This is the final submitted version. The printed version contains small changes.

The importance of theories of knowledge:

browsing as an example

Birger Hjørland

Royal School of Library and Information Science

6 Birketinget

DK-2300 Copenhagen S, Denmark

Email: [email protected]

Abstract

The recent study on information science (IS) by Bates (2007) is an important contribution to the

literature on browsing in IS. It is explicitly based on “behavioural science.” The present paper uses

Bates (2007) as the point of departure for demonstrating how more social and interpretative

understandings may provide fruitful improvements for research in information seeking, browsing

and related phenomena. It is part of the author’s ongoing publication of articles about philosophical

issues in IS and it is intended to be accompanied by analyses of other examples of contributions to

core issues in IS. Although it is formulated as a discussion based on a specific paper it should be

seen as part of a general discussion of the philosophical foundation of IS and as support for the

emerging social paradigm in this field. The paper argues that human browsing should not primarily

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be conceptualized in biological terms and should not be understood as random exploratory

processes but as a kind of orienting strategy governed by people's metatheories or “paradigms.”

Introduction

The purpose of the present paper is to demonstrate implications of theories of knowledge by

considering a published study in information science (IS) from a theory of knowledge perspective in

order to analyze its epistemological position and to demonstrate how an alternative view contributes

to the further advancement of the field. Bates (2007) is an important and interesting study where the

author provides a new definition of browsing and provides support for this view in psychology and

behavioral ecology. It is openly available on the Internet. Bates (2007) also discusses the

implications of her understanding for information systems design.

The purpose of our analysis in this paper is to examine Bates (2007) from the perspective of

epistemology/theory of knowledge and thereby to argue that there are alternative ways to look at

this important issue and that such alternative approaches may be able to advance IS in a fruitful

way.

“Behavioral science,” “the behavioral view” and some alternative views

The two most influential schools or “paradigms” in psychology in the twentieth century (in the USA

and thus also internationally) were behaviorism and cognitivism. These views have also been

influential in other fields, including IS. According to a bibliometric study conducted by Robins,

Gosling, and Craik (1999, p. 122) behaviorism dominated until about 1971, after which cognitivism

took over. Although cognitivism is probably still the dominant view in psychology (but behaviorism

is still a view with some influence) alternative views are getting stronger and the criticism of

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behaviorism and cognitivism is also becoming much stronger and difficult to ignore (Billig, 1996;

Harré & Gillett, 1994). These views have many different labels, but here we shall use “the

discursive view” as an umbrella term for a broad family of views which primarily regards the mind

and psychological processes as cultural and social by nature.

We have thus:

 behaviorism (the dominant view in US psychology from about 19131 to about 1971)

 cognitivism (the dominant view in US psychology from about 1971 to the present)

 the discursive view (an important, emerging view in psychology from about 1990, but with

an earlier origin).

The behavioral view was first formulated in psychology by J. B. Watson (1913), who made the

following programmatic statements:

 psychology is a pure objective, experimental science

 psychology belongs to the natural sciences

 the theoretical goals of psychology are prediction and control of behavior

 in principle, the behaviorist does not acknowledge a distinction between human

beings and animals

 psychology can be conducted in terms of stimulus and response

 stimulus can be predicted from behavior, and behavior from stimulus.

Behaviorist principles became increasing difficult to maintain and around 1971 the majority of

psychologists replaced them with the new paradigm: “cognitivism.” As we shall see below, an

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alternative view (“ethology”) developed in biology when behaviorism dominated psychology.

Ethology also belongs to “the behavioral sciences.”

Cognitivism is based on the metaphor of the human mind as a computer. It is a theoretical approach

to psychology that describes mental functions as information processing models and uses

quantitative, positivist research methods. The main issues that interest cognitive psychologists are

the inner mechanisms of human thought and the processes of knowing (in contrast to the

behaviorists’ neglect of inner mental processes). Because cognitivism is not the focus of the present

article, we shall not discuss it further (although it has had an influence on IS). It should be said

however, that criticism leveled against cognitivism is very harsh. Searle (1992, p. 225), for

example, speaks about “the shaky foundations of cognitive science” and says “it is simply false to

say that the brain is an information processing device.”

