Mapping Big Data into Knowledge Space with Cognitive Cyber-Infrastructure

Big data research has attracted great attention in science, technology, industry and society. It is developing with the evolving scientific paradigm, the fourth industrial revolution, and the transformational innovation of technologies. However, its nature and fundamental challenge have not been recognized, and its own methodology has not been formed. This paper explores and answers the following questions: What is big data? What are the basic methods for representing, managing and analyzing big data? What is the relationship between big data and knowledge? Can we find a mapping from big data into knowledge space? What kind of infrastructure is required to support not only big data management and analysis but also knowledge discovery, sharing and management? What is the relationship between big data and science paradigm? What is the nature and fundamental challenge of big data computing? A multi-dimensional perspective is presented toward a methodology of big data computing.Comment: 59 page

Culture in international business research: a bibliometric study in four top IB journals

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to conduct a study on the articles published in the four top international business (IB) journals to examine how four cultural models and concepts – Hofstede’s (1980), Hall’s (1976), Trompenaars’s (1993) and Project GLOBE’s (House et al., 2004) – have been used in the extant published IB research. National cultures and cultural differences provide a crucial component of the context of IB research. Design/methodology – This is a bibliometric study on the articles published in four IB journals over the period from 1976 to 2010, examining a sample of 517 articles using citations and co-citation matrices. Findings – Examining this sample revealed interesting patterns of the connections across the studies. Hofstede’s (1980) and House et al.’s (2004) research on the cultural dimensions are the most cited and hold ties to a large variety of IB research. These findings point to a number of research avenues to deepen the understanding on how firms may handle different national cultures in the geographies they operate. Research limitations – Two main limitations are faced, one associated to the bibliometric method, citations and co-citations analyses and other to the delimitation of our sample to only four IB journals, albeit top-ranked. Originality/value – The paper focuses on the main cultural models used in IB research permitting to better understand how culture has been used in IB research, over an extended period.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Dialectics and difference: against Harvey's dialectical post-Marxism

David Harvey`s recent book, Justice, nature and the geography of difference (JNGD), engages with a central philosophical debate that continues to dominate human geography: the tension between the radical Marxist project of recent decades and the apparently disempowering relativism and `play of difference' of postmodern thought. In this book, Harvey continues to argue for a revised `post-Marxist' approach in human geography which remains based on Hegelian-Marxian principles of dialectical thought. This article develops a critique of that stance, drawing on the work of Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. I argue that dialectical thinking, as well as Harvey's version of `post-Marxism', has been undermined by the wide-ranging `post-' critique. I suggest that Harvey has failed to appreciate the full force of this critique and the implications it has for `post-Marxist' ontology and epistemology. I argue that `post-Marxism', along with much contemporary human geography, is constrained by an inflexible ontology which excessively prioritizes space in the theory produced, and which implements inflexible concepts. Instead, using the insights of several `post-' writers, I contend there is a need to develop an ontology of `context' leading to the production of `contextual theories'. Such theories utilize flexible concepts in a multilayered understanding of ontology and epistemology. I compare how an approach which produces a `contextual theory' might lead to more politically empowering theory than `post-Marxism' with reference to one of Harvey's case studies in JNGD

Concept talk cannot be avoided

Distinct systems for representing concepts as prototypes, exemplars, and theories are closely integrated in the mind, and the notion of concept is required as a framework for exploring this integration. Eliminating the term “concept” from our theories will hinder rather than promote scientific progress

The New Mechanical Philosophy

The New Mechanical Philosophy argues for a new image of nature and of science--one that understands both natural and social phenomena to be the product of mechanisms, and that casts the work of science as an effort to discover and understand those mechanisms. Drawing on an expanding literature on mechanisms in physical, life, and social sciences, Stuart Glennan offers an account of the nature of mechanisms and of the models used to represent them. A key quality of mechanisms is that they are particulars - located at different places and times, with no one just like another. The crux of the scientist\u27s challenge is to balance the complexity and particularity of mechanisms with our need for representations of them that are abstract and general.This volume weaves together metaphysical and methodological questions about mechanisms. Metaphysically, it explores the implications of the mechanistic framework for our understanding of classical philosophical questions about the nature of objects, properties, processes, events, causal relations, natural kinds and laws of nature. Methodologically, the book explores how scientists build models to represent and understand phenomena and the mechanisms responsible for them. Using this account of representation, Glennan offers a scheme for characterizing the enormous diversity of things that scientists call mechanisms, and explores the scope and limits of mechanistic explanation

The Non-Modularity of Moral Knowledge: Implications for the Universality of Human Rights

