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INFORMATICS AS A SCIENCE: AN ATTEMPT TO COMPREHEND THE CONCEPT
Abstract
In this paper, the author describes the problem of the definition of the notion of informatics. Based on the comprehending of the phenomena of information, information processes and information technologies, a terminological analysis of this notion is presented. The authorial handlings of informatics and information society are given.
Keywords
informatics, information, information processes, information technology
AUTHOR
Nikita Karavaev
PhD in Philosophy,
head of Information Technology and Methodology of Informatics Teaching Department
Vyatka State University of Humanities Kirov, Russia nlkaravaev@yandex.com
Introduction. In general, the terminological analysis is one of the theoretical methods of research, which is aimed to disclosure the phenomenon by means of detection and clarification of values and meanings of terms denoting it. The result of our analysis, aimed at the concept of informatics as a science, should be the definition of this concept. The sequence of the terminological analysis in this article is "information - information process - information technology - informatics."
The phenomenon of information. In recent decades the concept of information has become one of the most common and frequently used concepts: it is used everywhere and, sometimes, in the fields that probably don't need it. Today the term "information"
is included into the terminology of almost all modern sciences; for this reason it is recognized as a general scientific concept.
The historical path of this concept is rather ambiguous, although in languages it was fixed in the 14th century. The word "information" entered the Russian language in the age of Peter the Great through the Polish "informacja" which comes in turn from the Latin "information." In the meaning of "an idea, the concept of something" it was recorded for the first time in "Spiritual Regulation" (1721). The Latin word "information" is formed from "informo" with the primary meaning "to form, to shape, to create" and with the secondary meaning "to teach, to educate," "to construct, to make," and "to imagine, to think." Thus, initially information is "shaping" (Fasmer, 1986). However, information is still one of the most discussed and multivalued concepts in Russian science and philosophy: it has many interpretations, none of which is generally accepted.
All of definitions can be grouped into the seven most common concepts as follows.
1. The ordinary approach in which information is considered as any message, fact, data, and knowledge. In Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian language (2006 edition) T.F. Efremova extended this definition: "An understanding about the world and its processes, as perceived by a person or special devices" (Efremova, 2006).
2. The statistical approach, in which information is considered as a message that decreases the uncertainty of its recipient. Outstanding representatives of this approach are the founders of communication theory R. Hartley (Hartley, 1928) and C. Shannon (Shannon, Weaver, 1949).
3. Semiotic approach. The founders of this approach are the scientists of Stanford scientific school (Stanford University, USA). From the point of view of this approach an implicit (axiomatic) definition of information is given, e.g., through the concept of data. X is information if and only if: (1) X consists of one or more piece of data; (2) the data in X are welll formed; and (3) the data in X are meaningful (Floridi, 2010). A datum is defined as a putative fact regarding some difference or lack of uniformity within some context.
4. The eliminant approach, which denies the existence of the phenomenon of information in principle. One of the representatives of this approach is the Russian biologist M.I. Setrov, who commented on the phenomenon of information that: "No one has ever seen this mysterious information either as a substance or as a property of something... Why Because it does not exist in nature, just as there is no fluid, phlogiston, or ether" (Setrov, 1975).
5. The absolutizing approach, which considers information as a universum of all existence. I.I. Yuzvishin, one of the famous representatives of this approach and the founder of informatiology, considers that "Information is ubiquitous, it is inside of us, outside of us, and in the entire universe, and this is . the universal beginning of everything, information is primary, matter is secondary" (Yuzvishin, 2000).
6. The functional approach, which considers information as a result, as a function of the activity of living beings. Representatives of this approach include Yu.N. Stolyarov (Stolyarov, 2000) and D.I. Dubrovsky (Dubrovskii, 1980). From the point of view of this approach, information is a subjective reality, because it is "a reflection of the objective causality of the surrounding real world in people's minds" (Berg, Chernyak, 1966).
7. The attributional approach, which treats information as a property of any matter (animate and inanimate) in any form (substance or field). Representatives of this approach include V.M. Glushkov (Glushkov, 1963) and V.I. Korogodin (Korogodin, Korogodina, 2000). "Information in the most general sense of the word is ... a measure of the changes that have been accompanied by all the processes that take place in the world. Informatio n is carried by not only the pages of a book with letters or human speech, but sunlight, a folded mountain range, the noise of a waterfall, the rustling of foliage, etc." (Glushkov, 1963).
