computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to practical disciplines (includi ...

, the scientific community metaphor is a

metaphor A metaphor is a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another. It may provide (or obscure) clarity or identify hidden similarities between two different ideas. Metaphors are often compared wi ...

used to aid understanding scientific communities. The first publications on the scientific community metaphor in 1981 and 1982 involved the development of a

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Most programming languages are text-based formal languages, but they may also be graphical. They are a kind of computer language. The description of a programming ...

named

Ether In organic chemistry, ethers are a class of compounds that contain an ether group—an oxygen atom connected to two alkyl or aryl groups. They have the general formula , where R and R′ represent the alkyl or aryl groups. Ethers can again be ...

that invoked procedural plans to process goals and assertions concurrently by dynamically creating new rules during program execution. Ether also addressed issues of conflict and contradiction with multiple sources of knowledge and multiple viewpoints.

Development

The scientific community metaphor builds on the philosophy,

history History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well ...

and

sociology of science The sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) is the study of science as a social activity, especially dealing with "the social conditions and effects of science, and with the social structures and processes of scientific activity." The sociolog ...

. It was originally developed building on work in the philosophy of science by Karl Popper and

Imre Lakatos Imre Lakatos (, ; hu, Lakatos Imre ; 9 November 1922 – 2 February 1974) was a Hungarian philosopher of mathematics and science, known for his thesis of the fallibility of mathematics and its "methodology of proofs and refutations" in its pr ...

. In particular, it initially made use of Lakatos' work on

proofs and refutations ''Proofs and Refutations: The Logic of Mathematical Discovery'' is a 1976 book by philosopher Imre Lakatos expounding his view of the progress of mathematics. The book is written as a series of Socratic dialogues involving a group of students wh ...

. Subsequently, development has been influenced by the work of Geof Bowker,

Michel Callon Michel Callon (born 1945) is a professor of sociology at the École des mines de Paris and member of the Centre de sociologie de l'innovation. He is an author in the field of Science and Technology Studies and one of the leading proponents of act ...

Paul Feyerabend Paul Karl Feyerabend (; January 13, 1924 – February 11, 1994) was an Austrian-born philosopher of science best known for his work as a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, where he worked for three decades (195 ...

, Elihu M. Gerson,

Bruno Latour Bruno Latour (; 22 June 1947 – 9 October 2022) was a French philosopher, anthropologist and sociologist.Wheeler, Will. ''Bruno Latour: Documenting Human and Nonhuman Associations'' Critical Theory for Library and Information Science. Libraries ...

John Law John Law may refer to: Arts and entertainment * John Law (artist) (born 1958), American artist * John Law (comics), comic-book character created by Will Eisner * John Law (film director), Hong Kong film director * John Law (musician) (born 1961) ...

, Karl Popper,

Susan Leigh Star Susan Leigh Star (1954–2010) was an American sociologist. She specialized in the study of information in modern society; information worlds; information infrastructure; classification and standardization; sociology of science; sociology of w ...

Anselm Strauss Anselm Leonard Strauss (December 18, 1916 – September 5, 1996) was an American sociologist professor at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) internationally known as a medical sociologist (especially for his pioneering attention t ...

, and

Lucy Suchman Lucy Suchman is a Professor of Anthropology of Science and Technology in the Department of Sociology at Lancaster University, in the United Kingdom. Her current research extends her longstanding critical engagement with the field of human-comp ...

. In particular Latour's '' Science in Action'' had great influence. In the book, Janus figures make paradoxical statements about scientific development. An important challenge for the scientific community metaphor is to reconcile these paradoxical statements.

