[AISWorld] [EXTERNAL] Re: "IS not capable of coming up with native theories" says its senior scholar

Thu Dec 16 22:12:48 EST 2021

... but 100% of purity implies 0% of imperfection, so does 100% of purity imply 100% of perfection?

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Prof. Dr. José Manuel Mora Tavarez
Depto. de Sistemas de Información
Centro de Ciencias Básicas
Universidad Autónoma de Aguascalientes
Ave. Universidad 940
Aguascalientes, AGS. México 20131
Email: jose.mora at edu.uaa.mx
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From: Eric Bachura <eric.bachura at utsa.edu>
Sent: Thursday, December 16, 2021 8:47 PM
To: Jose Manuel Mora Tavarez <jose.mora at edu.uaa.mx>; Torkil Clemmensen <tc.digi at cbs.dk>; aisworld at lists.aisnet.org <aisworld at lists.aisnet.org>
Subject: Re: [AISWorld] [EXTERNAL] Re: "IS not capable of coming up with native theories" says its senior scholar

I would first ask for a sample of those that think mathematics is perfect. I have not yet encountered such a person. Arrangement of fields by purity, in jest or in earnest, does not imply a belief of perfection (or more accurately, a belief in completeness). It only implies a belief in relative hierarchical dependence (which is, after all, what follows the work of Godel).

Sent from my Verizon LG Smartphone

------ Original message------
From: Jose Manuel Mora Tavarez
Date: Thu, Dec 16, 2021 8:14 PM
To: Eric Bachura;Torkil Clemmensen;aisworld at lists.aisnet.org;
Cc:
Subject:Re: [AISWorld] [EXTERNAL] Re: "IS not capable of coming up with native theories" says its senior scholar

Why do people think that Mathematics is perfect? IS top-ranked researchers and EiCs of top-ranked journals should read about it (i.e. a part of the Mathematics is not decidable, not consistent, and not complete):

  *   "Even if no finitary consistency proof of arithmetic can be given, the question of finding consistency proofs is nevertheless of value: the methods used in such proofs, although they must go beyond Hilbert’s original sense of finitism, might provide genuine insight into the constructive content of arithmetic and stronger theories. What Gödel’s result showed was that there can be no absolute consistency proof of all of mathematics; hence work in proof theory after Gödel concentrated on relative results, both: relative to the system for which a consistency proof was given, and relative to the proof methods used"

Zach, Richard, "Hilbert’s Program", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2019 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). <https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fplato.stanford.edu%2Fentries%2Fhilbert-program%2F&data=04%7C01%7Cjose.mora%40edu.uaa.mx%7Ce4e1a6ff1a354a18264208d9c1078d5c%7Ce1e2e29221d64849b7104d47d9578ad0%7C0%7C0%7C637753060726922090%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=1phxP61IUDmqrkTLIOpDtt3rEIcAkBvRtdkpnTmTmxA%3D&reserved=0> <https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fplato.stanford.edu%2Fentries%2Fhilbert-program%2F&data=04%7C01%7Cjose.mora%40edu.uaa.mx%7Ce4e1a6ff1a354a18264208d9c1078d5c%7Ce1e2e29221d64849b7104d47d9578ad0%7C0%7C0%7C637753060726932067%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=R4Mol12Csn9oa4NR8q4HgcEjhheS9fCK2pYWrKyODU0%3D&reserved=0>

------------------------------------------------------------
Prof. Dr. José Manuel Mora Tavarez
Depto. de Sistemas de Información
Centro de Ciencias Básicas
Universidad Autónoma de Aguascalientes
Ave. Universidad 940
Aguascalientes, AGS. México 20131
Email: jose.mora at edu.uaa.mx
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From: AISWorld <aisworld-bounces at lists.aisnet.org> on behalf of Eric Bachura <eric.bachura at utsa.edu>
Sent: Thursday, December 16, 2021 12:02 PM
To: Torkil Clemmensen <tc.digi at cbs.dk>; aisworld at lists.aisnet.org <aisworld at lists.aisnet.org>
Subject: Re: [AISWorld] [EXTERNAL] Re: "IS not capable of coming up with native theories" says its senior scholar

Good comments that can, at the very least, be taken as motivation to prove otherwise (at least from a dissenting perspective).

The philosophy of science was driven forward by dissenting views {Popper -> (Lakatos, Kuhn, Feyerabend)}. Our discipline would risk becoming a derivative and boring facsimile of what we borrow without dissent.

I am reminded of the xkcd purity comic (below with link to original).

[cid:image001.png at 01D7F274.7499E5D0]
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When I was a PhD student I had a printout of that on my lab door with a Business, Cyber, and Information Systems trio pounding on the top of the frame trying to get noticed. Identity crisis and all.

