Re: [Fis] [Fwd: Re: Information is a linguistic description of structures]--T...

[Mark Johnson]

Dear Loet and colleagues,

I wonder if an alternative view is possible: that the symbolic
codification of the sciences inherent in discourse and supported by
our universities (as they are currently constituted) is a constraint
which prevents us exploring a proper science of constraint. To
overcome it requires not just words and papers, but new forms of
practice, pedagogy, organisation and innovative uses of technology
(possibly what Gordon Pask referred to as 'maverick machines').
Expectations of academic practice - particularly within University
management - make this very hard to establish. Gregory Bateson
identified this very clearly - I recommend his essay at the end of
"Mind and Nature", "Time is out of joint".

There are perhaps some encouraging signs: the practices of artists and
musicians with new technologies, for example, or innovative approaches
to design. The challenge in taking such things more seriously lies in
thinking creatively about how we talk with each other about them.
Bateson understood the problem: he called it the "anti-aesthetic
assumption" which "Bacon, Locke and Newton long ago gave to the
physical sciences, viz that all phenomena (including the mental) can
and shall be studied and evaluated in quantitative terms."

Bateson's argument is that there are two complementary aspects to
mental process: a conservative, rigorous inner logic that demands
compatibility and conformance, and an imaginative, adaptive response
by nature in order to survive in a changing world. It is a mistake, I
think, to subsume the imaginative within the 'conservative inner
logic', which is the tendency of the language-oriented view of the
world. Somehow the balance has to be struck: "Rigour alone is
paralytic death, but imagination alone is insanity"

The point is that this has to be struck organisationally and
institutionally. Bateson ends by asking the Board of Regents at the
University of California (in 1978) "Do we, as a Board, foster whatever
will promote in students, in faculty, and around the boardroom table
those wider perspectives which will bring our system back into an
appropriate synchrony or harmony between rigour and imagination?" It's
an important question. How many university managers would even
understand it today?

Best wishes,

Mark





On Thu, Oct 1, 2015 at 7:14 AM, Loet Leydesdorff  wrote:
> in other words, it's time we confess in science just how little we know
> about language, that we explore language's mysteries, and that we use our
> discoveries as a crowbar to pry open the secrets of this highly contextual,
> deeply relational, profoundly communicational cosmos.
>
>
>
> Dear colleagues,
>
>
>
> The vernacular is not sufficiently codified to contain the complexity of the
> sciences. One needs specialized languages (jargons) that are based on
> symbolic codification. The codes can be unpacked in elaborate language; but
> they remain under re-construction. The further differentiation of codes of
> communication drives the complexity and therefore the advancement of the
> sciences as discursive constructs.
>
>
>
> This cultural evolution remains rooted in and generated by the underlying
> levels. For example, individuals provide variety by making new knowledge
> claims. Since the selection is at the level of communication, however, this
> level tends to take over control. But not as an agent; it further
> differentiates into different forms of communication such as scientific
> discourse, political discourse, etc. Sociologists (Parsons, Luhmann) have
> proposed “symbolically generalized media of communication” which span
> horizons of meaning. “Energy”, for example, has a meaning in science very
> different from its meaning in political discourse. Translations remain of
> course possible; local organizations and agents have to integrate different
> meanings in action (variation; reproduction).
>
>
>
> In my recent paper on the Self-organization of meaning (at
> http://arxiv.org/abs/1507.05251 ), I suggest to distinguish between three
> levels (following Weaver): A. (Shannon-type) information processing ; B.
> meaning sharing using languages; C. translations among coded communications.
> The horizontal and vertical feedback and feedforward mechanisms (entropy
> generation vs. redundancy generation in terms of increasing the number of
> options) are further to be specified.
>
>
>
> Hopefully, this contributes to our discussion.
>
>
>
> Best,
>
> Loet
>
>
>
>
>
> 
>
> Loet Leydesdorff
>
> Professor Emeritus, University of Amsterdam
> Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR)
>
> l...@leydesdorff.net ; http://www.leydesdorff.net/
> Honorary Professor, SPRU, University of Sussex;
>
> Guest Professor Zhejiang Univ., Hangzhou; Visiting Professor, ISTIC,
> Beijing;
>
> Visiting Professor, Birkbeck, University of London;
>
> http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ych9gNYJ=en
>
>
>
>
>
>
> 

Re: [Fis] [Fwd: Re: Information is a linguistic description of structures]--T...

[Stanley N Salthe]

Loet wrote:

 I suggest to distinguish between three levels (following Weaver): A.
(Shannon-type) information processing ; B. meaning sharing using languages;
C. translations among coded communications.