Qualities of scientific research

Scientific research depends critically on monotonicity, concurrency, commutativity, and pluralism to propose, modify, support, and oppose scientific methods, practices, and theories. Quoting from Carl Hewitt, scientific community metaphor systems have characteristics of ''monotonicity'', ''concurrency'', ''commutativity'', ''pluralism'', ''skepticism'' and ''provenance''. :monotonicity: Once something is published it cannot be undone. Scientists publish their results so they are available to all. Published work is collected and indexed in libraries. Scientists who change their mind can publish later articles contradicting earlier ones. :concurrency: Scientists can work concurrently, overlapping in time and interacting with each other. :commutativity: Publications can be read regardless of whether they initiate new research or become relevant to ongoing research. Scientists who become interested in a scientific question typically make an effort to find out if the answer has already been published. In addition they attempt to keep abreast of further developments as they continue their work. :pluralism: Publications include heterogeneous, overlapping and possibly conflicting information. There is no central arbiter of truth in scientific communities. :skepticism: Great effort is expended to test and validate current information and replace it with better information. :provenance: The provenance of information is carefully tracked and recorded. The above characteristics are limited in real scientific communities. Publications are sometimes lost or difficult to retrieve. Concurrency is limited by resources including personnel and funding. Sometimes it is easier to rederive a result than to look it up. Scientists only have so much time and energy to read and try to understand the literature. Scientific fads sometimes sweep up almost everyone in a field. The order in which information is received can influence how it is processed. Sponsors can try to control scientific activities. In Ether the semantics of the kinds of activity described in this paragraph are governed by the actor model. Scientific research includes generating theories and processes for modifying, supporting, and opposing these theories. Karl Popper called the process "conjectures and refutations", which although expressing a core insight, has been shown to be too restrictive a characterization by the work of

, Elihu M. Gerson, Mark Johnson,

Thomas Kuhn Thomas Samuel Kuhn (; July 18, 1922 – June 17, 1996) was an American philosopher of science whose 1962 book '' The Structure of Scientific Revolutions'' was influential in both academic and popular circles, introducing the term ''paradig ...

, George Lakoff,

Ludwig Wittgenstein Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ( ; ; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrian-British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He is con ...

, ''etc.''. Three basic kinds of participation in Ether are proposing, supporting, and opposing. Scientific communities are structured to support competition as well as cooperation. These activities affect the adherence to approaches, theories, methods, ''etc.'' in scientific communities. Current adherence does not imply adherence for all future time. Later developments will modify and extend current understandings. Adherence is a local rather than a global phenomenon. No one speaks for the scientific community as a whole. Opposing ideas may coexist in communities for centuries. On rare occasions a community reaches a ''breakthrough'' that clearly decides an issue previously muddled.

Ether

Ether used ''viewpoints'' to relativist information in publications. However a great deal of information is shared across viewpoints. So Ether made use of ''inheritance'' so that information in a viewpoint could be readily used in other viewpoints. Sometimes this inheritance is not exact as when the laws of physics in Newtonian mechanics are derived from those of

Special Relativity In physics, the special theory of relativity, or special relativity for short, is a scientific theory regarding the relationship between space and time. In Albert Einstein's original treatment, the theory is based on two postulates: # The laws ...

. In such cases Ether used ''translation'' instead of inheritance.

has analyzed translation in scientific communities in the context of actor network theory.

studied very sophisticated kinds of translations of mathematical (''e.g.'', the Euler formula for

polyhedra In geometry, a polyhedron (plural polyhedra or polyhedrons; ) is a three-dimensional shape with flat polygonal faces, straight edges and sharp corners or vertices. A convex polyhedron is the convex hull of finitely many points, not all on ...

) and scientific theories. Viewpoints were used to implement natural deduction (Fitch

952 Year 952 ( CMLII) was a leap year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. Events By place Europe * Summer – At the Reichstag in Augsburg (assembled by King Otto I), joined by German nob ...

in Ether. In order to prove a goal of the form in a viewpoint , it is sufficient to create a new viewpoint that inherits from , assert in , and then prove in . An idea like this was originally introduced into programming language proving by Rulifson, Derksen, and Waldinger

973 Year 973 ( CMLXXIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. Events By place Byzantine Empire * Spring – The Byzantine army, led by General Melias (Domestic of the S ...

except since Ether is concurrent rather than being sequential it does not rely on being in a single viewpoint that can be sequentially pushed and popped to move to other viewpoints. Ultimately resolving issues among these viewpoints are matters for

negotiation Negotiation is a dialogue between two or more people or parties to reach the desired outcome regarding one or more issues of conflict. It is an interaction between entities who aspire to agree on matters of mutual interest. The agreement c ...