From the point of view of their critics both behaviorism and cognitivism are seen as representing

enormous bubbles in the scientific landscape, which have left disappointingly little knowledge to

their successors. Harré and Gillett (1994, p. vii) wrote: “Behaviorism passed away, leaving only its

experimental methodology behind, and even that is kept in being more by institutional pressures

than by any scientific merit. The new dawn seemed to many to be heralded by the development of

computer-oriented ‘cognitive science,’ but that too proved to be an illusion. The technical

sophistication of the programming model was not matched by a coherent theory of the relation

between formal computation and real-life human thought.” Because of this criticism many

researchers in psychology as well as in information science and other fields (including myself)

turned towards alternatives such as “the discursive view.”

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The discursive view: an important recent development within psychology and related fields can be

labeled “a social turn” (covering a broad family of related views, including “activity theory”).

Therefore the social turn in IS should be seen as part of a broader movement in other fields,

including psychology. This social turn has many different labels, among others “the second

cognitive revolution” and “the discursive turn.”

Human psychology and functions like perception, thinking, memory and emotion are seen as

cultural and social developments. The alternative view, that psychological processes and

consciousness are independent phenomena that can be studied as something self-reliant, was held

by both Dewey (1910, p. 250) and Vygotsky (1997, pp. 272-3 and 372) as “the psychological

fallacy.” (The same fallacy is today widespread in the understanding of, for example, “information

needs” in IS2.) Both researchers found that in order to study the human mind, it is necessary to leave

it per se and study the society and the culture in which it functions. Empirical support for this view

has also been provided by social anthropology, for example by Jack Goody (1987).

It is beyond the scope of this article to provide more detailed information about theoretical

developments in psychology and adjacent fields, so I will finish with a quote about the social nature

of human thinking:

“If witcraft is a basic form of thought, then we can expect private thinking to be

modelled upon public argument. In consequence, it should possess a dialogic, rather

than monologic, character. Thought, then, would not be seen as a process which is

inevitably locked within the recesses of the brain and which is only dimly reflected in

our words. Instead, the structure of the way we argue reveals the structure of our

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 thoughts. To put the matter in a paradox, which should not be interpreted too literally:

Humans do not converse because they have inner thoughts to express, but they have

thoughts because they are able to converse” (Billig, 1996, p. 141).

Different “paradigms” are related to different views of knowledge. With some simplification we

may say that

 behaviorism is mainly related to empiricism (and to logical positivism)

Consequently theories of psychology can essentially be classified according to their underlying

epistemologies, and books about theoretical issues in psychology can be arranged on the basis of

these theories of knowledge, as done, for example, by Russell (2004). The same is the case with IS,

where I have often classified views by relating them to their underlying theories of knowledge (cf.

Hjørland, 1997).

Terms such as “behavioral sciences” have different meanings: social organization, a label used for a

collection of topic areas, e.g. in educational programs and journal names, or a set of assumptions

shared by a group of researchers and a particular methodological approach. We may thus indicate

the following connections:

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 Table 1:

Connections between paradigms and groupings of disciplines

Behaviorism (in psychology) The behavioral sciences4

Ethology and human ethology / behavioral

ecology (in biology3)

Cognitivism The cognitive sciences5

The discursive view6 What might be called “discursive studies”

Although these groups of sciences overlap, they are not identical: there are internal connections

between a theoretical view and what is seen as adjacent fields. Organizational labels such as “the

behavioral sciences” need not, of course, be very closely related to the corresponding “paradigms.”