So, here we have a subsumptive hierarchy"

{reduction of possibilities {interpretation {generalization}}}

STAN

On Thu, Oct 1, 2015 at 2:14 AM, Loet Leydesdorff 
wrote:

> in other words, it's time we confess in science just how little we know
> about language, that we explore language's mysteries, and that we use our
> discoveries as a crowbar to pry open the secrets of this highly contextual,
> deeply relational, profoundly communicational cosmos.
>
>
>
> Dear colleagues,
>
>
>
> The vernacular is not sufficiently codified to contain the complexity of
> the sciences. One needs specialized languages (jargons) that are based on
> symbolic codification. The codes can be unpacked in elaborate language; but
> they remain under re-construction. The further differentiation of codes of
> communication drives the complexity and therefore the advancement of the
> sciences as discursive constructs.
>
>
>
> This cultural evolution remains rooted in and generated by the underlying
> levels. For example, individuals provide variety by making new knowledge
> claims. Since the selection is at the level of communication, however, this
> level tends to take over control. But not as an agent; it further
> differentiates into different forms of communication such as scientific
> discourse, political discourse, etc. Sociologists (Parsons, Luhmann) have
> proposed “symbolically generalized media of communication” which span
> horizons of meaning. “Energy”, for example, has a meaning in science very
> different from its meaning in political discourse. Translations remain of
> course possible; local organizations and agents have to integrate different
> meanings in action (variation; reproduction).
>
>
>
> In my recent paper on the Self-organization of meaning (at
> http://arxiv.org/abs/1507.05251 ), I suggest to distinguish between three
> levels (following Weaver): A. (Shannon-type) information processing ; B.
> meaning sharing using languages; C. translations among coded
> communications. The horizontal and vertical feedback and feedforward
> mechanisms (entropy generation vs. redundancy generation in terms of
> increasing the number of options) are further to be specified.
>
>
>
> Hopefully, this contributes to our discussion.
>
>
>
> Best,
>
> Loet
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> Loet Leydesdorff
>
> *Professor Emeritus,* University of Amsterdam
> Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR)
>
> l...@leydesdorff.net ; http://www.leydesdorff.net/
> Honorary Professor, SPRU, University of
> Sussex;
>
> Guest Professor Zhejiang Univ. ,
> Hangzhou; Visiting Professor, ISTIC,
> Beijing;
>
> Visiting Professor, Birkbeck , University of
> London;
>
> http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ych9gNYJ=en
>
>
>
>
>
> ___
> Fis mailing list
> Fis@listas.unizar.es
> http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
>
>
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Re: [Fis] [Fwd: Re: Information is a linguistic description of structures]--T...

[Loet Leydesdorff]

-Original Message-
From: Robert E. Ulanowicz [mailto:u...@umces.edu] 
Sent: Thursday, October 01, 2015 7:11 PM
To: Mark Johnson; Loet Leydesdorff
Cc: Robert Ulanowicz
Subject: Re: [Fis] [Fwd: Re: Information is a linguistic description of
structures]--T...

 

 

Dear Mark & Loet,

 

What Bateson described is a special example of a more general agonism that
traces back to Heraclitus, who saw reality as the outcome between two
opposing tendencies -- "one that builds up and another that tears down".

Of course, the tension is fundamental to Eastern thought as well (e.g., Yin
- Yan).

 

Dear Bob, Mark, and colleagues, 

 

It seems to me that these general denominators are nowadays not specific
enough; the system(s) of reference have to be specified and we also are able
to specify what is integrating and what is differentiating. In general, one
can expect a trade-off between organization and self-organization of the
information flows.

 

In the case of interhuman communication, I suggest that the codes of
communication are self-organizing and differentiating; whereas they have to
be organized by individuals reflexively in instantiations (action). The
self-organizing codes are second-order attributes to the communications (and
not the communicators), structural, and therefore selection mechanisms; the
differentiation drives the communication so that it can increasingly process
complexity. The trade-offs generate tensions.

 

I read Mark's comments as a reference to the tradition of the "Dialectics of
Enlightenment": when communication tends to take over control, this
generates also alienation at the level of the individual because the
communication differentiates, while the individual wishes to integrate. Marx
expressed this as the relation between exchange and use value: exchange
value is the reflection on the abstract market of "human" use value. The
market can be considered as an interhuman communication (exchange) system
guided by a symbolically generalized code of communication (e.g., price).
Capitalism is based on the inversion of the cycle Commodity-Money-Commodity
into Money-Commodity-Money (Geld-Ware-Geld).