(as studied in the sociology and philosophy of science by Geof Bowker,

, Elihu M. Gerson,

, Karl Popper, Susan Leigh Star, Anselm Strauss, Lucy Suchman, etc.).

Emphasis on communities rather than individuals

Alan Turing Alan Mathison Turing (; 23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, and theoretical biologist. Turing was highly influential in the development of theoretical co ...

was one of the first to attempt to more precisely characterize ''individual'' intelligence through the notion of his famous

Turing Test The Turing test, originally called the imitation game by Alan Turing in 1950, is a test of a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behaviour equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human. Turing proposed that a human evaluato ...

. This paradigm was developed and deepened in the field of

Artificial Intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech r ...

. Allen Newell and

Herbert A. Simon Herbert Alexander Simon (June 15, 1916 – February 9, 2001) was an American political scientist, with a Ph.D. in political science, whose work also influenced the fields of computer science, economics, and cognitive psychology. His primary ...

did pioneer work in analyzing the protocols of individual human problem solving behavior on puzzles. More recently

Marvin Minsky Marvin Lee Minsky (August 9, 1927 – January 24, 2016) was an American cognitive and computer scientist concerned largely with research of artificial intelligence (AI), co-founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's AI laboratory, ...

has developed the idea that the mind of an individual human is composed of a society of agents in

Society of Mind ''The Society of Mind'' is both the title of a 1986 book and the name of a theory of natural intelligence as written and developed by Marvin Minsky. In his book of the same name, Minsky constructs a model of human intelligence step by step, bui ...

(see the analysis by Push Singh). The above research on individual human problem solving is ''complementary'' to the scientific community metaphor.

Current applications

Some developments in hardware and software technology for the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

are being applied in light of the scientific community metaphor. Legal concerns (''e.g.'',

HIPAA The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA or the Kennedy– Kassebaum Act) is a United States Act of Congress enacted by the 104th United States Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton on August 21, 1 ...

, Sarbanes-Oxley, "The Books and Records Rules" in SEC Rule 17a-3/4 and "Design Criteria Standard for Electronic Records Management Software Applications" in DOD 5015.2 in the

U.S. The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

) are leading organizations to store information monotonically forever. It has just now become less costly in many cases to store information on

magnetic disk Magnetic storage or magnetic recording is the storage of data on a magnetized medium. Magnetic storage uses different patterns of magnetisation in a magnetizable material to store data and is a form of non-volatile memory. The information is ac ...

than on tape. With increasing storage capacity, sites can monotonically record what they read from the Internet as well as monotonically recording their own operations.

Search engines A search engine is a software system designed to carry out web searches. They search the World Wide Web in a systematic way for particular information specified in a textual web search query. The search results are generally presented in a ...

currently provide rudimentary access to all this information. Future systems will provide interactive question answering broadly conceived that will make all this information much more useful. Massive concurrency (''i.e.,'' Web services and multi-core computer architectures) lies in the future posing enormous challenges and opportunities for the scientific community metaphor. In particular, the scientific community metaphor is being used in client

cloud computing Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage ( cloud storage) and computing power, without direct active management by the user. Large clouds often have functions distributed over mu ...

.A historical perspective on developing foundations for privacy-friendly client cloud computing: the paradigm shift from “inconsistency denial” to “semantic integration”
ArXiv January 30, 2009.

Development

Qualities of scientific research

Ether

Emphasis on communities rather than individuals

Current applications

See also

References

Further reading