Cheers,
John
At 03:38 PM 2012/10/15, Stanley N Salthe wrote:
On that "curious definition of knowledge", it looks like 'knowing how' rather than 'knowing that'.
STAN
On Mon, Oct 15, 2012 at 11:56 AM, Pedro C. Marijuan < [email protected]> wrote:
- Dear FIS Colleagues,
- Thanks to Zhao Chuan for the Computer Poem/Song. It is a soft way to
- retake our discussions. These weeks there have been a couple of
- important achievements in the bio-information field. On the one side,
- the first 'complete' model of a prokaryotic cell ("A Whole-Cell
- Computational Model Predicts Phenotype from Genotype", by Karr et al.,
- Cell, 150, 389-401, 2012). On the other, there was the report of another
- 'complete' scheme, that of the C. elegans nervous system, now at the
- level of individual synaptic contacts, which was able to explain the
- mating behavior of the worm ("The Connectome of a Decision-Making Neural
- Network", by Jarrell et al., Science, 337, 437-444, 2012). It contained
- several references to the "information flow" through interneurons and
- sensorimotor circuits, and a very curious definition of knowledge (as
- "the set of activity weights in an adjacency matrix of a neural network,
- upon which the network's input-output function in part depends...").
- Both papers are very interesting, relatively consistent with each other,
- and I think both represent symbolic milestones in the bio-information
- field. The point on information flows left me thinking on the larger
- perspective beyond single information items that we rarely focus on.
- Actually the first Shannonian information metaphor was about "sources"
- and "channels" --wasn't it? Particularly thinking on social information
- matters, how many aspects of contemporary life relate to the maintenance
- of the information flows intertwining and directing the economic flows.
- No doubt that the "forces of communication" have definitely won the
- upper hand upon the "forces of production ".
- Somehow, Zhao Chuan's poem is but a celebration of the central role that
- computers have come to play in the gigantic information flows of our time.
- best wishes
- --Pedro
- --
- -------------------------------------------------
- Pedro C. Marijuán
- Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group
- Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud
- Centro de Investigación Biomédica de Aragón (CIBA)
- Avda. San Juan Bosco, 13, planta X
- 50009 Zaragoza, Spain
- Tfno. +34 976 71 3526 (& 6818)
- [email protected]
- http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/
- -------------------------------------------------
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Professor John Collier [email protected]
Philosophy and Ethics, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 4041 South Africa
T: +27 (31) 260 3248 / 260 2292 F: +27 (31) 260 3031
http ://web.ncf.ca/collier
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