 

Bateson is interested in personal development ("mind") and (organizational)
action. From the perspective of the communication, individual minds provide
the sources of variation. Variation is needed for further developing the
communication. Reflexively, action also reproduces structure and retains
organization. All these relations are to be further specified, in my
opinion. 

 

Finally, I would like to say that this is not a dialectics. It is
increasingly obvious that at least three mechanisms are needed for complex
systems formation; for example: triadic closure and the generation of mutual
information/redundancy among three or more dynamics. The vertical
differentiation in levels A., B, and C is also not incidental. In the case
of two, we obtain co-evolution models that explain mutual shaping, but not
yet complex systems that may go into crises, globalize, etc. Trialectics,
Triple Helix, .., etc. 

 

Best, 

Loet

 

PS. This was my second email for this week. L.

 

  _  

Loet Leydesdorff 

Professor Emeritus, University of Amsterdam
Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR)

 <mailto:l...@leydesdorff.net> l...@leydesdorff.net ;
<http://www.leydesdorff.net/> http://www.leydesdorff.net/ 
Honorary Professor,  <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=ych9gNYJ=en>
http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ych9gNYJ=en

 

 

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Re: [Fis] [Fwd: Re: Information is a linguistic description of structures]--T...

[Loet Leydesdorff]

in other words, it's time we confess in science just how little we know
about language, that we explore language's mysteries, and that we use our
discoveries as a crowbar to pry open the secrets of this highly contextual,
deeply relational, profoundly communicational cosmos.

 

Dear colleagues,

 

The vernacular is not sufficiently codified to contain the complexity of the
sciences. One needs specialized languages (jargons) that are based on
symbolic codification. The codes can be unpacked in elaborate language; but
they remain under re-construction. The further differentiation of codes of
communication drives the complexity and therefore the advancement of the
sciences as discursive constructs.

 

This cultural evolution remains rooted in and generated by the underlying
levels. For example, individuals provide variety by making new knowledge
claims. Since the selection is at the level of communication, however, this
level tends to take over control. But not as an agent; it further
differentiates into different forms of communication such as scientific
discourse, political discourse, etc. Sociologists (Parsons, Luhmann) have
proposed "symbolically generalized media of communication" which span
horizons of meaning. "Energy", for example, has a meaning in science very
different from its meaning in political discourse. Translations remain of
course possible; local organizations and agents have to integrate different
meanings in action (variation; reproduction).

 

In my recent paper on the Self-organization of meaning (at
http://arxiv.org/abs/1507.05251 ), I suggest to distinguish between three
levels (following Weaver): A. (Shannon-type) information processing ; B.
meaning sharing using languages; C. translations among coded communications.
The horizontal and vertical feedback and feedforward mechanisms (entropy
generation vs. redundancy generation in terms of increasing the number of
options) are further to be specified.

 

Hopefully, this contributes to our discussion. 

 

Best,

Loet

 

 

  _  

Loet Leydesdorff 

Professor Emeritus, University of Amsterdam
Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR)

  l...@leydesdorff.net ;
 http://www.leydesdorff.net/ 
Honorary Professor,   SPRU, University of
Sussex; 

Guest Professor   Zhejiang Univ., Hangzhou;
Visiting Professor,   ISTIC,
Beijing;

Visiting Professor,   Birkbeck, University of London;


 
http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ych9gNYJ=en

 

 

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Re: [Fis] [Fwd: Re: Information is a linguistic description of structures]--T...

[mjs@aiu]

Dear Howard:
I am afraid one of your examples is not really accurate historically:
"the most amazing metaphor of relationality available to us is not math, 
it's not mechanism, and it's not reduction to "elements," it's 
language.  by using the metaphor of a form of language called "code," 
watson and crick were able to understand what a strand of dna does and 
how.   without language as metaphor, we'd still be in the dark about the 
genome."
The idea how to pack huge amount of information in something as small as 
chromosome came not from language, but from Schroedinger's concept of 
aperiodic crystal in his book "What is Life?". Crick switched from his 
candidacy in physics to biology after reading this book. He knew very 
well what he was looking for together with Watson. And crystals, 
periodic or not, do not have much common with language.