The existence of all these approaches and the diversity of interpretations of the concept of information, in our opinion, have at least two causes:
1. The first cause is the fact that each concept of information was created in the framework of the certain scientific fields and studies, generally in social and humanitarian ones. The specific features of these studies (Karavaev, 2013) are embodied in the philosophy of the concept of information. Unlike the natural sciences and technics, in the sociohumanitarian sciences the problem of the interpretation of concepts is more important: many of them are interpreted in different ways. The contextual determination of such concepts is the main cause of the diversity of their interpretations.
2. The second cause is the fact that the different approaches to the interpretation of information relate different phenomena of the world to this concept. Here, it is possible to name at least three phenomena that cannot be reduced to one interpretation:
a) the essential characteristics of matter (in the forms of the substance and field), i.e., the specific features of its structural organization and its properties. These exist independently of the issue of who or what can perceive them. As the British scientist, Tom Stonier, noted "information exists. It does not need to be perceived to exist. It requires no intelligence to interpret it. It does not have to have meaning to exist. It exists: (Stonier, 1990)
b) signs and its compositions that can be expressed verbally (words, numbers and other characters), and non-verbally (drawings, diagrams, facial expressions, gestures, etc.). In its broadest sense, as a sign can be understood any socio-cultural phenomenon -from artificial tools and other artifacts to social phenomena, processes and institutions.
c) the values of some sign structures (significants), of symbols, both verbal and nonverbal. As signs, significant exists only within the appearance of selforganizing systems, in particular, the human system, and without such a system this information just cannot exist. As with the meaning of signs, this type of information is really a subjective reality.
In Russian science, in our opinion, the problem of the concept of information and its interpretation is highly exaggerated. In fact, information, like any other word, is just a sign pointing to a particular phenomenon of the world and is used for creating correspondence between the outside world and our inner world of cognitive meanings. It is not for us to decide which of these worlds is the only correct one, because they are created within a certain context. The philosophical problem of information lies in the interdisciplinarity of this term: information is a category of a large number of scientific disciplines, each of which explains it in its own way. This is a normal situation for science at the present stage of its development.
One of the most promising solutions to the problem of the pluralism of the definition of information, in our view, is to bring together different points of view on this concept within exemplification approach to its definition. By this approach, a definition is revealed by a certain set of characteristic phenomena covered by this concept. In this case, the concept of information to be disclosed to the three above-mentioned phenomena. So, in terms of exemplification approach information is 1) the essential characteristics of matter; 2) sign structures and compositions; and 3) significant as the values of sign formations.
Information processes and technologies. Among the many information processes (processes in which an object and/or a result is information) there are three basic ones: storage, processing, and transmission. Other information processes, such as search, creation, verification, analysis, protection, and others can be reduced to these three processes.
As for any process, the information process needs some tools that convert the object to a result, in other words, it needs a technology. In our case, this is information technology. Information technologies, as the technologies of dealing with information, are
the system of means and methods for the implementation of information processes.
In the history of the development of information technologies there have been some key points (the so called information revolutions), each of which provided some cognitive, communicative, or other advantages in comparison with the previous one: (1) the appearance of memory; (2) the appearance of non-verbal languages; (3) the invention of verbal languages; (4) the appearance of writing; (5) the invention of printing; (6) the inventions of the telegraph, telephone, and television; (7) the invention of computers; (8) and the appearance of computer networks and the Internet (Karavaev, 2011).
The first three revolutions are the endogenous development of technologies for dealing with information. Verbal and non-verbal languages, as well as memory are internal and personal tools of human beings. The other revolutions are exogenous technologies, i.e., they are external tools for the storage, processing, and transmission of information.
Thus, information technology is a system of means and methods for the implementation of information processes (storage, processing and transmission). There are basically two types of information technology: 1) endogenous (memory and language) and 2) exogenous. The latter type, in turn, has two varieties: 1) mechanical (writing, printing press, telegraph, telephone, television), and 2) automated (computer and computer networks). The appearance of the automated information technology coincided with the formation of a new scientific field - informatics.
Informatics as a science. The formation of informatics occurred in the 20th century. It was connected with the development of computers as a new means of information processing.
