Dear FISers,
I also agree with Ji and John Torday about the tight relationship
between information and communication. Actually Principle 5 was stating
: "Communication/information exchanges among adaptive life-cycles
underlie the complexity of biological organizations at all scales."
However, let me suggest that we do not enter immediately in the
discussion of cell-cell communication, because it is very important and
perhaps demands some more exchanges on the preliminary info matters.
May I return to principles and Aristotle? I think that Rafael and Michel
are talking more about principles as general concepts than about
principles as those peculiar foundational items that allow the beginning
of a new scientific discourse. Communication between principles of the
different disciplines is factually impossible (or utterly irrelevant):
think on the connection between Euclidean geometry and politics,
biology, etc. I think Ortega makes right an interpretation about that.
When Aristotle makes the first classification of the sciences, he is
continuing with that very idea. Theoretical sciences, experimental or
productive sciences, and applied or practical sciences--with an emphasis
on the explanatory theoretical power of both physics and mathematics
(ehm, Arturo will agree fully with him). I have revisited my old reading
notes and I think that the Aristotelian confrontation with the Platonic
approach to the unity of knowledge that Ortega comments is extremely
interesting for our current debate on information principles.
There is another important aspect related to the first three principles
in my original message (see at the bottom). It would be rather strategic
to achieve a consensus on the futility of struggling for a universal
information definition. Then, the tautology of the first principle
("info is info") is a way to sidestep that definitional aspect.
Nevertheless, it is clear that interesting notions of information may be
provided relative to some particular domains or endeavors. For instance,
"propagating influence" by our colleague Bob Logan, Stuart Kauffman and
others, and many other notions or partial definitions as well--I include
my own "distinction on the adjacent" as valuable for the informational
approach in biology. Is this "indefinability" an undesirable aspect? To
put an example from physics, time appears as the most undefinable of the
terms, but it shows up in almost all equations and theories of
physics... Principle three means that one can do a lot of things with
info without the need of defining it.
As for the subject that is usually coupled to the info term, as our
discussion advances further, entering the "information flows" will tend
to clarify things. The open-ended relationship with the environment that
the "informational entities" maintain via the channeling of those info
flows--it is a very special coupling indeed--allows these entities the
further channeling of the "energy flows" for self-maintenance. Think on
the living cells and their signaling systems, or think on our "info"
societies. Harold Morowitz's "energy flow in biology" has not been
paralleled yet by a similar "information flow in biology". One is
optimistic that the recent incorporation of John Torday, plus Shungchul
Ji and others, may lead to a thought-collective capable of illuminating
the panorama of biological information.
(shouldn't we make an effort to incorporate other relevant parties, also
interested in biological information, to this discussion?)
Best wishes--Pedro
El 23/09/2017 a las 21:27, Sungchul Ji escribió:
Hi Fisers,
I agree.
Communication may be the key concept in developing a theory of informaton.
Just as it is impossible to define what energy is without defining the
thermodynamic system under consideration (e.g., energy is conserved
only in an isolated system and not in closed or open systems;
the Gibbs free energy content decreases only when a spontaneous
process occurs in non-isolsted systems with a constant temperature
and pressure, etc), so it may be that 'information' cannot be defined
rigorously without first defining the "communication system" under
consideration. If this analogy is true, we can anticipate that, just
as there are many different kinds of energies depending on the
characteristics of the thermodynamic systems involved, so there may be
many different kinds of 'informations' depending on the nature of the
communication systems under consideration.
The properties or behaviors of all thermodynamic systems depend on
their environment, and there are three system-environment relations
-- (i) isolated (e.g., the Universe, or the thermos bottle), (ii)
closed (e.g., refriegerator), and (iii) open (e.g., the biosphere,
living cells).
It is interesting to note that, all communication systems (e.g., cell,
organs, animals, humans) may embody ITR (Irreducible Triadic Relation)
which I found it convenient to represent diagramamatically using a
3-node network arrows as shown below:
/ f g/
*A* ----------> *B *---------> *C*
| ^
| |
|__________________|
/h/
Figure 1. The Irreducible Triadic Relation (*ITR*) of C. S. Peirce
(1839-21914) represented as a 3-node, closed and directed network.
The arrows form the /commutative triangle /of category theory, i.e.,
operations /f/ followed by /g/ leads to the same result as operation
/h/, here denoted as /fxg = h./
/f/ = information production; /g/ = information interpretation; /h/ =
correspondence or information flow. Please note that Processes f and
g are driven by exergonic physicochemical processes, and /h/ requires
a pre-existing code or language that acts as the rule of mapping A and C.
Again, just as generations of thermodynamicists in the 19-20th
centuries have defined various kinds of "energies" (enthalpy,
Helmholtz free energy, Gibbs free energy) applicable to different
kinds of thermodynamic systems, so 'information scientists' of the
21st century may have the golden opportunity to define as many kinds
of 'informations' as needed for the different kinds of "communcation
systems" of their interest, some examples of which being presented in
Table 1.