One can work in a field designated by a given label even if one's theoretical commitment is more

closely related to another paradigm. On the other hand, it is obvious that there is some connection

between the terms one uses and the view to which one subscribes. Terminology is neither innocent

nor neutral.7

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My point so far is: Bates (2007) refers in the subtitle of her paper to the behavioral sciences. I see

this as an indication of a theoretical view based on or related to “a behavioral view,” although I am

placing myself under the discursive label. These different theoretical positions should make it

possible to draw different perspectives on IS in general and browsing in particular. Things are,

however, somewhat complicated because (Harré & Gillett, 1994, pp. 3-4) “ironically, at about the

same time as behaviorism was established in psychology, the study of the biology of animal

behavior was undergoing a remarkable and permanent revolution in the hands of Lorenz, Tinbergen,

and von Frisch, who abandoned the laboratory for the study of the whole lives of animals in their

natural surroundings” (what is termed “ethology” and is based on an “ecological” point of view).

This is important because – as we shall see later – a main driver of Bates (2007) seems primarily to

be ethological studies (which are also part of “the behavioral sciences” but not subject to the same

criticism which has been raised against behaviorism in psychology, although its application to

human beings, the field known as “human ethology,” has also been severely criticized for

neglecting the importance of culture). Nonetheless, the basic aim of the present paper is to uncover

the fundamental assumptions in different traditions, to consider the drawbacks in behavioral views

and to put forward an alternative view on browsing based on views related to “the social turn” in

both psychology and IS.

Presentation of Bates (2007)

Bates's work (2007) is a conceptual, analytical and theoretical article rather than an empirical

article. It considers browsing as one kind of information behavior, along with other kinds, including

scanning and berrypicking.8 It discusses other authors’ definitions and understanding of browsing

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and suggests a new definition of that phenomenon. Bates also exemplifies what she considers “a

prototypical browsing situation”, i.e. looking at magazines at an airport news stand:

“Based on experience, you know that the news stand could be a browsing-rich

experience. You walk over and stand close enough to the shelves to read the headlines.

You glimpse a section. You see a headline or picture that interests you. You pick up the

magazine, i.e., you select it. You read a bit, i.e., you examine it and put it back. You

glimpse something out of the corner of your eye. You turn your head and look at that

magazine. No, not interesting after all. You now look in the other direction on the shelf.

Ah, now that's really interesting! You pick up the magazine and read a little. You think,

‘I'm going to buy this one. I can read it on the plane,’ i.e., you acquire. You then either

browse additional magazines or go to the check-out stand to buy your magazine.”

(Bates, 2007, italics added).

In this example the italicized words (glimpse, select, examine, acquire) are the elements of typical

browsing sessions. Bates also suggested that although her definition is expressed in terms of vision

it is possible in principle to extend it to, say, browsing sound clips of a music player and the use of

other senses.

After discussing the literature about browsing in IS Bates (2007) turns towards

 psychological literature about visual search and

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Bates does not ask whether these sources represent different metatheories and what the implications

of that would be. In a former paper (2002) she referred to Sandstrom (1994) on “optimal foraging

theory” (which has now been critically discussed in IS by Nicolaisen, 2007). I have found this

theory inspiring (although it is controversial) because it asks the question: “what is the best form of

behavior in particular cases?” If browsing research is to be fruitful, I believe we have to address this

question: what kinds of orienting behavior are the optimal ones in different contexts? We shall

return to that question later. Bates’s primary aim is to find support for her understanding of

browsing in these behavioral literatures.

In the light of this literature (as well as the literature from IS), Bates (2007) reaches the following

eight conclusions:

1. Animals that can move (motile as opposed to sessile animals) may use their movement

capability to explore in a more or less random manner. This behaviour exposes them to new

places and possibilities. Such exposure may lead to new food sources, mates, nesting or

hiding places and escape routes from predation. Such exposure may also lead to harm or

death. 10

2. Presumably, the amount and extent of exploratory behaviour exhibited in a given species is

the result of the historical trade-off experienced by the species between explorations that led

to positive results and explorations that led to deleterious results. (Another, non-conflicting,

possibility is that there may be a range of exploratory behaviour within the species as well,

with some animals doing more or less exploration. Thus, this variation is the engine for

further natural selection and, therefore, evolution of the species' exploratory propensities in

one direction or another.)

