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Using Double Helix Relationships to Understand and Change Informing Systems

Author

  • Hans-Erik Nissen

Editor

  • Hans-Erik Nissen
  • Peter Bednar
  • Christine Welch

Summary, in English

The paper opens by generalizing the concept of 'informing science'. It

then introduces some meta-scientific perspectives and a discussion of a

metaphor that has considerable explanatory power. Two main schools

of metascience are presented and contrasted. The difference between

treating invariances in natural sciences and in social and cultural sciences

is discussed. The double helix is introduced as a generic metaphor

to highlight important distinctions. Highlighting new distinctions

in this way can help to avoid simply assimilating them into already familiar

distinctions. The paper also discusses how some metascientific

perspectives and the transdisciplinary generalized concept of informing

science can be seen as related. Finally, the paper argues that computerized

models never keep up with continuously changing situations.

However, people always have to handle the full variety of situations,

including those not foreseen during requirements engineering. To address

this, the paper suggests balancing requirements engineering with

model transparency engineering

Publishing year

2007

Language

English

Pages

21-62

Publication/Series

Use and Redesign in IS: Double Helix Relationships?

Document type

Book chapter

Publisher

Informing Science Press

Topic

  • Information Systems, Social aspects

Keywords

  • information systems design
  • hermeneutics- dialectics
  • cognition versus recognition
  • double helix metaphor
  • information systems

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISBN: 978-1-932-8860-5-4