Science in postmodernity reflects the scientific revolutions occurred in the end of the XIX century and in the beginning of XX century. The paradigmatic ruptures and crises provided the debate around a new science that develops in relational contexts of complexity. The changes, which also include new relations of the subject with the object, take part in the process of suspicion of traditional reason, suggesting the necessity of an open theory to the transversal of thought and to almost all the events that lead to conceptual and methodological plurality. This is the context in which this research about information science is developed. In this sense, the objective of this work is to analyze the scientific statute of information science in postmodernity. In the first place, an epistemological approach has been adopted, tracing a synthesis of the development of the western scientific philosophical thought up to postmodernity. Then, a survey and analysis of articles selected in journals devoted to information science in Brazil, from 1972 to 2002, were carried out. Thirty-seven texts were selected in accordance with a set of categories established from the theoretical reference framework of the research. It was evident that, during this period, little research was done in Brazil about epistemological questions related to the characteristics of the scientific philosophical thought of information science in postmodernity.
Information science; Epistemology; Postmodernity; Science; Philosophy of science; Theory of knowledge