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3. Based on the above, we accept that most animals have a propensity toward exploratory

behaviour.

4. In humans, at least, visual search is optimized for efficiency and constrained by brain

capacity, in such a way as to require a particular kind of search. Specifically, we take in a

scene all at once in a massively parallel glimpse, then select or sample a spot within the

glimpsed area to examine more closely, using higher-level capabilities which require much

more mental processing space. The glimpse notes basic features such as colour and

movement. The higher-level processing at the examination stage engages in such activities

as face recognition, reading and object identification.

5. Browsing is a cognitive and behavioural expression of this exploratory behaviour. The in-

built motivation for this exploratory behaviour can be called curiosity. Because humans are

so strongly reliant on vision, bodily motion often mirrors visual search, in that the second

stage of browsing often involves physical movement toward items of interest, which

movement, of course, also supports closer visual inspection.

6. Browsing is here considered to have four elements. The first element is essential to our

understanding of browsing, the later elements almost always occur as well: 1) glimpse a

scene, 2) home in on an element of a scene visually and/or physically (if two or more

elements are of interest, they are examined serially, not in parallel), 3) examine item(s) of

interest, 4) physically or conceptually acquire or abandon examined item(s). This sequence

is repeated indefinitely through further glimpses. Browsing is thus not a smooth scan of a

scene.

7. Formally, browsing is defined thus: Browsing is the activity of engaging in a series of

glimpses, each of which exposes the browser to objects of potential interest; depending on

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 interest, the browser may or may not examine more closely one or more of the (physical or

represented) objects; this examination, depending on interest, may or may not lead the

browser to (physically or conceptually) acquire the object.

8. The design of interactive information systems needs to incorporate an awareness of human

browsing characteristics. Specifically, browsing for information in such systems should not

be limited to the opportunity to scan, but instead enable the searcher to manifest the

instinctive tendency to engage in a browsing sequence: to glimpse, then to examine or not

something glimpsed, then to keep or not the things examined” (Bates, 2007).

We have now described Bates’s (2007) article. In my opinion it is not behaviorist in a narrow sense.

Behavioral ecology is not behaviorist and Bates clearly draws on that. Her conclusions concerning

animal behavior seem to be correct and important, although they neglect the problem of how to

determine which behavior is optimal in specific situations or contexts. Perhaps her point of view is

not just behavioral, because one could say that point 4 above relates to cognitive science. In spite of

this Bates’s views are clearly different from a social/cultural perspective. There are some areas in

which they are clearly more related to behavioral science that to discursive studies:

(1) the search for universal principles in browsing behavior common to both animals and human

beings.

(2) the search for biological mechanisms underlying browsing behavior at the expense of

epistemological and discursive/rhetorical causes.

(3) principles about browsing are primarily sought in psychology (i.e. in the properties of the

organism/the subject) rather than in the surrounding world (although the ecological

perspective does that).

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 (4) the tendency to consider browsing a random exploration rather than a systematic or theory-

driven exploration.

I have now tried to establish how Bates's work (2007) is theoretically connected to behavioral

sciences and how this may be a limited perspective. This should become clearer when we consider

the alternative, social, perspective introduced below.

An alternative view based on the theory of knowledge

Bates (2007) speaks of browsing as a kind of exploratory behavior, whereas I would suggest we

should speak of it as a kind of orienting strategy. Unlike Bates, I do not think of browsing as a

totally random exploration, and the word “strategy” clearly indicates that. Although there is nothing

in Bates’s article that is directly opposed to the view that browsing is a strategic way of acting, the

impression one gets from the article is that Bates views it as a random process. In addition, there is

no indication how we can find out which kind of orienting strategy is optimal in a given context.

