AW: [SIGMETRICS] Is The Science of Science As A Field of Study In Its Own Right Alive Or Dead?

[Clifford Miller]

Haiko,

Thank you.  That is helpful.  I have now read the downloadable contents, 
preface and sample chapter.

As these emails go to all on the list I had better curtail them now but 
with my thanks in advance to any of you who might provide any further 
information by email in response to the questions I have posed.

Bibliometrics, scientometrics and informetrics appear to address the 
kinds of fruit there are on the tree of knowledge and things like their 
size, relative abundance, how fast they grow or wither.  We can gain 
information about the infrastructure of science and its dynamics over time.

I would expect the core of a science of science to tell us also about 
the common characteristics and natures of each kind of fruit and their 
differences, the nature of what they contain and how one might reproduce 
them independently.

So by analogy, one aspect is telling us about the tree and about what 
kinds of fruit are found on it.  The other aspect - the core - should 
tell us what what each fruit is made of, how it is constructed and how 
it might taste and smell and its differences from and common 
characteristics with the other fruit.