Information field for historical research

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Information field for historical research

Journal Title: Вісник Дніпропетровського університету. Серія Історія та археологія. - Year 2017, Vol 25, Issue 1

Abstract

The article analyzes the main information collision of historical knowledge, which consists in physical inaccessibility of events and phenomena of the past as an object of historical science for a historian as an investigator. The aim of the research is to formulate and discuss a working hypothesis about the information field of historical science. The article provides an analytical background on the main ideas and approaches in the field of modern information field theory. The author carries out the projection of the main provisions of the information field theory on historical research. It is shown that the information field is a really existing information carrier that provides its acquisition, transportation, storage and visualization, as well as provides information and knowledge recorded in various forms, realizes cultural communications. One of the manifestations of such a culture is the sign systems, which determine certain contexts. Signs are characterized by polysemy. Despite artificial origin, semiotic reality is objective. Simultaneously, signs provide intellectual activity of people. Mental signs in the historical process of use by society acquire additional meanings, generating new symbols. Polysemy shapes the problem of epistemological uncertainty of two stages – identifying the problem and solving it. Historians as researchers resort to cognitive models, which, thanks to the translational function, ensure the transfer of information from the known to the unknown. One of the explanations of polysemy is the theory of conceptual integration, according to which the structures of the original mental spaces are projected onto a new, constructed, mental space – blend. This is the result of a personʼs intellectual ability to create new meanings on the basis of the available ones. Since signs and symbols are multi-valued, they form a multiplicity of retrospective scenarios of historical research at the stage of problem formulation. At the stage of its solution, the historian interacts actively with the information field, which consists in verifying empirical data of available scientific hypotheses. At this stage, the historian conducts heuristic, axiological and selection work, which results in the authorʼs version of the historiography.

Authors and Affiliations

Yurii Sviatets

Keywords

Blend. Hypothesis. Signs. Information. Models. Uncertainty. Polysemy. Symbols

EP ID EP260678
DOI 10.15421/261703
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