I suggest that browsing is related to orienting strategies, and that the difference between more

systematic kinds of searching and browsing is related to theories and metatheories held by the

persons acting.

Example

When women go shopping for clothes, they may go directly to a shop they know and

search systematically for a specific kind of clothing in a department, where they have

formerly found things they liked. They may also browse by trying different shops,

different departments and different brands. We may say that the shop/department/brand

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 they know represents a theory that it is likely that something needed or wanted could be

found there. When different shops are being browsed, they are pre-selected (consciously

or unconsciously). Some shops may seem too far away, some too expensive, others too

low-class. Some may seem to be oriented towards younger people's needs and so on. We

can say that shops and departments are selected by metatheoretical criteria. If a theory

is a theory about which shop is best then a metatheory is a theory about how to evaluate

your theory, or which criteria should guide your choice of theories. Of course both

theories and metatheories are changed dynamically when new information is

encountered (e.g. advice from a friend or when advertising seems to contradict one's

opinion). It may be, for example, that your theory about which shops were too far away

will change when you learn about their quality and prices. Often browsing leads to the

discovery of, for example, a new brand in another store. If that brand looks attractive it

is then sought more systematically.

We saw in the example, that people's browsing is governed first by “needs” (or interests and

purposes) and then by theories and metatheories about how to fulfill those needs.11 Browsing is a

broader and less systematical kind of orienting strategy compared with systematic searching

because metatheories are broader and less focused compared with first-level theories. In the case of

human beings, theories and metatheories are, to a very high degree, the result of socialization. We

learn about markets, products and prices and a lot of other things and our behavior cannot be

understood independently of what we have learned about reality. In the case of animals the

“theories” are much more hardwired into the brain.12

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One psychological theory that explains our actions by exploring the theories behind them is “theory

theory” (Gopnik & Meltzoff, 1998; Gopnik & Wellman, 1994). We may also say with Alfred

Korzybski: "A person does what he does because he sees the world as he sees it" (i.e. because he

has the theories he has).

I have provided an everyday example of browsing and now want to consider browsing in the

context of academic studies. I believe this is a very important area and one that is generally

neglected in information science. It is important for several reasons.

(1) Information scientists browse themselves. They have first-hand experience of

seeking information. The benefits and drawbacks of different kinds of strategies can

be interpreted by considering other researchers’ contributions to IS by studying their

citation behavior. It is very strange to ignore such firsthand experience, and it often

leads to rather strange theories of users as a species different from ourselves.

(2) Information science (and library science) is very much about helping users using

bibliographical databases and related tools in relation to academic work. By only

considering browsing more generally in relation to everyday information (and even

to animal behavior) our knowledge tends to become too abstract, vague and

unspecific.

(3) The knowledge gained from science studies (such as Kuhn’s (1962) theory of

paradigms) can be applied to everyday life. This is, for example, how “the theory

theory” developed. To study everyday life and try to develop general principles from

it is probably to turn things upside-down.

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When Bates wrote her 2007 article she did, of course, engage in different kinds of “information

seeking behavior,” include browsing. My own writing of the present paper is similarly based on

kinds of information seeking and browsing. To consider specific persons' behavior is not usual in IS

(or in behavioral science or in “behavioral science”), 13 but this is in my opinion owed to a

problematic theory of science in which other people are considered as objects rather than subjects.

My claim is that the most important difference between Bates’s and my own orienting strategies is

owed to different metatheoretical views on IS.

Bazerman (1985/1988) studies how physicists are reading physics and, to a lesser degree, searching

for physics literature. It is a study that I classify as belonging to “the social turn” or “the discursive

view.” He writes:

“Twentieth-century physicists read articles in physics within the activity and structure of

twentieth-century physics. Their reading is motivated and shaped by their participation

in that communal endeavor” (p. 235). “The reader reads not a single text, but an

intertext which creates both the traces of language familiar and meaningful for the

reader and the presuppositions on which the reading rests” (p. 236).

