B. C. Brookes's Fundamental Equation has been regarded as one of the m
ost influential models that depict in a simple form how a person deals
with information. His equation suggests that the concept of informati
on is likely to be something that modifies the recipient's knowledge s
truture as s/he uses information. Although this concept is generally a
ccepted in current information research community, the equation still
has some vagueness on the definitions of its terms. Information scient
ists after Brookes have discussed over this point of issue from variou
s perspectives. In this paper Brookes's concept of information as an o
bject of scientific research is delineated definitively by examining h
is way of scientific thinking as well as his view of information scien
ce. His study lays emphasis on such topics as the uniqueness the pheno
mena of human information use assumes in character, the difficulty of
distinguishing objective from subjective matters in that phenomena, an
d the necessity of paradigm shift in information science. This emphasi
s means Brookes's concept of information reflected in the term of 'Del
ta I' of his equation should not be treated as a metaphor of a thing b
ut of a process in relation to the personal cognition and understandin
g. P. Ingwersen, a Denish scientist, also examines the Brookes's equat
ion and gives some modifications to it. The main point in his modifica
tions seems to be an addition of 'potential information'. Ingwersen's
interpretation may be significant as far as the phenomena of human inf
ormation use can be seen as successive and static steps. But human inf
ormation use is rather dynamic and interactive, then it is concluded t
hat his interpretation makes little contribution to the explication of
that phenomena in terms of human cognitive process.