Many contemporary human rights theorists argue that we can establish the normative universality of human rights despite extensive cultural and moral diversity by appealing to the notion of overlapping consensus. In this paper I argue that proposals to ground the universality of human rights in overlapping consensus on the list of rights are unsuccessful. I consider an example from Islamic comprehensive doctrine in order to demonstrate that apparent consensus on the list of rights may not in fact constitute meaningful agreement and may not be sufficient to ground the universality of human rights. I conclude with some general suggestions for establishing the universality of human rights. Instead of presuming the universality of human rights based on apparent overlapping consensus we need to construct universality through actual dialogue both within and between communities

How Does Science Come to Speak in the Courts? Citations Intertexts, Expert Witnesses, Consequential Facts, and Reasoning

Citations, in their highly conventionalized forms, visibly indicate each texts explicit use of the prior literature that embodies the knowledge and contentions of its field. This relation to prior texts has been called intertextuality in literary and literacy studies. Here, Bazerman discusses the citation practices and intertextuality in science and the law in theoretical and historical perspective, and considers the intersection of science and law by identifying the judicial rules that limit and shape the role of scientific literature in court proceedings. He emphasizes that from the historical and theoretical analysis, it is clear that, in the US, judicial reasoning is an intertextually tight and self-referring system that pays only limited attention to documents outside the laws, precedents, and judicial rules. The window for scientific literature to enter the courts is narrow, focused, and highly filtered. It serves as a warrant for the expert witnesses\u27 expertise, which in turn makes opinion admissible in a way not available to ordinary witnesses

Rethinking benchmark dates in international relations

International Relations has an ‘orthodox set’ of benchmark dates by which much of its research and teaching is organized: 1500, 1648, 1919, 1945 and 1989. This article argues that International Relations scholars need to question the ways in which these orthodox dates serve as internal and external points of reference, think more critically about how benchmark dates are established, and generate a revised set of benchmark dates that better reflects macro-historical international dynamics. The first part of the article questions the appropriateness of the orthodox set of benchmark dates as ways of framing the discipline’s self-understanding. The second and third sections look at what counts as a benchmark date, and why. We systematize benchmark dates drawn from mainstream International Relations theories (realism, liberalism, constructivism/English School and sociological approaches) and then aggregate their criteria. The fourth section of the article uses this exercise to construct a revised set of benchmark dates which can widen the discipline’s theoretical and historical scope. We outline a way of ranking benchmark dates and suggest a means of assessing recent candidates for benchmark status. Overall, the article delivers two main benefits: first, an improved heuristic by which to think critically about foundational dates in the discipline; and, second, a revised set of benchmark dates which can help shift International Relations’ centre of gravity away from dynamics of war and peace, and towards a broader range of macro-historical dynamics

Aristotle, The Pythagoreans, and Structural Realism

Aristotle’s main objection to Pythagorean number ontology is that it posits as a basic subject what can exist only as inherent in a subject. I then show how contemporary structural realists posit an ontology much like that of Aristotle’s Pythagoreans. Both take the objects of knowledge to be structure, not the subject of structure. I discuss both how pancomputationalists such as Edward Fredkin approach the Pythagorean account insofar as on their account all reality can in principle be expressed as one (very big) number, made up of discrete units, and even more moderate varieties of structural realism, like that of Floridi, share with pancomputationalism the aspect of “Pythagorean” ontology that Aristotle finds so objectionable: positing structure or form with no substrate. I conclude by arguing that Aristotle himself is drawn to something close or (identical) to a structural realist ontology in Metaphysics 7.3

Mathematical practice, crowdsourcing, and social machines

The highest level of mathematics has traditionally been seen as a solitary endeavour, to produce a proof for review and acceptance by research peers. Mathematics is now at a remarkable inflexion point, with new technology radically extending the power and limits of individuals. Crowdsourcing pulls together diverse experts to solve problems; symbolic computation tackles huge routine calculations; and computers check proofs too long and complicated for humans to comprehend. Mathematical practice is an emerging interdisciplinary field which draws on philosophy and social science to understand how mathematics is produced. Online mathematical activity provides a novel and rich source of data for empirical investigation of mathematical practice - for example the community question answering system {\it mathoverflow} contains around 40,000 mathematical conversations, and {\it polymath} collaborations provide transcripts of the process of discovering proofs. Our preliminary investigations have demonstrated the importance of "soft" aspects such as analogy and creativity, alongside deduction and proof, in the production of mathematics, and have given us new ways to think about the roles of people and machines in creating new mathematical knowledge. We discuss further investigation of these resources and what it might reveal. Crowdsourced mathematical activity is an example of a "social machine", a new paradigm, identified by Berners-Lee, for viewing a combination of people and computers as a single problem-solving entity, and the subject of major international research endeavours. We outline a future research agenda for mathematics social machines, a combination of people, computers, and mathematical archives to create and apply mathematics, with the potential to change the way people do mathematics, and to transform the reach, pace, and impact of mathematics research.Comment: To appear, Springer LNCS, Proceedings of Conferences on Intelligent Computer Mathematics, CICM 2013, July 2013 Bath, U