What was remarkable was the amount of interconnectedness between disciplines and the fertility of these connections for disciplinary developments, which reminded me of the important role of information workers to mediate between the disciplines in order to open possibilities to invent new knowledge. My own contribution Philosophy as calling was actually to make the point that it is a calling coming to every person, human being, in a natural way, and not only to professional philosophers, and that professional philosophers very often damage and even destroy the capacity for the philosophical and the keenness to philosophise inherent to all human beings and that this calling is also a calling that interferes with every single disciplinary activity and engagement also and especially the activities, engagements and foci of Information Science and the Information Worker. Extremely fruitful discussions were generated by this session, mainly of an intercultural and interdisciplinary nature with a focus on the way the philosophical-minded, or in other words the thoughtful person in whatever discipline is able to bridge gaps between disciplines and cultures, especially with a view to constructive inventions in many areas of work and life.

  

C S de Beer, Information Science, University of Pretoria.

 

 Philosophy comes to us as an appeal to search for wisdom, understanding, insight and knowledge. All humans experience this. It is not so much a human creation, like the sciences, but much rather a gift to humans to which they have to respond. This calling does not come from above or beyond, but from inside ourselves.

 

It is in a very fundamental way a call to exercise the most distinguished quality we possess, namely thinking. It is a call to think properly, adequately, responsibly, inventively, and not only critically. Pascal stated: “Let us try our best to think well; that is the principle of morality.”

 

The philosopher is required to encourage thinking, to identify flaws and distortions in thinking, gaps in mental activity, and to identify traces of philosophy and the philosophical wherever they appear or may appear, and this comprehensive endeavour with regard to all disciplines, subjects and sciences.

 

This calling is irresistible and inexhaustible. It haunts us wherever we are and in whatever we do. The philosophic mind can never stop philosophising. Gadamer, in his article “Thought as salvation” stated: Not from transcendental revelation, but out of the power of deepening, and the spiritualization of the own earthly-humanly being, the road to salvation opens up.