Revisiting the Imagination of the Interdisciplinarity of Information Science

In most authentic definitions concerning Information Science in the last four decades, emphasis on the interdisciplinarity of that area has always been a firm basis upon which Information Science is the outcome of mixing issues in disciplines such as librarianship, computer sciences, communications, linguistics, psychology, etc. in the epistemological map of human sciences. The researcher, applying dialectic method, and asking a question: what are the characteristics of interdisciplinary sciences, investigates the interdisciplinarity of information science Among the results of this dialectic method is that the main and identifying subject(s) in every scientific discipline (not simply its current scientific methodologies and theories) are the designating research approaches governing that discipline. Accordingly, since a discipline such as biochemistry, pertains to both biology and chemistry, is normally dependent on the two disciplines and thus its interdisciplinary nature is evident. However, in analogy, the main subject of information science which is the study of information and information processes, is not the main subject of any other scientific discipline and is only observed in information science. The researcher has enumerated four factors affecting the notion of interdisciplinarity of information science in the present paper. Based on the arguments made, one can conclude that none of the factors can justify the interdisciplinarity of information science and even its branches. This is to be considered in theoretical definitions concerning this scientific discipline.