Order & ordering

"Love, Order, Progress"

(Comte, 1907, The Positivists' motto)

 

Order is "the logical or comprehensible arrangement of separate elements",  "a condition of regular or proper arrangement" or "the act of putting things in a sequential arrangement" (WordNet 2.1).

 

In Library and Information Science (LIS) what is ordered include:

Order may serve retrieval of documents, browsing, efficiency in storage and related functions. Commonly used criteria for ordering in LIS include:

Often are different kinds of ordering criteria used in combination. Traditionally have classification systems such as Dewey Decimal Classification been used both for shelf arrangement and for use in library catalogs (catalog cards until the appearance of OPACs). In the catalog - especially in electronic forms - may many kinds of subject access points be combined, why several kinds of order may be offered to the users.

 

Ordering of physical objects (e.g. books on shelves) is termed shelving order, while ordering of document representations in catalogs is termed "catalog order". A generic term for shelving order and catalog order is filing order (cf., Mills & Broughton, 1977), which is opposed to citation order, which is the order by which the facets of a compound subject are arranged in a subject heading or class number.

 

 

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The nature of order, what order is, whether there exist a certain order in the world, are questions that belong to the field of metaphysics.

 

Koch (1999) writes that order is something that may be observed or it is something which may be made. An observed order may be a construction made by other people or it may have evolved spontaneously. An order may be given once and forever, or it may be evolving. Cicero - and later Augustin - defined order as the placement of a thing (or events, persons, whatsoever) on its right place, i.e., where it belongs. Order is thus understood as the result of a process.

Sometimes has the observed order been interpreted as an order constructed by God. Linné, for example, regarded the species and families of animals as given by God, and it was common in the 1700s to regard the observed order as a proof of the existence of God. The contrary idea is maintained by materialism and Darwinism: That the observed order in nature is the result of spontaneous mutations. We may speak of self-organizing systems.

 

An important epistemological problem is whether an observed order exist independent of human consciousness, or whether an observed order is something that we construe. There is a tendency in positivism to try to generalize conditions in (parts of) our culture, to make the universal and to explain them biologically, that is: to construe a universal order, that may not exist. While the metaphysics of logical positivism assumed the unity of science, Dupré (1993) is a spokesman of a metaphysical view of the disunity of science and the disorder of things.

 

"There remains among many biologists and philosophers the hope of finding the ultimate and uniquely best classification of organisms, most recently conceived in terms of the speciation processes of Darwinian evolution (e.g. De Queiroz, 1999). However, it is at the same time becoming clearer that there is very likely no such ideal classification. There is no reason why a classification that reflects the origins of the things classified should coincide exactly with one aimed at the ecological relations of those things, and it is increasingly perceived that these can and do diverge (Dupré, 2002: chs 3–4). This possibility becomes even clearer in view of the difficulties that are emerging in the project of evolutionary-based classification." (Dupre, 2006, 30-31)

 

In this way have different epistemologies different views or implications concerning the objectivity of observed and constructed orders. Empiricism tend to regard orders as empirical generalizations; There is no order beyond observed regularities, and such regularities are not regarded in relation to the observers social and cultural background or interests. Rationalism tend to assume a given order (whether given by God: "God's eye" or given by inherent structures in our minds, or both). Order is regarded as independent of point of view and is not relative. Rutherford (1998) is about Leibniz and the rational order of nature arguing that the key to Leibniz' philosophy, the underlying idea of the system is the conception of nature as an order designed by God to maximize the opportunities for the exercise of reason.  Historicism tends to conceive observed structures as culturally relative. Pragmatism tends to conceive observed orders as representing dominant interest and power structures and to construe new orders based on analysis of the interests, they are going to serve.

 

Foucault (1970) has provided an original analysis of how the orders we observe is the result of historical processes and interests.

 


Literature:

 

Comte, A. (1907). A General View of Positivism. London: Routledge and Sons.

 

De Queiroz, K. (1999). The General Lineage Concept of Species and the Defining Property of the Species Category. IN: R. A. Wilson (ed.) Species: New Interdisciplinary Essays. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press/Bradford Books.

 

Dupré, J. (1993). The disorder of things: Metaphysical foundations of the disunity of science. Cambridge. MA: Harvard University Press.

 

Dupré, J. (2002). Humans and Other Animals. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

 

Dupré, J. (2006). Scientific classification. Theory, Culture & Society, 23(2-3), 30-32.

 

Foucault, M. (1970). The order of things: An archaeology of the human sciences. New York: Vintage Books.
 

Friman, M.; Jansson, P. & Suominen, V. (1995). Chaos or order? Knowledge Organization, 22(1). 23-29.

 

Kauffman, S. A. (1993). The Origins of Order. Self-organization and Selection in Evolution. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.

 

Koch, C. H. (1999). Orden. IN: Den store danske Encyklopædi. Ed. By J. Lund. Copenhagen: Gyldendal. (Vol. 14, pp. 518-519).
 

