and Dear Other [FIS]ers!
I appreciate your comments. Thanks.
As regards the explanatory power in saying "A is different from B", see my distinction between identity (and accordingly, difference), and equivalence in my below cited IJTP paper (Section 1.2), and the far reaching (physical) consequences discussed there. http://www.springerlink.com/content/g28q43v2112721r1/ . (For those, of you, who have no access to the journal, I can attach the .pdf of the paper. If one of you requests, I can send the manuscript of my coming book "Another version of facts" where I give more detailed explanation of the "equivalence is not identity" principle.)
An addition to the discussions in journals: the practice of present-day peer-review system reduces discussion between the author and 2-3 reviewers. If the latter disagree, the rest of the community is disclosed to get involved in the discussion, that means from INFORMATION EXCHANGE.
In Autumn 1915, nearly hundred years ago, in the middle of a world war in the heart of Germany D. Hilbert from Göttingen and A. Einstein from Berlin submitted their series of versions on the GTR by turns in two week periods (!), until the final, now accepted correct version was published as a result of the public (over the private) information exchange between them.
They were published immediately (with a hundred years old technology), and the responses of the other as well.
(a) Can you imagine what would have been the fate of the general relativity THEORY with the present day practice of publication policies (including also electronic journals)?
(b) Can you imagine what would have been the affect on the practical applications, measure-based confirmations (e.g., in cosmology) and almost immediate EXPERIMENTAL tests without the that time information-exchange-facilitating publication policies?
Best wishes,
Gyuri
Dear Colleagues,
Let me join the supporters of Gyuri. Indeed there is a need for theories, as the expectations one maintains while conducting an experiment are nothing other but the neurological representation of a theory, irrespective of the subject knowing it or attributing his decisions to "intuition", "a feeling" or "the Allmighty's will". The result of learning is a theory which is then verified or falsified by subsequent actions.
One cannot think without building theories. We communicate - but in music, ballett, paintings, etc. - by transmitting elements of theories. (The word "chair" is an element of the theory that there exist movable objects of continuous existence that have this and that function and properties.) The theory we use while communicating in a scientific fashion is, that there exist words that can be clearly and easily understood, because they have an agreed-on provenance. (All who talk about a subject of Physics know what they expect the others to understand as the meaning of the word "kiloWatt".)
Here one has to discuss the thought of Joseph: "There is nothing to be gained - no additional explanatory power in saying -Â "A is different from B"". In itself the sentence is valid, if A is # B and the word "different" means that A # B. The numbers speak for themselves, therefore it is a tautology if one says "A # B" while pointing to an A and a B that are #. In this sense Joseph is completely right.
Where the tautology can be used in a fruitful way, creating the gain of an explanatory enhancement, is when the logical objects A and B are used like a card tricks performer artist uses the cards. It is the same set of cards, and obviously there can be no news after all the dust will have settled. Whatever can be demonstrated by means of the cards is in the cards and their relations among each other. After one will have understood the tric of the conjurer, one will be able to say "There is no additional gain in observing that the space concept is a made-up construct of two accounting spaces" or "There is nothing new in observing that spatially positioned mass points are an implication of the fact that A and B can merge into C".
Wittgenstein has pointed it out quite clearly: "After you will have understood me, you will know that I have said nothing new, that in fact, if one talks correctly one cannot say anything new." It is only grammar, after all. He said that the grammar of the language restricts and allows constructions that are transmittable (communicable in an exact fashion).
This is what we do. We discuss what would make a general theory of information pleasing, aesthetic, immediately evident, solid, obviously of a basic order. We agree about the requirements concerning an ordered chain of thoughts, a well-related web of ideas that orders the sub-ideas in a fashion that one can use practically. We know that such a theory would be a well-ordered one, where one segment logically follows from the segments that are before, lateral or consequential.
So the theory of information is a theory of grammar. Grammar deals among other with the linear succession of carriers of meaning. This grammatical discussion is now at the disposal of the FIS community, demonstrated on A and B. We can discuss - the rewards will be not small - how A and B relate to other As and Bs in the first approach, and then, we can discuss how our approaches to the idea of order change the relations of A and B to other As and Bs. This is a purely grammatical discussion, and as such not very juicy. There is indeed nothing new among the natural numbers, and there cannot ever be, and the deep study of something that in effect cannot be otherwise may request some kind of discipline as the rewards are not directly immediate. Yet, unfortunately Nature has no obligation to be fascinating and polymorph-perverse or produce histrionic scenes. Alas, the periodic table of elements is as fascinating as a vintage exercise in accounting, and the combinations are just combinatorics. So after we shall have understood that setting 2+3=1+4 and believing that one gets away with it was an illusion, and that if one wants to model Nature, one better learns (re-learns) additions, then we shall say that nothing new comes out of sorting the first 136 additions and then resorting them and watching how the convoys move, and setting some convoys as the unit of space-cohesion, because this is just sorting and resorting and keeping the eyes and the memory open. No big deal and no news.