In Russian science, informatics was initially considered as the theory of scientific information. This interpretation of informatics was proposed in 1966 by the Russian scientists A.I. Mikhailov, A.I. Chernyi, and R.S. Gilyarevskii. According to them, informatics is the field of human cognition that studies "the structure and general properties of scientific information, and the pattern of its creation, conversion, transmission and usage in different spheres of human activity" (Mikhailov, Chernyi, Gilyarevskii, 1972). Today, this approach to the interpretation of informatics is out of date and is not used by modern scientists.
The next stage in the development of the concept of informatics is its consideration as a technical science, associated with the use of computers for information processing, their creation, and their application in all spheres of human life and society. Under this approach, there are many definitions of informatics. Here are some of them, informatics is:
1. "The science of efficient information (which is considered as a presentation of knowledge and mess sages in the technical, economic, and social fields) processing that is realized mainly by automatic means" (Bauer, Goos, 1991).
2. "The sphere of human activity that is associated with the processes of data conversion by computers and their interaction with the surrounding environnment" (Makarova, 1997).
3. "A technical science that classifies the techniques and methods of creating, storing, reproducing, processing, and transmission of data by means of computer equipment" (Simonovich, 1999).
4. "The science of problem formalization, algorithm design for its solving and methods for its solving using computers and computer networks" (Fridland, 2003).
5. "The field of activity associated with the development of means of data processing with the use of a computer" (Okulov, 2013).
At the present stage of the development of the science the interpretations of informatics under this approach (informatics as a technical science) is one of the most prevalent.
Papers that consider informatics much more widely began to appear later. Informatics, according to them, is a fundamental science of information processes in nature, society, and technical systems. One of the representatives of this approach, the Russian scientist K.K. Kolin, considers informatics as a science "of properties, laws, methods and means of formation, transformation and distribution of information in nature and society, including by means of technical systems" (Kolin, 2010). However, in our opinion, such an interpretation unreasonably widely expands the subject field of informatics; according to it "the emphasis is on the concept of information, but there are rather contentrich books about informatics that don't speak about this concept at all" (Kanke, 2013).
Today there is still no accepted definition of the concept of informatics and it still continues to be a subject of scientific and philosophical discussions. In the search for a clear and logical definition of informatics we propose to consider this term according to its etymology. In our view, an etymological approach to the interpretation of the concept of informatics is very promising, because "the meaning of a word is a kind of employment of it. For this is what we learn when the word is incorporated into our language." (Vitgenshtein, 1991).
The French scientist F. Dreyfus is one of the first who proposed to use the neologism "informatique." This word is formed of the morphemes "inform" and "atique," which, in turn, are abbreviations of the words "information" (information) and "automatique" (automatic). Thus, initially this word was understood as information automatics. As distinct from, for example, industrial automatics, which is the set of various devices (mechanical, electronic, etc.) and methods of their usage for automatization of technical and industrial processes, the field of study of information automatics, or informatics, is determined by the automatization of working with information.
In the similar meaning at the proper time in the American science the term "computer science" formed as the science of computers, which studies the processing, storage, and transmission of information by different computer and telecommunication equipment. Computer science "is a field of study that is concerned with theoretical and applied disciplines in the development and use of computers for information storage and processing" (Dodig-Crnkovic, 2002).
Based on the above and on the study of the subject fields that are studied in the majority of scientific and educational books on informatics, it is possible to justifiably mean by informatics the meaning of the word that was initially in scientific use: informatics is the field of knowledge that studies the use of special tools (primarily computers) for automatization of dealing with information (its processing, storage, and transmission). In other words, informatics is the science of automatization of information processes.
This interpretation of the concept of informatics, in our opinion, clearly specifies the categories of informatics such as object and subject of informatics and its belonging to certain types of scientific knowledge. The object of informatics in this case are the information processes in general, and the subject - the problems of automation of information processes.
Within the classification of sciences in their subject areas (natural, mathematical, social, human and technical) informatics can be attributed to the technical sciences as the automation of information processes is due to the use of technical tools, mostly computer equipment. In the classification of the functional purpose of scientific research (fundamental and applied sciences) informatics is the applied science. The results of computer science aimed at solving specific practical problems (automation tasks), and not focused on "the creation of theoretical concepts and models, practical applicability of which is not obvious" (Titov, 1999) (i.e. knowledge for knowledge), as in the fundamental sciences.
Conclusion. So, informatics as the science of automation of information processes is applied, technical science, aimed at solving the problems of automation of information processes through the development of information technology, the creation of programming languages, design algorithms for solving problems, etc.
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