The following appeared in Volume 98, Number 2 (Spring, 1999) of the APA Newsletters

The questions that we ask (and do not ask) will surely condition the answers we may find. The influence of method on the content of knowledge is a well-worn philosophical issue. The method of contemporary knowledge seeking is embodied in the search engine. These tools are becoming increasing sophisticated, which generally means that they put more decision power into the program and less into the person using it. With the huge numbers of people accessing Internet information and library collections by search, we must face the issue of what the search methods portend for the organization of information and the standards of knowledge.

The Feature Section of this issue, Search Logic and the Search for Truth, explores some of the potentials and problems with search methods. Michael Heim has written about these matters before, notably in The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality (N.Y., Oxford U. Press, 1993). We are very pleased to have an updated reflection of the nature of search logic and it’s potential impact on the body of human knowledge in this issue of the newsletter. Heim argues that the nature of Boolean logic underlying the search method produces a preference for small and manageable chunks of information. While the search method appears to be merely a convenient way to assay a body of information, it may well be that "the scanning mode infiltrates all our other modes of knowing. The byte, the breezy bit, the verbal/visual hit, take the place of heavier substance."

Juxtaposed to Heim’s concerns are the practical implementations Anthony Beavers describes at the heart of the Noesis project. Beavers maintains Noesis, which is a dedicated philosophy search and indexing tool for the Internet. Noesis is a unique search approach as it acts upon a base of moderated sources. Thus, Noesis search results will have a high probabilty of relevance for the philosophical scholar. Beavers claims that via innovations such as a peer-review method for managing the source moderation and the tracking of responses to online sources; "Noesis can better map the actual way that the profession moves, namely in the dialogic context of putting forth ideas and building off of them."

Websites like Yahoo! Organize information hierarchically rather than by keyword. Episteme Links  is such a website dedicated to philosophy. Willem A. deVries reviews the site, run by Thomas Stone. The difference in experience between seaching from an engine and browsing through a site collection like Episteme Links is striking. I am inclined to think that very different results follow from the two methods. Controlled study of this hypothesis will be interesting.

Encyclopedia’s are a familiar way to organize knowledge. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is an Internet version of this traditional method. In an interview conducted by Bill Uzgalis, John Perry, editor of the Stanford Encyclopedia, describes the unique aspects of a dynamic encyclopedia that is "alive in the sense that it is always changing....it’s endlessly deep if it is structured the right way."