Bazerman does not speak of “theories” but of schemata,14 but his understanding corresponds with

my understanding that reading and searching are determined by purposes and theories obtained in a

social context.15

Bazerman observed seven research physicists' reading activities, library search for materials (and

quick first reading of those materials in the library), scanning tables of contents, and careful reading

16
of two articles. Although Bazerman does not use the word “browsing,” it is evident that he also

describes that phenomenon in the following:16

“The scanning processes of these physicists give evidence about how deeply these

schema are impressed in the subconscious, The subjects scan so rapidly over tables of

contents that they cannot give conscious thought to each title. Rather, certain words

seem to trigger the attention and make the scanner question a particular title more

actively” (Bazerman, 1985/1988, p. 239).

“Once the scanner’s attention has been grabbed by a single term, he or she then will

look at the other words in the title. In the observations I made, only about one quarter of

the titles that triggered attention on the basis of a single term were actually looked at.

All others were deleted on the basis of the other information of the title and author” (p.

240).

“But what the news is depends on individual interests and purposes. Theoreticians, for

example, may go right to the results of experimental articles to see what kind of data is

obtained and must be accounted for by their theory; they are likely to skip over

methodological sections as uninteresting and theoretical sections as familiar. Even

problem formulations and conclusions may not contain much that is helpful to them” (p.

243).

What I discern from the above is that different people browse in different ways because they have

different purposes and schemata or theories. When Bates wrote her article she searched and

browsed mostly in mainstream behavioral literature because she assumed that this was the best way

to do research on browsing. When I wrote this response, I based it on searching and browsing

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literatures in the philosophy of science and on some minority approaches to psychology related to

“the discursive turn” as well as other fields.

Some sociologists (Berger & Zelditch, 1993; Wagner, 1984; Wagner & Berger, 1985) have used the

term “orienting strategies” in a way that I find fruitful. They find that orienting strategies should be

understood as metatheories:

“Consider the very large proportion of sociological theory that is in the form of

metatheory. It is discussion about theory: about what concepts it should include, about

how those concepts should be linked, and about how theory should be studied. Similar

to Kuhn's paradigms, theories of this sort provide guidelines or strategies for

understanding social phenomena and suggest the proper orientation of the theorist to

these phenomena; they are orienting strategies. Textbooks in theory frequently focus on

orienting strategies such as functionalism, exchange, or ethnomethodology” (Wagner &

Berger, 1985, p. 700).

Orienting strategies provide guidelines for approaching phenomena. “Orienting strategies tell us

what to consider important and what to ignore, and how to handle the information we consider

important” (Wagner, 1984).

What is gained by connecting theory of browsing to the concept of metatheories, and to consider it

in the framework of science studies? I mentioned above three reasons why the academic context is

important. I will now add another point, which I consider to be the most important one.

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How can we, as information specialists, help people decide what kinds of browsing and other forms

of orienting behavior are the optimal ones for different tasks or in different contexts? I believe the

best possible answer is given by science studies. All researchers have to use strategies that on the

one hand limit the use of time used for browsing and on the other hand allow enough browsing to

enable us to make important discoveries. I believe this trade-off between browsing and focusing is

related to the trade-off between using time for spending time studying metatheories and sticking to

one theory, which is again related to the question of accepting the core assumptions in a paradigm

or research program or leaving the program and working from other theoretical assumptions (cf.

Lakatos, 1970).

