahlberg, 1994]

I have adopted Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle to KO field, focus on Concept. If we
can account the semantic elements we can concentrate the meaning, visualize the mind
picture with the same quality. And inversely.

3.1 Individual concept-building and societal category

The concept-building of each persons entity is the variability. We should find those
favoured semantic characteristics which constitute the similar conceptual image in the
mind of the librarians and of each user, too. [Hajdu Bart, 2003] Categories are
fundamental Concept of Knowledge Organization and epistemological approaches, too.

I will point to the fractal model is structure of social networks. According to the fractals
of social networks I will show the characteristic of collaborative
knowledge and knowledge sharing.


4. CONCEPT AND ITS CONNECTION TO SCIENCES

As I have written there are several definitions what Concept and concept-building are
from the different sciences. They define and tone meaning of Concept. With helping of
Heisenberg we see much better the elements of Concept (meaning, usage).

How can we combine the knowledge of Physics and Knowledge Organization?
According to the Heisenberg Principle the adaptation was very simply, but there are
much more relations what can we suit concepts of Knowledge Organization.

Why is Physics suitable to describe all manifestations? There would be so many
answers for this question, one of them: because the Physics and its laws are universal.

Now I am flashing some occurrence without any equations and formula.


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4.1 Newton Principles

Case study image image explanation
Building sand-
castle


There is a point
when the sand-
castle fall-down.
Where this point is
usually is surprise
for builders.
Sand knows the Newton I. Principle

Potential parallelism to Knowledge Organization:
classifying all collection for a long time,
controlled relations in thesauri,
build OPACs.

4.2 Fractal theory

Case study image image explanation
Norwegian
coastal sector,
fjords


We can interpret
with fractal
theory based on
theory of
Mandelbrot
Manifestation can explain by fractal theory.

There are many possibilities where we can use and adopt theory of Benoit Mandelbrot
in nature and the intellectual fields, too.

Our common experience is with dimensions of one, two and three. A line has one
dimension, a plane has two dimensions and space has three dimensions. It is hard to
imagine fractional dimensions but they do, in fact exist. Fractals can be created
mathematically but also seem to occur in nature in places like coastlines, trees, leaves,
snowflakes, mountains, etc. (These care called stochastic fractals.) For example, if you
look at accurate maps of, say, the Atlantic coastline of the United States you will find
that the length of the coastline depends of the length of the measuring stick you use to
measure the length. As you look closer and closer you see more detail. The other thing
to note in the figures is that each level of detail is self-similar, that is, it looks looking
the same as you zoom in. This self-similarity is the key feature of fractals. There are

455
many examples of naturally occurring fractals (Crowley, 2002), for example: brain,
lungs, kidney, distribution of galaxies, broccoli, river system or solidification, artistic
works etc.

Potential parallelism to Knowledge Organization:
Chaos Theory in Knowledge Organization, controlling possibilities,
relations between Concepts,
Visualization of Information, Relations, Concepts.

And so many other possibilities for using the Physical laws: Word Frequency in
Languages; Inconstant Brightness of Quasars; Frequency and Intensity of Earthquake;
Distribution for Financial Balance in our account; Evolutionary Model of Microbe etc.


5. CONCLUSION

There are so many contact points and interactions that we have not considered in the
research of Knowledge Organization yet, for example Knowledge Engineering,
Economics, Philosophy, Psychology, Linguistics etc. I have given some definitions
from Philosophy and Linguistics. The Physical Viewpoint is only one of the various
possibilities, but it can help to understand better at least a small part of Knowledge
Organization Theory.



REFERENCES

[Crowley, 2002] CROWLEY, Charles: Overview of Complexity. 10.05.2002. [viewed:
October 1, 2007]. Available on the Web:
<http://wynchar.com/charlie/Complexity/overviewOfComplexity.html>

[Dahlberg, 1994] DAHLBERG, Ingetraut: Domain interaction: Theory and Practice. In
Knowledge Organization and quality management: proceedings of the Third
International ISKO Conference 20-24 June 1994, Copenhagen, Denmark. Germany:
Indeks Verlag. pp. 60-71.

[Hajdu Bart, 2003] HAJDU BART, gnes: Change in the Process of Cognition by
Contemporary Information Technology = Tendencias de Investigacin en Organizacin
del Conocimiento Trends in Knowledge Organization Research. Salamanca :
Universidad de Salamanca, 2003, p.351-355.

[Hajdu Bart, 2007] HAJDU BART, gnes: Heisenberg and the Structure of Concept
- Content and Dimension. = La interdisciplinariedad y la transdisciplinariedad en la
organizacin del conocimiento cientfico Interdisciplinarity and Transdisciplinarity in

456
the Organization of Scientific Knowledge. /Ed. Blanca Rodrguez Bravo, M
a
Luisa
Alvite Dez. Len: Universidad de Len, Secretariado de Publicaciones, 2007, p.90-
100.

[Hacking, 2006] HACKING, Ian: The Complacent Disciplinarian. 2006. [viewed:
October 1, 2007]. Available on the Web:
<http://www.interdisciplines.org/interdisciplinarity/papers/7>

[Heisenberg, 2006] HEISENBERGs hompage at AIP [viewed: October 1, 2007].
Available on the Web: <http://www.aip.org/history/heisenberg/>

[Kuhn, 1987] KUHN, Thomas S.: The Presence of Past Science. The Shearman
Memorial Lectures. Non published. London: University College.

[Mcinerney, 1997] MCINERNEY, Claire: An interdisciplinary perspective of
classifactory structures. 1997[viewed: October 1, 2007]. Available on the Web:
<http://www.scils.rutgers.edu/~clairemc/classify.html>

[Rey 1995] REY, Georges: Concepts. In: A Companion to the philosophy of mind. Ed.
by S. Guttenplan. Oxford, UK: Blackwell. 1995 pp.185-193.

(Soergel et al., 2004) SOERGEL , D., LAUSER, B., LIANG, A., FISSEHA, F.,
KEIZER, J., & KATZ, S. (2004). Reenginnering thesauri for new application: the
AGROVOC example. Journal of Digital Information,4(4). [viewed: October 1, 2007].
Available on the Web: <http://jodi.tamu.edu/Articles/v04/i04/Soergel/>

[Sperber, 2006] SPERBER, Dan: Why Rethink Interdisciplinarity? Interdisciplines.
[viewed: October 1, 2007]. Available on the Web:
<http://www.interdisciplines.org/Interdisciplinarity/papers/1>

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