Dear FISers,
quite many things have been said these days about our "family ghosts".
Everyone has a different opinion on the under-information matter, and
maybe that's healthy. Personally I have not changed very much the vision
with which FIS was started many years ago. See in the descriptive text
(http://fis.sciforum.net/about-fis/): "...At FIS, rather than the
discussion of a single particularized concept, information becomes the
intellectual adventure of developing a ‘vertical’ or ‘transdisciplinary’
science connecting the different threads and scales of informational
processes, which demands both a /unifying/ and a /multi-perspective/
approach..."
With time my impression, already expressed in this list, is that there
is a fundamental hiatus in our conceptions around biological information
so that a meaningful connection with the several infos of the physical
realm, and the miscellany of humanities can not be worked out. In a
couple of recent discussions I was close to see with more clarity the
problem, but again I feel blurred. It does not mean at all that I have
an abandonment attitude. Conversely I think we are getting closer and
closer. The fundamental fact of our generation is the stupendous new
panorama that computers and the new technologies have opened on life,
from the bioinformatics to the neurodynamics and the "topodynamics". To
say something more concrete the big problem I see is how to enter the
LIFE CYCLE as the generalized source and sink of the information flows.
And then the Planckian Information theme presented by our new colleague
Sung looks quite intriguing. Why most of these information flows and
energy flows exchanges are caught under that covering law? Anecdotally
we (my research minigroup) are working in the sociotype, understood as
the social communication structures surrounding the person. What is the
average number of friends and acquaintances that we can maintain
meaninfully? Probably you have heard about Dunbar's number (in between
150-200), but what sort of statistical distribution would you obtain?
Very easy, seemingly they follow a Planckian distribution. We have
limited mental resources and have to keep an "economy" on our memory
investment on other people...
Anyhow, the present discussion session may be important to make an
indent on this curious commonality between the physical and the biotic
arrangement of exchanges.
All the best--Pedro
--
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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 0
50009 Zaragoza, Spain
Tfno. +34 976 71 3526 (& 6818)
pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es
http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/
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