Yet more important is the question of which information sources are fruitful to browse? The

literature of information science has not yet had much to say about this important issue, but in a

way the answer is very simple. We have seen that Bates and I have used different metatheoretical

points of departure, implying different orienting strategies and thus also implying different ways of

browsing. To ask “which browsing strategy is best?” involves asking “which metatheory is most

fruitful?” When a metatheoretical position has been chosen, the best searching and browsing

strategy depends on how the relevant literature is distributed in disciplines and languages, its type,

its relation to national traditions, etc. Given that kind of knowledge we as information specialists

will be able to give advice about the optimal ways of searching and browsing.

Conclusion

The present paper has outlined some key areas in the history of disciplines relevant to the study of

browsing. I have tried to show that browsing (as well as any other phenomenon) cannot be properly

19
investigated without consideration of the metatheoretical frameworks in which it has formerly been

studied. By doing so, I have aligned myself with the historicist/hermeneutical tradition.

I have further argued that browsing can best be understood as a kind of orienting strategy. When

people search for information, they are governed by their knowledge and theories of the phenomena

they seek knowledge about as well as by their knowledge and theories about how knowledge about

that phenomenon has formerly been produced (in what disciplines, in what languages, in what kinds

of literature, etc.). The difference between browsing and more systematic kinds of searching

corresponds to the difference between metatheories and first-level theories. If a person has a clear

and strong belief or theory then it is reasonably evident which sources should be used and why

systematic searching is most important. If, on the other hand, the person is theoretically

uncommitted then there are many directions to follow and browsing becomes more relevant.

Whether browsing is done widely or more narrowly is thus not just the psychological preference of

the individual, but is related to how scattered the information is, and how well it is organized from a

given theoretical perspective.

One job for information scientists is to help people decide about which strategies should be used for

finding information. I have argued that in order to answer such a question we must know about

orienting strategies in different domains and how different theoretical positions are scattered in the

information ecology.

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24
1
In 1913 J.B. Watson wrote his famous programmatic article “Psychology as the behaviorist views it.”

2
In another paper, I wrote: “What seems most critical here is the tendency to consider information needs (or needs in

general) and relevance criteria as inner motivational state, which may be regarded as a mistake related to what Gilbert Ryle

(1949) termed the ‘ghost in the machine’ or a ‘category-mistake’ The expression "the car needs petrol" is of course not an

indication that the car has a feeling or an "inner motivational state." The meaning of the word "need" is that the car cannot

do what we want it to do unless it gets some petrol. There is no reason to believe that the meaning of "need" is different

when applied to human beings or to information. We can say that a student needs knowledge about English grammar. Like

the car, the student probably has no awareness that s/he lacks this knowledge, but his/her teacher may believe that his/her

written and spoken English could be improved if s/he learned principles of English grammar. The teacher may also convince

the student about this need and then this need may become conscious and an "inner motivational state" (Hjørland, 2010,

p.222).
3
Ethology and behavioral ecology also influenced psychology and became a minor school in psychology.

4
Behavioral sciences are a concept created in the USA in the beginning of the 1950s. Originally it was intended to include

sociology, anthropology (except archeology, technical linguistics and most of physical anthropology), psychology (except

physiological psychology), and behavioral aspects of biology, economics, geography, legal studies, psychiatry and political

science.

Fifteen years later it was generally established at US universities and from then on became a very common concept in

books, reference works, journals and other kinds of knowledge organization. The key event in establishing this term and

field of knowledge was the publication of an idea described in a program of the Ford Foundation in the late 1940s.

It is a rather unusual example of a scientific organization of knowledge and nomenclature, owed purely to an administrative

decision which subsequently institutionalized it as an intellectual concept. There was no attempt in the Ford-programmed to

establish one science based on one theoretical view as is indicated the case in the journal Behavioral Science (1956- ) and

by Miller (1955). In spite of the fact that Smelser and Baltes (2001) regard their work as a revised edition of the

International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences and in spite of their decision to include the concept "behavioral sciences"

in the title this work does not contain any article about behavioral sciences.
5
The cognitive sciences (sometimes singular: cognitive science) are an interdisciplinary field which can be dated back to

1956 when the psychologist Jerome Bruner published A Study of Thinking and the linguist Noam Chomsky's book Logical

Structure of Linguistic Theory circulated in a preliminary edition. The field developed very fast and became a dominant

force in American psychology and other fields, including information science, from where it spread to the rest of the world.
The field established its own scientific journals, conferences and so on from about 1975.

