ABSTRACT
In examining the question of the nature of information for geographic information science (GIScience), multiple levels of information should be considered. Within knowledge management, there is the well-known and often cited ordering of information, which states that with enough processing signals become data, data become information, information becomes knowledge and, eventually with enough processing, knowledge becomes wisdom. Unfortunately, the context of this ordering is rather general. As Coombs (1983) stated in discussing the principle of Pareto optimality, scientists within individual domains have the ability to develop detailed theories, which are more limited in scope, but more powerful in terms of explanatory power. Given the richness of the GIScience domain, it is worth considering more powerful theories of information.
