Social Sciences in the Dewey Decimal Classification: a critique

Abstract

Knowledge is defined as justified belief produced by interaction of human beings with the environment. It constitutes the form and content of expressed facts, theories, memoirs, fiction, myths, beliefs, teachings, values and expressed feelings. Social science is a systematised body of knowledge gathered and produced as a result of interaction of man with the society or social environment in general. In fact its field is vast and touches all other disciplines namely (natural) sciences and humanities. Though society or social life of man on this earth is millions of years old yet as an academic discipline, science of society, it emerged only in the nineteenth century. Indeed it is one of the recent disciplines of study and research. Despite application of the scientific method, broadly formulated and advocated by Francis Bacon (1561-1626), as a science it is not as rigorous as the Natural Sciences. Human calculus is primitive and objectivity which is the bedrock of natural sciences is discounted while studying social beings in groups. Nevertheless, the results of social sciences are increasingly applicable to study, social phenomena and solve social and environmental problems. Paper discusses the origin of the Dewey decimal classification in the last quarter of the nineteenth century and estimates its quantitative use and states it to be still the most popular library classification in the world. It divides knowledge into the Baconian produce of three faculties of human mind, namely Memory, Imagination and Reasoning given by him in the book Advancement of learning (1605). Melvil Dewey (1851-1931), its inventor, first inverted Bacon?s the order and then elaborated them into ten main classes covering the entire universe of knowledge. Indeed his elaboration was constrained by the use of decimal notation which has only ten divisions at each step but was in tune with the academic departments in the US universities. Main class Social Sciences 300 has been ungainly placed between 200 Religion and 400 Languages, both of which fall in humanities. Nevertheless, its inclusion among the knowledge produced by Reason is tenable. Then the paper goes on to examine the position, order and inter and intra relation of contents of each of the ten divisions of social sciences as in the 23rd edition (2011) of the DDC: It criticizes that 320 Political Science has been separated from 350 Public Administration while 330 Economics seems oddly placed between 328 Parliaments and 340 Law. Authors also feel the separation of 900 History from 300 Social Sciences is indefensible. Concludes that the DDC is a cognitive mirror of the 19th century American Academic World, which does not reflect the current perceptions and order of knowledge.