The following message is being re-posted on behalf of David Seedhouse, as it 'bounced back' due to using the "Reply-To" function [replying to Paul Lee's message of Monday December 2, 1996] and leaving in the original headers. Unfortunately, the list-serv computer at York U. has trouble recognizing which address it is to send a message to when confronted with several "To" fields. the easiest way to avoid this error is to insert a > bracket in front of any line in the message which might be a problem - usually only the "To" and "From" fields. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------- Subject: Re: Pseuds' Corner > Paul Lee wrote >There is so much out there, how do we > 1) narrow the search, and 2) search in a synthetic manner. > > Narrowing became an issue for me recently when I was researching my > contribution to "The 1997 Guide to Healthcare Resources on the Internet" > (ed. John Hoben / published by Faulkner & Gray). I did a search for the > phrase "healthy community" and got over one million URL's back. I > decided to analyze the term "community" for its related meanings using a > controlled lexical focus, as oppossed to broader professional and > vernacular usage. Mining the US National Library of Medicine's > "Knowledge Source Server" I found related terms in several indexing > systems. The printout was 140 pages long. Again, a significant barrier > to narrowing in that I couldn't keep that many pages of terms juggled in > my mind at once. > > I analyzed these related terms and found I could depict the relations > graphically on a single large sheet. This allowed me the insight that > in fact the multifarious terms with a definable relationship to > "community" that we use in technical languages associated with health > are ALL lexically interrelated to one another! This is rather > marvelous, because the opposite was certainly possible - that several > islands of terms could exist with no common lexical heritage. It also > implies that our language has built into it an explicit basis for > synthetic understanding. I'm sorry but I just can't let this pass without comment. ;-> What a staggering thing to say. How have you managed to get around in the world without realising this before now? I intend to submit this to the UK satirical journal Private Eye - they devote a regular section to just this sort of thing ..... ;-) > This is all preliminary research. Where it is going is that health > promotion at the societal level needs to be articulated in an elaborated > fashion in order to begin the construction of scientific models, and > then rational policies and wise allocations of resources. Best wishes David <[log in to unmask]>