Abstract

Our paper argues that the geometry of Information Retrieval (IR) is more akin to a cybernetics than it is a quantum theory. However, as a cybernetics, several aspects of IR as poorly captured. It provides some correspondence between IR and cybernetics, identifying the behaviourist character of the latter as the limiting issue and suggesting the need to recontextualise IR outside of any such discourse. It discusses the implications to some foundational notions, and to methodology in such a recontextualisation.

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