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From: Torkil Clemmensen<mailto:tc.digi at cbs.dk>
Sent: Thursday, December 16, 2021 11:44 AM
To: aisworld at lists.aisnet.org<mailto:aisworld at lists.aisnet.org>
Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: [AISWorld] "IS not capable of coming up with native theories" says its senior scholar

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I am probably not saying anything new, just trying to disagree with Conways view that there is nothing unique to study in IS😊

Seen from the periphery of IS, I thought that the *unique* subject matter or phenomenon that IS studies is "organisational use of IT". And that sociotechnical theory is the closest thing to 'native' theory in IS that we have, though this theory is also used in several other fields such as hci, cscw, sts, environmental studies, and more. This theory theorizes the intersection between people and technology.

I believe that the relation (intersection, interaction) between the social and the technical, which is captured in sociotechnical theorizing, is not fully contained in theories from other fields in social sciences, because the other fields are occupied with other phenomena.

A good example is psychology (itself an example of applied philosophy) which study the "psyche" but which also consists of a large number of largely unrelated subfields each conceptualising their own phenomena, sports psychology, clinical psychology, etc. Of course some of these subfields do deal with technology, such as "engineering psychology" and "design psychology", and may produce research that should be publishable in IS or adjacent fields of HCI, CSCW, STS, etc.

However, most of the theory in psychology (and other social sciences) cannot simply be directly imported and used in IS to study IT use in organisations in a meaningful way. Rather it needs a (lot of) translation and extension (e.g., connecting 'psyche' with 'technology') which is (should be) done by (IS) researchers who have spent their career doing that😊 That translated and extended theory becomes, if contextualised enough, native to the IS context, me thinks.

Torkil Clemmensen

-----Original Message-----
From: AISWorld <aisworld-bounces at lists.aisnet.org> On Behalf Of wombat
Sent: 15 December 2021 16:24
To: aisworld at lists.aisnet.org
Subject: Re: [AISWorld] "IS not capable of coming up with native theories" says its senior scholar

The most successful theory in IS is TAM. Which is an application of TRA and then TPB to the specific domain of IS. This should tell you something to start with. :-)

In order to create "native" theories (which I interpret as "theories which are unique to IS"), IS would have to have something which makes it unique.

It does not.

As others have said, it's a field of the intersection of technology (specifically, "information systems", which, in practice, means
"computers") and people/organizations. It is an *applied* field, which means that, by definition, it is an *application* of another, more fundamental, field or fields.

The people are fully described by theories from sociology, anthropology, psychology, social psychology, and others that I'm probably leaving out.

"Technology" is fully described by fields such as physics, chemistry, mathematics, and computer science, and again others that I'm probably leaving out.

We would not expect to have native theories of carpentry, for example.
We describe how the tools work using physical sciences, how the people work using social sciences, and their intersection also with social science. There aren't going to be theories unique to carpentry. Or plumbing. Or electrical engineering. Or any other applied field. The theories are always going to be specific applications of the more general category.

And, let's be real: there is no fundamental scientifically interesting difference between an abacus, a slide rule, a calculator, or a computer.
They do exactly the same things, just faster and faster. Even the currently faddish AI research is still fundamentally performed on Von Neumann architecture machines, and therefore still ruled by mathematics and physics. A quantum computer might *conceivably* (not definitely!) make a difference. However, I am still far from convinced that quantum computers are possible, and that the current purported progress in the field is more than experimental artifact, without an actual quantum foundation. I have a gut feeling that Gödel has something to say about the achievability of real quantum computing. And, even if achievable, isn't it an application of quantum mechanics and mathematics?

Hence, our theories are always going to be grounded in either social science, or computer science. Which latter, itself, is an applied field at the intersection of mathematics and electrical engineering (no computer science theory lacks applicability in one of those fields). And electrical engineering itself is an applied field of physics, and has no theories which are not applications of physical theories of electro-magnetism. Some CS research also overlaps with social sciences, also, of course, but most of its work is outside that realm, and this only supports that IS isn't unique.

Since the field is fully contained within these other fields, its theories are of necessity fully contained in those other fields. Hence, there can be no unique IS theory which is not just as applicable to other technology and/or people. Any "IS unique" theory is a special case of a more general theory.

Does this really matter? No. But it should be something that is considered when deciding when something is "new" and "theoretically interesting" in our publications. Because, really, it won't be. Ever. If it is "new" and "theoretically interesting", it's generalizable to fields outside of IS, and is part of a more general theory-- and therefore should actually be published in its more general form in that field.

The lack of replication, the lack of replicability, the unpublishability of those two (save for AIS Transactions on Replication Research, the one bright spot in the field!), and abuse and misunderstanding of statistics are far greater problems and threats to the field of IS than the lack of "native theory".

Just my two cents. Make of it what you will.

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