Την Παρασκευή, 19 Δεκεμβρίου 2014 και ώρα 11:00 π.μ., θα πραγματοποιηθεί ομιλία (στην αγλλική γλώσσα) της Δρος. Σοφίας Ευσταθίου στην Αίθουσα Εκδηλώσεων του Ερευνητικού Κέντρου «Αθηνά».

Abstract

We examine the impact of “Knowledge Management” (KM) in the life sciences. KM tools include data- and knowledge-bases, ontologies and information sharing, mining and reasoning platforms. KM, we suggest, is a core activity transforming the life sciences. KM tools help structure, store, share and synthesize biological information produced by biological experiments and observations, in partly automated ways. We examine how life sciences work is transformed by KM tools by analysing concepts of “knowledge” operative in a systems biology research group developing KM tools. We distinguish between two founded concepts of knowledge operating here: biological knowledge that is to be managed or bioknowledge, and computationally managed knowledge or compuknowledge. Using these distinctions we show that managing biological knowledge computationally involves transforming bioknowledge into compuknowledge and back. This way of knowing in biology is new: generalisation from experimental observation is becoming explicitly mediated by lexical/conceptual logical structures, resonating with early positivist visions of a unified science.