Dear James,
thank you for the widening of this discussion.
Order and Information
Let us not close this session on the historical perspective of the
modern concept of Science yet. Loet’s thoughtful remarks about the
relation between information and order bring us back to some deep
problems they were addressing in the Middle Ages.
The discussion about the relative importance of the universalia vs.
the re (also known as Occam’s) can be restated in today’s terms as
follows: is the idea behind the thing more useful as a description of
the world as the descriptions of the things themselves?
In Loet’s view, there exists a framework within which we can observe
how the actual states of the things are. Therefore, in this approach
there is no need for a separate concept of order; as each possible
alternative is a priori known, it is the information content that
gives a description of the world. By information, this approach means
the deviation of the actual cases from the ideal-typical case, in
which an order exists. (universalia sunt ante rem)
The opposing view explains information by means of the axiomatic idea
of order. The system is in the same fashion closed, and every possible
alternative is equally known a priori. The difference in viewpoints
lies in the focusing on the properties of the ideal-typical case vs.
the actual types of cases. (universalia sunt post rebus).
The numbers offer a nice satisfying explanation. As we order the
things, we encounter ties. (A sort on 136 additions will bring forth
cases which are indistinguishable with respect to one aspect.) The
members of a tie can represent the universalia. (“All additions where
a+b=12” is e.g. a universalium) The actual cases will – almost – each
deviate from the ideal-typical case.
The information content is then the deviation of the actual cases from
the ideal-typical state, as Loet defines, and concurrently an
implication of which order prevails, as the opposing view suggests. So
it is the same extent and collection which both see, but the names are
different as is different the approach of calculating it. A reorder
creates different ties, therefore a different information content.
The difference between the Middle Ages and today is, in my view, that
they had no possibility to face the idea that there is no ultimate
ordering principle behind the many obviously existing ordering
principles. Our generation has credible news about societies which are
ordered in a completely different fashion and yet are not struck down.
We have experienced too many ideal orders to believe that any such
exists.
Karl
2011/3/24, Pedro C. Marijuan pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es:
Dear all,
Thank you very much to Pedro for asking me to suggest a discussion for
the list and to everyone else for indulging me. As a historian, I have
learnt that questions I naively thought were quite simple have turned
out to be very complicated indeed. The purpose of history, I think, is
to explain the past. It is not just a collection of facts (one damn
thing after another) or even attempting to find out what really
happened (although it does help if we can do this). Historians want to
ask why? and how? as well as what?
Among historians of science, there are two camps. The larger one
examines science as a cultural artefact within a particular historical
milieu. It seeks to answer questions like why did people believe what
they believed?, why did they practice science in the way they did?
and what did they hope science could achieve? Historians in this camp
tend to be specialists in a particular area. They want to see the world
through the eyes of their historical agents. Questions about whether a
particular scientific theory is true or corresponds to objective reality
are not very relevant. What matters is the way people in the past saw
things. We need to understand them.
A second, smaller camp of historians of science where I have pitched my
own tent want to know what caused modern science. They recognise the
enormous utility of scientific discovery and seek to explain how mankind
came by this wonderful tool. In other words, they seek a theory of the
historical origins of science. For this camp, questions about truth are
of paramount importance because we are trying to look back in time to
find the beginnings of processes that ultimately lead to a particular
end. That end is a scientific practice that produces true theories, or
at least theories that correspond to an objective reality.
This quest for the origins of modern science is difficult, not to
mention rather pointless, if you contest the claim that modern science
can give rise to a true description of the objective world. So, when I
presented my claim that we should look in the Middle Ages for these
origins, it seems I had ignored a number of prior questions. Indeed,
the whole concept of science as producing true information was rapidly
thrown into question.
I