6
As represented by, for example, Billig (1996) and Harré and Gillett (1994).

7
The well-known psychologist Jerome S. Bruner (1990) has thus as part of his alternative to behaviorism and cognitivism

argued that one should not speak of human behavior, but of human acts, because the term “behavior” has underlying

assumptions about the nature of human beings. This consideration is, by the way, also relevant in IS, where the term

“information behavior” is (still) much used.

9
Before doing so, Bates (2007) expresses reservations about her expertise in these fields and states that she has tried to

follow the mainstream (“or at least ideas widely recognized and taken seriously, as supposed to fringe approaches”). These

remarks seem interesting because they are in a way the diametrical opposite of my own views. Firstly, I find that the issues

discussed are of an interdisciplinary nature. They cannot be answered adequately by considering the literature of one

discipline alone. There should be no criticism when information scientists use literature from other fields. On the contrary, it

should be considered a weakness when we do not. Secondly, my own attitude is that to be authoritarian is not a scholarly

virtue. The most influential approaches need not be the best qualified ones. As stated earlier in this article, I, like other

scholars, am skeptical of the mainstream (and consider it as“ bubbles” which have contributed very little). Therefore I

search (and browse!) in a way that is very different from the way Bates (2007) does (as revealed by the sources she uses). I

shall return to this issue in the next section because they are important from the theoretical position which I try to support.
10
Browsing may lead to harm or death, as Bates implies but it is important to emphasize that it is the waste of energy and

time that is probably the most important problem of exaggerated browsing (cf. Marchionini, 1995, p. 117).
11
People's view of their own needs should also be considered as theories, which may turn out to be wrong. That is obvious,

for example, in medical cases, where the doctor may have quite different views of the relevant diagnosis and treatment

compared with the patient's own theory.

their brains. In recent years, however, many more products like perfumes, formerly almost exclusively women’s domain, are

now being widely marketed for men.

13
There is, however, one important exception. Howard D. White studied how some prominent information scientists

(Marcia J. Bates, Christine L. Borgman, William S. Cooper, Michael H. MacRoberts, Henry Small, Karen Sparck Jones,

Don R. Swanson, and Patrick Wilson) referred to themselves and others in multiple works over time, thereby providing

individual citation profiles. This kind of research is not, as White writes, depersonalized: “One needs domain knowledge to
interpret the list of names. If one has that, recitation analysis can be quite engaging—a source of intelligence that, unlike

much in information science, is not depersonalized” (White, 2001, 87).

14
Schemata theory, along with the terms "frame," "scene" and "script," were made known by cognitive psychologists, in

particular Ulric Neisser, although they are older. Bazerman has probably taken them from the context of cognitive

psychology. It is outside the scope of this article to discuss schemata theory. It should be clear from what I have written that

I find it better to use concepts from science studies than concepts from cognitive psychology.
15
“Differences in schema or purpose that the reader brings affect both the process of comprehension and the meaning

constructed from the text” (p. 236). “The reader is not an isolated mind, devoid of experience and community” (p. 236).

“The researcher’s own need to carry on research and his or her own understanding of the field clearly shape the reading

process and the meaning carried away from the professional literature. Moreover, purpose and schema are intertwined, so

that the reader’s schema incorporates active purpose and purpose is framed by the schema. In this dynamic interplay any

article has the potential for reshaping the reader’s schema and purpose” (Bazerman, 1985/1988, p. 237).
16
Bates (2007) argues that scanning is not the same as browsing. Even if Bazerman use the word scanning, it seems to fall

under the term browsing as defined by Bates (2007).