________________________________________________________________________
Table 1. A 'parametric' definition of information based on the values
of the three nodes
of the *ITR, *Figure 1.
________________________________________________________________________
*Communication system* *A B C *
(Information)**
________________________________________________________________________
/Cells / DNA/RNA Proteins Chemcal reactions
(Biological informations)
or chemical waves
_________________________________________________________________________
/Humans / Sender Message Receiver
(Linguistic informations)
_________________________________________________________________________
/Signs / Object Representamen Interpretant
(Semiotic informations, or
'Universal informations' (?))
__________________________________________________________________________
With all the best.
Sung
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*From:* Fis <fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es> on behalf of JOHN TORDAY
<jtor...@ucla.edu>
*Sent:* Saturday, September 23, 2017 10:44:33 AM
*To:* fis@listas.unizar.es
*Subject:* [Fis] Principles of IS
Dear Fis, I am a newcomer to this discussion, but suffice it to say
that I have spent the last 20 years trying to understand how and why
physiology has evolved. I stumbled upon your website because Pedro
Maijuan had reviewed a paper of ours on 'ambiguity' that was recently
published in Progr Biophys Mol Biol July 22, 2017 fiy.
Cell-cell communication is the basis for molecular
embryology/morphogenesis. This may seem tangential at best to your
discussion of Information Science, but if you'll bear with me I will
get to the point. In my (humble) opinion, information is the
'language' of evolution, but communication of information as a process
is the mechanism. In my reduction of evolution as communication, it
comes down to the interface between physics and biology, which was
formed when the first cell delineated its internal environment (Claude
Bernard, Walter B Cannon) from the outside environment. From that
point on, the dialog between the environment and the organism has been
on-going, the organism internalizing the external environment and
compartmentalizing it to form what we recognize as physiology
(Endosymbiosis Theory). Much of this thinking has come from new
scientific evidence for Lamarckian epigenetic inheritance from my
laboratory and that of many others- how the organism internalizes
information from the environment by chemically changing the
information in DNA in the egg and sperm, and then in the zygote and
offspring, across generations. So here we have a fundamental reason to
reconsider what 'information' actually means biologically. If you are
interested in any of my publications on this subject please let me
know (jtor...@ucla.edu <mailto:jtor...@ucla.edu>). Thank you for any
interest you may have in this alternative way of thinking about
information, communication and evolution.
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Dear FIS Colleagues,
As promised herewith the "10 principles of information science". A
couple of previous comments may be in order.
First, what is in general the role of principles in science? I was
motivated by the unfinished work of philosopher Ortega y Gasset, "The
idea of principle in Leibniz and the evolution of deductive theory"
(posthumously published in 1958). Our tentative information science
seems to be very different from other sciences, rather multifarious in
appearance and concepts, and cavalierly moving from scale to scale.
What could be the specific role of principles herein? Rather than
opening homogeneous realms for conceptual development, these
information principles would appear as a sort of "portals" that
connect with essential topics of other disciplines in the different
organization layers, but at the same time they should try to be
consistent with each other and provide a coherent vision of the
information world.
And second, about organizing the present discussion, I bet I was too
optimistic with the commentators scheme. In any case, for having a
first glance on the whole scheme, the opinions of philosophers would
be very interesting. In order to warm up the discussion, may I ask
John Collier, Joseph Brenner and Rafael Capurro to send some initial
comments / criticisms? Later on, if the commentators idea flies,
Koichiro Matsuno and Wolfgang Hofkirchner would be very valuable
voices to put a perspectival end to this info principles discussion
(both attended the Madrid bygone FIS 1994 conference)...
But this is FIS list, unpredictable in between the frozen states and
the chaotic states! So, everybody is invited to get ahead at his own,
with the only customary limitation of two messages per week.
Best wishes, have a good weekend --Pedro
*10 **PRINCIPLES OF INFORMATION SCIENCE*
1. Information is information, neither matter nor energy.
2. Information is comprehended into structures, patterns, messages, or
flows.
3. Information can be recognized, can be measured, and can be
processed (either computationally or non-computationally).
4. Information flows are essential organizers of life's
self-production processes--anticipating, shaping, and mixing up with
the accompanying energy flows.
5. Communication/information exchanges among adaptive life-cycles
underlie the complexity of biological organizations at all scales.
6. It is symbolic language what conveys the essential communication
exchanges of the human species--and constitutes the core of its
"social nature."
7. Human information may be systematically converted into efficient
knowledge, by following the "knowledge instinct" and further up by
applying rigorous methodologies.
8. Human cognitive limitations on knowledge accumulation are partially
overcome via the social organization of "knowledge ecologies."
9. Knowledge circulates and recombines socially, in a continuous
actualization that involves "creative destruction" of fields and
disciplines: the intellectual /Ars Magna./
10. Information science proposes a new, radical vision on the
information and knowledge flows that support individual lives, with
profound consequences for scientific-philosophical practice and for
social governance.
--
-------------------------------------------------
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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--
-------------------------------------------------
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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