If I have understood QTQ correctly, he is already at this stage. Discussing tautologies is less important than being open - also in an instinctive, not only in intellectual fashion. Being imaginative and creative at first disobeys customary laws and habits of rationality. I translate QTQ for me with "Accept your ideas." and Gyuri und Joseph with "You can only talk about them if they are not too subjective. Communicability means regularity.". Thousand Chinese kow-tows if this insignificant person has mistranslated.
Karl
2012/1/10 Joseph Brenner <[email protected] >
- Dear FISers,
- Â
- I also agree with Gyuri and disagree with QTQ. Sorry. I think it is clear that manipulating chemicals or cells or even images of quasars is "science" and not "theory" at a first level of understanding. But when one is involved in doing those manipulations, theory is involved at a higher cognitive level, in a dynamic relation to the experimental process, and both are informational in nature.
- Â
- There is nothing to be gained - no additional explanatory power in saying -Â "A is different from B"
- unless it is trivially the case. Where both physical actions and cognitive processes are so closely intertwined as in science and theory, in the social sciences as well as in my natural science examples, I think it is "scientific" to look at logical overlaps or interactions. Information science is to be found there, among other places.
- Â
- Best wishes,
- Â
- Joseph
- Â
- Â
- Â
- ----- Original Message -----
- From: Gyorgy Darvas
- To: Pedro C. Marijuan ; [email protected] ; [email protected]
- Cc: mjs ; Joseph Brenner ; fislist
- Sent: Tuesday, January 10, 2012 5:23 PM
- Subject: Re: [Fis] [Fwd: THEORY AND SCIENCE] From QTQ
- I disagree!
- Theory is a part, an important element of science.
- Practice should check, can confirm or falsify a theory, but cannot replace or discredit its mission.
- As regards journals, my position is that they must give place to controversial ideas. The task of a journal is to give forum for discussion. A journal (i.e., its editors) and the reviewers do not need to share the opinions put forward in the submitted papers. Scientific truth can be met only if controversial ideas are discussed. That means, scientific truth is shaped as a result of discussion. The task of the reviewers is not to take over the responsibility from the scientific community, to decide on the correctness of ideas, incl. theories, expressed in the papers. (They can check whether the mathematical derivations are not mistaken, experiments are documented and reproducible, etc.) Ideas can be discussed if they are published for a wide circle of scientists, so that anyone who wants could express her/his supporting or controversial ideas and arguments. This is a key to the development of science.
- Regards,
- Gyuri
- At 16:48 2012.01.10.ÿ, Pedro C. Marijuan wrote:
- -------- Mensaje original --------
- Asunto: THEORY AND SCIENCE
- Fecha: Tue, 10 Jan 2012 10:49:58 +0800
- De: [email protected]
- Responder a: [email protected]
- Para: Pedro C. Marijuan <[email protected]>, mjs <[email protected]>, Joseph Brenner <[email protected]> , fislist <[email protected]>
- Dear Pedro, Dear Marcin, Dear Joseph, Dear FIS Colleagues,
- Theory is important and necessary, but theory is different from science, theory is a growing view or hypothesis. We should remember Russell's paradox and the third number of Math Crisis, we should remember Aristotle and Galileo, and we shouldn't forget the article about MDMA by Jan Hendrik Schön in 2002. Let us remember history that go on record according to gubernatorial volition usually. Furthermore, lie is not science, for example Hwang's cloning experiments in stem-cell research.
- Newton's mechanics is science, computer science is true, and however there is no information science. The sole criterion for truth or science is practice.
- Of course, after the Hwang affair, Scienceï¼journal ï¼gets its wrist slapped for publishing a fraudulent stem-cell paper. Instead, the committee recommends that papers received by the journal should be divided into uncontroversial and controversial, and the latter gone over with a fine comb of new check. à This is a way to arrive at science, too.
- Bestà wishes
- Ã
- QTQ
- Â
- Recent publications online:
- - Mathematical description of a so far undisclosed symmetry of nature:
- http://arxiv.org/abs/0811.3189v1
- - Physical consequences of a new gauge-symmetry and the concluded conservation law:
- http://www.springerlink.com/content/g28q43v2112721r1/
- - Spontaneous symmetry breaking in non-Euclidean systems:
- http://www.springerlink.com/content/k272555u06q2074w/?p=14dd4c9c5b5e4c1396b3e4855a87e9e2&pi=1
- ______________________________________________________
- Gyorgy Darvas
- E-mail / Skype; S Y M M E T R I O N
- Mailing address: c/o G. Darvas; 29 Eotvos St., Budapest, H-1067 Hungary
- Phone: 36 (1) 302-6965;
- Monograph: Symmetry; Course of lectures
- _______________________________________________________
- - Mathematical description of a so far undisclosed symmetry of nature:
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