in other words, it's time we confess in science just how little we know about language, that we explore language's mysteries, and that we use our discoveries as a crowbar to pry open the secrets of this highly contextual, deeply relational, profoundly communicational cosmos.
Dear colleagues, The vernacular is not sufficiently codified to contain the complexity of the sciences. One needs specialized languages (jargons) that are based on symbolic codification. The codes can be unpacked in elaborate language; but they remain under re-construction. The further differentiation of codes of communication drives the complexity and therefore the advancement of the sciences as discursive constructs. This cultural evolution remains rooted in and generated by the underlying levels. For example, individuals provide variety by making new knowledge claims. Since the selection is at the level of communication, however, this level tends to take over control. But not as an agent; it further differentiates into different forms of communication such as scientific discourse, political discourse, etc. Sociologists (Parsons, Luhmann) have proposed "symbolically generalized media of communication" which span horizons of meaning. "Energy", for example, has a meaning in science very different from its meaning in political discourse. Translations remain of course possible; local organizations and agents have to integrate different meanings in action (variation; reproduction). In my recent paper on the Self-organization of meaning (at http://arxiv.org/abs/1507.05251 ), I suggest to distinguish between three levels (following Weaver): A. (Shannon-type) information processing ; B. meaning sharing using languages; C. translations among coded communications. The horizontal and vertical feedback and feedforward mechanisms (entropy generation vs. redundancy generation in terms of increasing the number of options) are further to be specified. Hopefully, this contributes to our discussion. Best, Loet _____ Loet Leydesdorff Professor Emeritus, University of Amsterdam Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR) <mailto:[email protected]> [email protected] ; <http://www.leydesdorff.net/> http://www.leydesdorff.net/ Honorary Professor, <http://www.sussex.ac.uk/spru/> SPRU, University of Sussex; Guest Professor <http://www.zju.edu.cn/english/> Zhejiang Univ., Hangzhou; Visiting Professor, <http://www.istic.ac.cn/Eng/brief_en.html> ISTIC, Beijing; Visiting Professor, <http://www.bbk.ac.uk/> Birkbeck, University of London; <http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ych9gNYAAAAJ&hl=en> http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ych9gNYAAAAJ&hl=en
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