Paradigms of Knowledge and its Organization: the Tree, the Net and Beyond

This special issue is devoted to investigating how knowledge and its organization are conceived in terms of the metaphors or topological models used for their representation. It focuses in particular on two of them, namely the tree and the net, which have played paradigmatic roles. We have invited a group of authors from different academic backgrounds and expertise (philosophy, LIS, linguistics, etc.) to share their ideas and perspectives with the aim of furnishing a historical-philosophical analysis of the issue, an inquiry into the epistemological frameworks involved, and on how all this relates to knowledge organization.