In this respect Loet comments:
"In my opinion, the status of Shannon’s mathematical theory of information is different from special theories of information (e.g., biological ones) since the formal theory enables us to translate between these latter theories." We are essentially in agreement, and yet I would invert any perspective that prioritizes the approach pioneered by Shannon. Dear Terrence and colleagues, The inversion is fine with me as an exploration. But I don’t think that this can be done on programmatic grounds because of the assumed possibility of “a general theory of information”. I don’t think that such a theory exists or is even possible without assumptions that beg the question. In other words, we have a “hole” in the center. Each perspective can claim its “generality” or fundamental character. For example, many of us entertain a biological a priori; others (including you?) reason on the basis of physics. The various (special) theories, however, are not juxtaposed; but can be considered as other (sometimes orthogonal) perspectives. Translations are possible at the bottom by unpacking in normal language or sometimes more formally (and advanced; productive?) using Shannon’s information theory and formalizations derived from it. I admit my own communication-theoretical a priori. I am interested in the communication of knowledge as different from the communication of information. Discursive knowledge specifies and codifies meaning. The communication/sharing of meaning provides an in-between layer, which has also to be distinguished from the communication of information. Meaning is not relational but positional; it cannot be communicated, but it can be shared. I am currently working (with coauthors) on a full paper on the subject. The following is the provisional abstract: As against a monadic reduction of knowledge and meaning to signal processing among neurons, we distinguish among information and meaning processing, and the possible codification of specific meanings as discursive knowledge. Whereas the Shannon-type information is coupled to the second law of thermodynamics, redundancy—that is, the complement of information to the maximum entropy—can be extended by further distinctions and the specification of expectations when new options are made feasible. With the opposite sign, the dynamics of knowledge production thus infuses the historical (e.g., institutional) dynamics with a cultural evolution. Meaning is provided from the perspective of hindsight as feedback on the entropy flow. The circling among dynamics in feedback and feedforward loops can be evaluated by the sign of mutual information. When mutual redundancy prevails, the resulting sign is negative indicating that more options are made available and innovation can be expected to flourish. The relation of this cultural evolution with the computation of anticipatory systems can be specified; but the resulting puzzles are a subject for future research. Best, Loet _____ Loet Leydesdorff Professor, University of Amsterdam Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR) <mailto:l...@leydesdorff.net> l...@leydesdorff.net ; <http://www.leydesdorff.net/> http://www.leydesdorff.net/ Associate Faculty, <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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