Koichiro, Bob U., Pedro: Recent posts here illustrate the fundamental discord between modes of human communication. Pedro’s last post neatly addresses the immediate issue.
But, the basic issue goes far, far deeper. The challenge of communicating our meanings is not restricted to just scientific meaning vs. historical meaning. Nor, communication between the general community and, say, the music (operatic and ballad) communities. Nor, is it merely a matter of definition of terms and re-defining terms as “metaphor” in another discipline. Pedro’s post aims toward the deeper issues, issues that are fairly known and understood in the symbolic logic and chemical communities. In the chemical community, the understanding is at the level of intuition because ordinary usage within the discipline requires an intuitive understanding of the way symbolic usage manifests itself in different disciplines. (For a detailed description of these issues, see, The Primary Logic, Instruments for a dialogue between the two Cultures. M. Malatesta, Gracewings, Fowler Wright Books, 1997.) The Polish Logician, A. Tarski, recognized the separation of meanings and definitions requires the usage of METALANGUAGES. For example, ordinary public language is necessary for expression of meaning of mathematical symbolic logic. But, from the basic mathematical language, once it grounded in ordinary grammar, develops new set of symbols and new meanings for relations among mathematical symbols. Consequently, mathematicians re-define a long index of terms that are have different meanings in its technical language. The meaning of mathematical terms is developed from an associative logic that is foreign to ordinary language. From these antecedents, the consequences are abundantly clear. The communication between the meta-languages fail. The mathematicians have added vast symbolic logical structures to their symbolic communication with symbols. In other words, the ordinary historian and scientist are not able to grasp the distinctive meanings of mathematical information. Physical information is restricted to physical units of measure and hence constrained to borrowing mathematical symbols and relating to the ordinary language as its meta-language. The perplexity of chemical information theory is such that it is not understandable in any one meta-language or any pair of meta-languages. In order for symbolic chemical communication to occur, the language must go far beyond such simplistic notions of a primary interaction among forces, such as centripetal orbits or even the four basic forces. The early metalanguage of chemistry was merely terms within ordinary language, such as the names of elements. Or, the common names for oils from various sources. Around the turn of the 19 th Century, the metalanguage of chemistry started it century-long journey to become a meta-language of mathematics with the development of the concepts of atomic weights for each singular elements and molecular weight, and molecular formula for each different molecule. The critical distinction that separates the meta-language of chemistry from other metalanguages is the absolute requirement for specification of the name of any object on the basis of it’s distinction from other signs or collections of signs. Thus, chemical information theory, in terms of metalanguages, requires the exact usage of the meta-languages of both physics and mathematics in order to define the origin of its symbolic logic, as well as the natural metalanguage of ordinary human communication. Biological information theory is grounded on chemical information theory, using a particular encoding of meaning within dynamical systems, to communicate among the 5 essential metalanguages necessary for the practice of the medical arts. And, I might add, for human history. The failure of luke-warm physics to serve as a foundation for a generalized information theory is the lack of terminology that can be used to communicate among the symbolic logics used in more advanced modes of human communication. In summary, in the 21 st Century, the foundation of human symbolic communication requires multiple metalanguages and symbol systems, that is, a generalized information theory. Such a generalized theory of information must necessarily include the symbolic logic of chemistry, which is essential to span the symbolic gaps between the disciplines. (For those of you who are familiar with my background, this email illuminates some of the reasoning behind the development of the perplex number system and perplex systems theory within the associative symbolic logic of graph theory.) Cheers Jerry > Begin forwarded message: > > From: "Pedro C. Marijuan" <pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es> > Subject: Re: [Fis] Cho 2016 The social life of quarks > Date: January 18, 2016 at 5:50:40 AM CST > To: 'fis' <fis@listas.unizar.es> > > Dear Howard and colleagues, > > OK, you can say that quarks communicate, but immediately we need to create > another term for "real" communication. I mean, there are quarks (fermions) > and bosons (particle forces) everywhere: planets, stars, galaxies, etc. Their > multiple interactions constitute most of the contents of physics. If you want > to term "communication" to some basic categories of physical interactions > based on force exchange --of some of the 4 fundamental forces, whatever-- we > run into difficulties to characterize the communication that entails signals, > agents and meanings, and responses. That's the "real" communication we find > after the origins of that singular organization we call life --essential then > for the later emergence of superorganisms, peaking order, memes, etc. You > have oceans of interacting fermions and bosons around, but the new > communicating phenomenology is only found in our minuscule planet. > > As an explanatory metaphor, it is not a good idea, almost wrong I dare say. > But as a free-wheeling, literary metaphor it belongs to the author's choice. > The problem is that both realms of information, so to speak, have relatively > overlapping components, depending on the explanatory framework used (see the > ongoing exchanges by Stan, John, Terry, etc.) And that kind of apparent > homogenization blurs the effort to establish the distinctions and advance in > a unifying perspective (I think!!). In any case, it deserves more discussion. > In your Jan. 14th message you ad more elements--I will think twice!. > > All the best--Pedro > > PS. Clarifying the two messages per week rule (responding to offline quests): > the two messages should be counted along the "international business week": > starting on Monday until the end of Sunday, Greenwich Time. Thanks to all for > respecting this "boundary condition"! >
_______________________________________________ Fis mailing list Fis@listas.unizar.es http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
