Michel this is an interesting question and you can find a plausible answer for if you take a look at the etymology of this word. http://www.capurro.de/infoconcept.html
Latin "informatio" as a noun is used, as far as I know, only in the singular and means giving form to something in a 'material' as well as in a 'spiritual' (education, communication) sense. It would be possible to say in (ancient and medieval) Latin "informationes" but not in the sense we use it today. It would mean different processes of formation, not 'pieces' of 'information'. The ontological (or 'material') use of 'informatio' becomes (partly) obsolete in Modernity (and is rediscovered today). In English the use of the plural goes back to the 14th Century, but is rare later. The use of the singular is a reminiscence also in the case of British empiricists who prefer the term "impressions" of Aristotelic philosophy probably because it sounds less Aristotelian . Nevertheless the epistemological context that prevails in Modernity (information = communicating something to someone) (since the ontological sense became obsolete with the disappearence of Aristotelian philosophy) makes possible (and meaningful...) the use of the plural (as in the case of French, Spanish, Italian) Take a look at this text quoted from the article by Capurro/Hjoerland I mentioned before (or go directly to my Dissertation written in German some 30 years ago! http://www.capurro.de/info.html where you will find in detail many of the sources): "Peters (1988, p. 12) asserts that Bacon's (1967) "Great Instauration": criticizes the logicians of his day for receiving "as conclusive the immediate informations of the sense..." Instead, those "informations" must be subjected, according to Bacon, to a sure plan that will sort the true form the false. Though Bacon's usage may not appear irreconcilable with our own, the inverted pluralization should tip us off that he does not completely share our prejudices (we should say "the information of the senses"). In fact, this locution exemplifies a perfectly hylomorphic notion of the workings of the senses: they are a kind of matter (wax being a favorite empiricist instance) on which objects of the world may leave their shapes or stamps. What is interesting here is that the site of information is being shifted from the world at large to the human mind and senses. This shift requires no break with scholastic notions of mind or nature. Indeed this epistemological notion of information(s), particularly the wax metaphor, was a key higher-level concept throughout the Middle Ages. Consider Locke's (1995, p. 373) statement: "No existence of anything without us, but only of GOD, can certainly be known further than our senses inform us." Peters (1988, pp. 12-13) concludes: Information was readily deployed in empiricist philosophy (though it played a less important role than other words such as impression or idea) because it seemed to describe the mechanics of sensation: objects in the world in-form the senses. But sensation is entirely different from "form" — the one is sensual, the other intellectual; the one is subjective, the other objective. My sensation of things is fleeting, elusive, and idiosynchratic [sic]. For Hume, especially, sensory experience is a swirl of impressions cut off from any sure link to the real world... In any case, the empiricist problematic was how the mind is informed by sensations of the world. At first informed meant shaped by; later it came to mean received reports from. As its site of action drifted from cosmos to consciousness, the term's sense shifted from unities (Aristotle's forms) to units (of sensation). Information came less and less to refer to internal ordering or formation, since empiricism allowed for no preexisting intellectual forms outside of sensation itself. Instead, information came to refer to the fragmentary, fluctuating, haphazard stuff of sense. Information, like the early modern worldview more generally, shifted from a divinely ordered cosmos to a system governed by the motion of corpuscles. Under the tutelage of empiricism, information gradually moved from structure to stuff, from form to substance, from intellectual order to sensory impulses. Later developments on etymology are partly covered by the next section. Here we will conclude that the modern uses of information show a transition period in which the medieval ontological concept of "molding matter" is not just abandoned but reshaped under empirical and epistemological premises. It has been extremely interesting to observe how the concept of information is closely connected to views of knowledge. This conclusion is important when we later analyze the concept of information in information science, because it indicates a severly neglected connection between theories of information and theories of knowledge." Probably the opposition between Aristotle and Empircism is less stronger than Peters interprets because the sensory process of 'informatio' (or "informatio sensus") is not primarily (!) oriented towards intellectual forms (as in case of animal sensation). Anyway there is at first sight no parallel terminus technicus to our present "informations" in (ancient) Greek. The Latin philosophers (and the Arab philosophers before! particularly Averroes from which Albertus Magnus 'takes' the term or adscribes it to him) are translating key texts of Plato and Aristotle where the terms "eidos" "idea" or "typos" (and other terms) appear. Plato developped the theory of 'participation' (or "methexis") and Aristotle the one of abstraction ('aphairesis') of the forms of things by sensory organs (and intellect) "without the matter" ("aneu tes hyles"). Take a look at this article on Aristotle and Mathematics from the Stanford Encyclopedia (part. Chapter 7) http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-mathematics/ One (at least) question remains open: which is the word/concept used in Ancient Greek (and Latin) corresponding to our modern concept of information(s)? My answer: it was the concept of message ('angelia' in Greek and 'notitia' together with 'nuntiare/nuntius' in Latin). These terms were (from our point of view) too Modern, so to speak, to translate Platonic/Aristotelian philosophy. Or, to put it in other words: how far can we interpret ancient Greek philosophy in 'informational' (or 'communicational') terms? how strong is the paradigm change in case there is one? and how far are we creating a new kind of philosophy of information by combining both traditions (that were present in ancient 'informatio')? I talked shortly about this in the León meeting (mentioned by Pedro). Here is my text (in Spanish) http://www.capurro.de/leon.pdf kind regards Rafael > Hello FISers. > > Recently, one of my colleagues attract my attention on the following point. > In French, we often use information as a countable quantity, > so that we can write "informations". > In English, it seems that it is unusual, if not incorrect, to do that. > (1) Please can some English native FISers give their opinion about that ? > (2) Please can some FISers from non English-speaking countries tell us > how is the situation in their own language ? > > Thank you very much. > > Michel. > > Michel Petitjean, > DSV/iBiTec-S/SB2SM (CNRS URA 2096), CEA Saclay, bat. 528, > 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette Cedex, France. > Phone: +331 6908 4006 / Fax: +331 6908 4007 > E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://petitjeanmichel.free.fr/itoweb.petitjean.html > > _______________________________________________ > fis mailing list > fis@listas.unizar.es > https://webmail.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis > -- Prof. Dr. Rafael Capurro Hochschule der Medien (HdM) - Stuttgart Media University, Wolframstr. 32 70191 Stuttgart, Germany Private: Redtenbacherstr. 9, 76133 Karlsruhe, Germany E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Voice Stuttgart: + 49 - 711 - 25706 - 182 Voice private: + 49 - 721 - 98 22 9 - 22 (Fax: -21) Homepage: www.capurro.de Homepage ICIE: http://icie.zkm.de Homepage IRIE: http://www.i-r-i-e.net Information Ethics Senior Fellow, 2007-2008; 2009-2010, Center for Information Policy Research, School of Information Studies, UW-Milwaukee, USA _______________________________________________ fis mailing list fis@listas.unizar.es https://webmail.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
