A look at the philosophical foundations of relevance: stable, fluid, or both: Appraising relevance in information retrieval systems based on Platonic dialectic

The aim is to analyze two approaches of system-oriented and user-oriented in information retrieval systems and to appraise relevance from an epistemological basis and to present a composed approach based on Platonic dialectic.
This is a theoretical study that critically analyzes the approaches of system-oriented and user-oriented in information retrieval systems and relevancy evaluation, and, given its strengths and weaknesses, has proposed a relatively comprehensive method based on Platonic dialectics.
Findings: Epistemologically, the system-oriented approach is rooted in the Parmenide's philosophy of stability and the user-oriented approach in Heraclitu's flux philosophy. The change in the information needs and the way of observing the world, and the change in the judgment process of relevance can be explained by the use of Heraclitu's flux theory; also, the change in the judgments of relevance to single document over different times can be explained by Parmenide's stability. To overcome the deficiencies of these two approaches in assessing the relevance of the retrieved documents, the use of Platonic dialectical method can be an alternative.
Platonic dialectical method is a deductive-inductive composed method in which all components of information retrieval are seen in all stages of the search as a whole whose components are in action and in interaction with each other; thus, one can provide an appropriate approach to assess "relevance" in Information retrieval systems.