Dear Koichiro,
I share in part Loet’s frustration in trying to understand your complex constructions. Please let me propose, therefore three strategies that might be helpful in naturalizing them, that is, converting them into concepts that fit the science with which we are, or can become, more familiar. 1. Generalization. If your approach to the time of cyanobacteria is a valid one, it should apply generally. I, my wife and the system I-and-my-wife must also generate specific times, as I think we do. 2. Relating Reality and Appearance. In my extension of logic to complex systems, reality and appearance are related contradictorially: there is some reality to appearance and some appearance to reality. Thus, if as you state the “flow of time” is a “representation” or a “metaphor”, I would say it is primarily an appearance, albeit a very convincing one, whereas the “material flow-through” is primarily a reality. In a separate process, we may relate “flow of time on a global scale” to tenses, but what is important to me is that the two flows are related as appearance and reality (“time as time retaining its identity”). This interpretation helps me, at least, clarify the first part of your hermetic sentence: Both information and time, once set free from the read-into flow of time, are common in sharing the similar materialistic and energetic context/ in incorporating the transitive verbs into themselves as holding the contrast between the direct and the indirect object of a verb, that is to say, between a message and its dative. Time, here, and please correct me if mistaken, is the real “energetic” time that is generated by real systems. I would welcome your comment on my formulation of this point in my earlier note. This time winds up being interpreted (for evolutionary reasons) as “read-into flow of time” and from which it needs to be distinguished. This reading answers Loet’s first objection: time is not a construct of language, but “flow-of-time” can be related to linguistic structures. I see both information-as-process and time-as-process as probability distributions, but we should come back to this. As to Loet’s second objection, Koichiro, I think you weakened your argument by reference to something that looks unreal, namely, “original cyclic motions”. If you had simply said “observable celestial motions”, the contrast with incorrect representations of them (e.g., as invariant) I think would be clear. 3. Avoiding Linguistic Structures. The most difficult bit to “naturalize”, as Loet also felt, is your use of linguistic structures. Such structures, when used to attempt to explicate the flow of information in real systems, which is a real, energetic process, become part of the problem. Real energetic phenomena do not spend their effort and time (J) on incorporating transitive verbs (into what?), or holding contrasts between direct and indirect objects (how?). Thus when you write The underlying issue is how we can construct the flow of time from the tenses. When the constant update of the present perfect tense in the present progressive tense is referred to in the finished record, we can perceive the flow of time as driven by the transitive verb “update” in the present tense, though only in retrospect. you have mentioned together two separate issues that I feel need to be unpacked: “construction of the flow of time” and “perception of the flow of time”. If we agree that “flow of time” is just a metaphor, as noted above, its construction from linguistics is to me a secondary issue. Perception of the flow of time, however, is an absolutely essential concept that I have never seen addressed adequately outside the cosmology of Lusanna and Pauri. Perception is a real energetic process that is driven by our underlying dynamics, as primarily 3D creatures in a 4D universe, not by verbs and their objects. What are “the message” (accusative, direct object) and “to the message” (dative, indirect object) doing in the first citation in 2. above? 4. My final strategy is simply a suggestion, but perhaps it helps to explain my critique of the use you make of tense: there should be some relation made to space and what Lupasco considered the real, contradictorial relation between time and space. I think behind Loet’s reference to time as possibly a frequency distribution is a similar desire to move away from linguistic structures to real structures. Thus Loet’s designation of time as something that can be communicated fits with the idea of time as something real, always associated with physical entities. Going even farther out on a limb, we may consider time as discussed above and information as two perspectives on the same physical process. I and I am sure Loet, as well as others would look forward to your replies. Best wishes, Joseph ----- Original Message ----- From: Loet Leydesdorff To: 'Koichiro Matsuno' ; 'Joseph Brenner' ; 'fis' Sent: Tuesday, May 24, 2011 7:42 AM Subject: RE: [Fis] replies to several. The Key to Time Dear Koichiro and colleagues, Let me try to raise some questions. I find the language sometimes difficult. Examples might help! Ø The underlying issue is how can we construct the flow of time from the tenses. In other words: time is a construct of language? When the constant update of the present perfect tense in the present progressive tense is referred to in the finished record, we can perceive the flow of time as driven by the transitive verb “update” in the present tense, though only in retrospect. This is a description of this construction process: how it works. This updated version of the flow of time in retrospect exhibits a marked contrast to the flow of time riding on the intransitive verb “flow” in the present tense unconditionally, the latter of which is common to the standard practice of physical sciences even including relativity. The occurrence of the perfect tense is due to the act of measurement of material origin distinguishing between the before and after its own act, while its frequent update in the progressive tense will be necessitated so as to meet various conservation laws such as material or energy flow continuity to be registered in the record, e. g., not to leave the failure in meeting the flow continuity behind. The KaiC hexamers of cyanobacteria are involved in the constant update of the prefect tense in the progressive tense. The “various conservation laws” are not a construct of language but constraints on constructions in language? Have they always been these constraints or only since the scientific revolution of the 17th century? Ø The flow of time read by the externalist, say, by Ptolemy-Newton, into an invariant cyclic motion of the stellar configuration displayed over the sky is enigmatic in relating a cyclic movement of physical bodies to a linear movement of something else called time. A less ambitious approach could be to relate a linear movement of physical bodies to the linear movement of time even if the latter is an anthropocentric artifact, unless the artifact interferes with the physical bodies. The flow of time read-into by the physicist implies no linear flow of time in the absence of the physicist as leaving only the original cyclic motions behind. The original cyclic motions predate the reading. They are given? By whom and in which language? (By God in the revelation of his creation, that is, in the Bible?) That must be quite stifling. In contrast, appreciating the material through-flow keeping the class identity of the supporting material aggregate as being represented as the flow of time comes to imply that the through-flow is informational in that it presumes both the message (e.g., the subunits to be exchanged) and its dative (e.g., the aggregate processing their exchanges). Both information and time, once set free from the read-into flow of time, are common in sharing the similar materialistic and energetic context in incorporating the transitive verbs into themselves as holding the contrast between the direct and the indirect object of a verb, that is to say, between a message and its dative. Despite that, I am not quite sure at this moment whether this synthetic view would merely be one step backward for the sake of the likely two steps forward to come. Is the dative of a message different from the third case in the declension? Please, explain what you mean and provide perhaps an example. “Both information and time”…? If “information” can be defined in terms of a probability distribution, would “time” be definable as a frequency distribution? Is that perhaps how I can understand these two to be juxtaposed in this sentence? (I would be inclined to consider time as “what is being communicated” when frequencies are communicated.) Best wishes, Loet
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