Mills, J. & Broughton, V. (1977). Bliss Bibliographic Classification. 2.ed. Introduction and Auxillary Schedules. London: Butterworths.

 

Patrides, C. A. (1973-74). Hierarchy and order. IN: Wiener, P. P. : The Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. (Vol. 2, pp. 435-449). Available (without illustrations): http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/cgi-local/DHI/dhi.cgi?id=dv2-50

 

Prigogine, I. & Stengers, I. (1984). Order Out of Chaos: Man’s New Dialogue with Nature. New York: Bantam Books.

 

Rutherford, D. (1998). Leibniz and the rational order of nature. New edition. Cambridge University Press. First published 1995. 

 

Schmidt, K. & Wagner, I. (2004). Ordering systems: Coordinative practices and artifacts in architectural design and planning’, Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW): The Journal of Collaborative Computing, 13(5-6), pp. 349-408.  http://www.itu.dk/~schmidt/papers/ordsys_preprint.pdf

 

WordNet 2.1 (2005). http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

 

 

See also: Alphabetical order; Classification; Filing order (Lifeboat for KO); Form (Epistemological lifeboat); Main class (Lifeboat for KO);  Organization (Lifeboat for KO);  Provenance, principle of ; Rhizome.


 

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/_0/history_05

 

 

 

Birger Hjørland

Last edited: 19-01-2007

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http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enzyklop%C3%A4dietheorie#Gliederungs-_und_Ordnungsprinzipien

 

 En anden vigtig form for orden består i at ordne værker og forfatterskaber. Store tænkeres værker udgives i videnskabelige udgaver og samlede værker, ofte kronologisk ordnet, med registre, noter, bibliografier o.s.v.

Det at ordne repræsentationer istedet for selve dokumenterne bevirker, at man kan anbringe henvisninger på flere pladser uden at have ekstra kopier eller dubletter af selve dokumenterne: man kan have mere logiske og mere brugervenlige ord­nings­systemer. I moderne BDI-virksomhed går man derfor mere og mere over til at have flere forskellige ordningsprincipper i databaser, hvoraf ordningen af de fysiske dokumen­ter på hylder kun udgør een orden.

Ved accessionsorden tildeles hvert dokument eller hver bibliografisk post et løbenummer, hvorfor dette ordningsprincip også betegnes løbenummerorden. Som regel er løbenummerorden kombineret med ordning efter form, således at anvendelsen af lagerpladsen optimeres (j.fr. også *operationsanalyse). Dette opstillingsprincip anvendes i biblioteker med lukkede hylder, og faciliterer ikke *browsing.

I folkebiblioteker anvendes *DK5 såvel som genfindingssystem i kataloger og som opstillingssystem på hylder, men edb-teknologien muliggør en adskillelse af disse to ordnings -eller klassifikationsprincipper. Der har været eksperimenteret lidt med alternative opstillingssystemer i danske folkebiblioteker. I boglader opstilles bøger ofte i brede temagrupper (jfr. *tema).

For brugere af ordningssystemer kan det være vigtigt, at der anvendes standardiserede principper. Ordningssystemer er ofte genstand for standardiseringsarbejde (jfr. *Standardisering).

En orden tjener et pragmatisk formål: overskuelighed og facilitering af informationssøgning. Det forhold, at en ordning tjener pragmatiske forhold, implicerer imidlertid ikke, at en pragmatisk erkendelses­teori nødvendigvis er det mest hensigtsmæssige ud­gangs­­punkt for teorier om orden. Mange naturvidenskabelige fænomener, f.eks. den bio­logiske taksonomi og kemiens periodiske system, repræsenterer snarer en videnskabelig *realisme end en prag­ma­tisk erkendelsesteo­ri. Hvis virkeligheden indeholder be­stemte objektive ordnings­principper vil det ofte (men ikke altid, og ikke udelukkende) være mest praktisk at anvende disse ordningsprin­cip­per, fremfor nye principper baseret på en hjemmestrikket lommefilosofi eller andet.

I mange tilfælde hersker der videnskabelig usikkerhed med hensyn til, om en given orden repræsenterer en objektiv realitet eller er et udtryk for en pragmatisk konstruktivisme (dette gælder f.eks. klassifikation af psykiske sygdomme). Disse problemer er forbundet med dybe filosofiske problemer omkring bl.a. realisme versus nominalisme. Sådanne spørgsmål er centrale for at beskæftige sig med ordnings­principper på det dybeste plan.


Et givet ordningsprincip indebærer altid en prioritering af de *informationsbehov, der skal tilgodeses. Desuden indebærer ordningsprincipper en prioritering af de omkostninger, der er forbundet med selve ordningen. En ordning, der i vidt omfang skal afspejle aktuelle - og måske stærkt fluktuerende brugerbehov er langt kostbarere at etablere end ordning efter simple, formelle og "objektive" (stabile) ordningsprin­cipper.