Purpose This paper seeks to describe and discuss a tagging experiment involving images related to Israeli and Jewish cultural heritage. The aim of this experiment was to compare freely assigned tags with values (free text) assigned to predefined metadata elements. Design/methodology/approach Two groups of participants were asked to provide tags for 12 images. The first group of participants was asked to assign descriptive tags to the images without guidance (unstructured tagging), while the second group was asked to provide free‐text values to predefined metadata elements (structured tagging). Findings The results show that on the one hand structured tagging provides guidance to the users, but on the other hand different interpretations of the meaning of the elements may worsen the tagging quality instead of improving it. In addition, unstructured tagging allows for a wider range of tags. Research limitations/implications The recommendation is to experiment with a system where the users provide both the tags and the context of these tags. Originality/value Unstructured tagging has become highly popular on the web, thus it is important to evaluate its merits and shortcomings compared to more conventional methods.

Fundamentismus (“Foundationism”) und Skeptizismus-Anarchismus sind zwei entgegengesetzte Positionen in der traditionellen Erkenntnistheorie und in der modernen Wissenschaftstheorie. Zwischen ihnen gibt es einen dritten Standpunkt, den Evolutionismus. Beispiele sind zwei neuere Arbeiten von Putnam (1978) und Stegmüller (1979). Im Gegensatz zum logisch-statischen Fundamentismus berücksichtigt der Evolutionismus auch dynamische und naturalistische Ansätze. Stegmüller folgend entlehnen wir in der vorliegenden Untersuchung aus der Sprachphilosophie pragmatische Gesichtspunkte, um die logische Syntax und Semantik, die Werkzeuge des Fundamentismus, zu ersetzen. Wir zeigen die Kraft der Pragmatik bei der Behandlung von Problemen wie Erkenntniswachstum, Begriffswechsel, Theorien- und Bedeutungsdynamik, wissenschaftliche Entdeckung und besonders beim Problem der Inkommensurabilität. Unser nicht-fundamentistischer Vorschlag ist ein heuristisches Modell, das auf der modernen genetischen Theorie basiert.

Pluralism and monism are the two current views concerning scientific research and language understanding. Between them there is a third, intermediate, view. We take a “procedural methodology of science” as exemplified in the work of L. Tondl, and “procedural linguistics”, as exemplified in the work of B. Harrison, to be representative of this third possibility. Procedures are cognitive, linguistic, and physical processes which, through their hierarchical interconnections can generate fruitful “mechanisms”. These “mechanisms” are sensitive to context and operate in heuristic and algorithmic ways. Their similar logical structure points towards a profound unified basis for scientific and linguistic activities, thus providing an interesting bridge between what is achieved by a little child talking to his parents, and a creative scientist struggling to interpret the results of his experiments.