In a message dated 9/11/2015 8:15:48 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es writes:
Dear Steven and FIS colleagues, Many thanks for this opening text. What you are proposing about a pretty structured discussion looks a good idea, although it will have to confront the usually anarchic discussion style of FIS list! Two aspects of your initial text have caught my attention (apart from those videos you recommend that I will watch along the weekend). First about the concerns of a generation earlier (Shannon, Turing...) situating information in the intersection between physical science and engineering. The towering influence of this line of thought, both with positive and negative overtones, cannot be overestimated. Most attempts to enlarge informational thought and to extend it to life, economies, societies, etc. continue to be but a reformulation of the former ideas with little added value. See one of the last creatures: "Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies" (2015), by Cesar Hidalgo (prof. at MIT). In my opinion, the extension of those classic ideas to life are very fertile from the technological point of view, from the "theory of molecular machines" for DNA-RNA-protein matching to genomic-proteomic and other omics' "big data". But all that technobrilliance does not open per se new avenues in order to produce innovative thought about the information stuff of human societies. Alternatively we may think that the accelerated digitalization of our world and the cyborg-symbiosis of human information and computer information do not demand much brain teasing, as it is a matter that social evolution is superseding by itself. The point I have ocasionally raised in this list is whether all the new molecular knowledge about life might teach us about a fundamental difference in the "way of being in the world" between life and inert matter (& mechanism & computation)---or not. In the recent compilation by Plamen and colleagues from the former INBIOSA initiative, I have argued about that fundamental difference in the intertwining of communication/self-production, how signaling is strictly caught in the advancement of a life cycle (see paper "How the living is in the world"). Life is based on an inusitate informational formula unknown in inert matter. And the very organization of life provides an original starting point to think anew about information --of course, not the only one. So, to conclude this "tangent", I find quite exciting the discussion we are starting now, say from the classical info positions onwards, in particularly to be compared in some future with another session (in preparation) with similar ambition but starting from say the phenomenology of the living. Struggling for a convergence/complementarity of outcomes would be a cavalier effort. All the best--Pedro Steven Ericsson-Zenith wrote: > ...The subject is one that has concerned me ever since I completed my PhD in 1992. I came away from defending my thesis, essentially on large scale parallel computation, with the strong intuition that I had disclosed much more concerning the little that we know, than I had offered either a theoretical or engineering solution. > > For the curious, a digital copy of this thesis can be found among the reports of CRI, MINES ParisTech, formerly ENSMP, http://www.cri.ensmp.fr/classement/doc/A-232.pdf, it is also available as a paper copy on Amazon. > > Like many that have been involved in microprocessor and instruction set/language design, using mathematical methods, we share the physical concerns of a generation earlier, people like John Von Neumann, Alan Turing, and Claude Shannon. In other words, a close intersection between physical science and machine engineering. > > ...I will then discuss some historical issues in particular referencing Benjamin Peirce, Albert Einstein and Alan Turing. And finally discuss the contemporary issues, as I see them, in biophysics, biology, and associated disciplines, reaching into human and other social constructions, perhaps touching on cosmology and the extended role of information theory in mathematical physics... > > > _______________________________________________ > Fis mailing list > Fis@listas.unizar.es > http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis > -- ------------------------------------------------- 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) pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/ ------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ Fis mailing list Fis@listas.unizar.es http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis ____________ Howard Bloom Author of: The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History ("mesmerizing"-The Washington Post), Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century ("reassuring and sobering"-The New Yorker), The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of Capitalism ("A tremendously enjoyable book." James Fallows, National Correspondent, The Atlantic), The God Problem: How A Godless Cosmos Creates ("Bloom's argument will rock your world." Barbara Ehrenreich), How I Accidentally Started the Sixties ("Wow! Whew! Wild! Wonderful!" Timothy Leary), and The Mohammed Code ("A terrifying book…the best book I've read on Islam." David Swindle, PJ Media). www.howardbloom.net Former Core Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute; Former Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University. Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; Founder, Space Development Steering Committee; Founder: The Group Selection Squad; Founding Board Member: Epic of Evolution Society; Founding Board Member, The Darwin Project; Founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology, Scientific Advisory Board Member, Lifeboat Foundation; Editorial Board Member, Journal of Space Philosophy; Board member and member of Board of Governors, National Space Society.
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