Regards,
Marcin

On 9/29/2015 2:39 PM, howlbl...@aol.com wrote:
re: it is likely to be problematic to use language as the paradigm 
model for all communication--Terrence Deacon
Terry  makes interesting points, but I think on this one, he may be 
wrong. Guenther Witzany is on to something.  our previous approaches  
to information have been what Barbara Ehrenreich, in her introduction 
to the upcoming paperback of my book The God Problem: How a Godless 
Cosmos Creates, calls "a kind of unacknowledged necrophilia."
we've been using dead things to understand living things. aristotle 
put us on that path when he told us that if we could break things down 
to their "elements" and understand what he called the "laws" of those 
elements, we'd understand everything.  Newton took us farther down 
that path when he said we could understand everything using the 
metaphor of the "contrivance," the machine--the metaphor of 
"mechanics" and of "mechanism."
Aristotle and Newton were wrong.  Their ideas have had centuries to 
pan out, and they've led to astonishing insights, but they've left us 
blind to the relational aspect of things. utterly blind.
the most amazing metaphor of relationality available to us is not 
math, it's not mechanism, and it's not reduction to "elements," it's 
language.  by using the metaphor of a form of language called "code," 
watson and crick were able to understand what a strand of dna does and 
how.   without language as metaphor, we'd still be in the dark about 
the genome.
i'm convinced that by learning the relational secrets of the body of 
work of a Shakespeare or a Goethe we could crack some of the secrets 
we've been utterly unable to comprehend, from what makes the social 
clots we call a galaxy's spiral arms (a phenomenon that astronomer 
Greg Matloff, a Fellow of the British interplanetary Society,  says 
defies the laws of Newtonian and Einsteinian physics) to what makes 
the difference between life and death.
in other words, it's time we confess in science just how little we 
know about language, that we explore language's mysteries, and that we 
use our discoveries as a crowbar to pry open the secrets of this 
highly contextual, deeply relational, profoundly communicational cosmos.

with thanks for tolerating my opinions.
howard

Howard Bloom
Author of: /The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the 
Forces of History/ ("mesmerizing"-/The Washington Post/),
/Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 
21st Century/ ("reassuring and sobering"-/The New Yorker)/,
/The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of Capitalism/ ("A 
tremendously enjoyable book." James Fallows, National Correspondent, 
/The Atlantic/),
/The God Problem: How A Godless Cosmos Creates/ ("Bloom's argument 
will rock your world." Barbara Ehrenreich),

/How I Accidentally Started the Sixties/ ("Wow! Whew! Wild!
Wonderful!" Timothy Leary), and
/The Mohammed Code/ ("A terrifying book…the best book I've read on 
Islam." David Swindle,/PJ Media/).

www.howardbloom.net
Former Core Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute; Former Visiting 
Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University.
Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; Founder, Space 
Development Steering Committee; Founder: The Group Selection Squad; 
Founding Board Member: Epic of Evolution Society; Founding Board 
Member, The Darwin Project; Founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; 
member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the 
Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of 
Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International 
Society for Human Ethology, Scientific Advisory Board Member, Lifeboat 
Foundation; Editorial Board Member, Journal of Space Philosophy; Board 
member and member of Board of Governors, National Space Society.
In a message dated 9/28/2015 11:47:26 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, 
pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es writes:


From Terry...

 Original Message 
Subject:Re: [Fis] Information is a linguistic description of
structures
Date:   Sun, 

Re: [Fis] [Fwd: Re: Information is a linguistic description of structures]--T...

[Francesco Rizzo]

Cari Tutti,
condivido al 100% quel che afferma Marcin che si ritrova scritto in circa
20 miei libri. Quando parlo di significazione, informazione e comunicazione
mi riferisco all'intera esistenza e a tutta la conoscenza in-centrate su
quattro (ma potrebbero essere 44) tipi di informazione: termodinamica o
naturale (entropia e neg-entropia); bio-ecologica (informazione genetica
che si trasmette genealogicamente); semiotico-ermeneutica (informazione
semantica); matematica (bit di entropia uguale alla e differente dalla
seconda legge della termodinamica secondo Boltzmann). Si vuole prendere
atto di questo punto cruciale o no? Altrimenti cadiamo nella melassa
entropica della confusione.
Grazie.
Francesco Rizzo.

2015-09-29 8:02 GMT+02:00 mjs@aiu :

> Dear Howard:
> I am afraid one of your examples is not really accurate historically:
> "the most amazing metaphor of relationality available to us is not math,
> it's not mechanism, and it's not reduction to "elements," it's language.
> by using the metaphor of a form of language called "code," watson and crick
> were able to understand what a strand of dna does and how.   without
> language as metaphor, we'd still be in the dark about the genome."
> The idea how to pack huge amount of information in something as small as
> chromosome came not from language, but from Schroedinger's concept of
> aperiodic crystal in his book "What is Life?". Crick switched from his
> candidacy in physics to biology after reading this book. He knew very well
> what he was looking for together with Watson. And crystals, periodic or
> not, do not have much common with language.
> Regards,
> Marcin
>
> On 9/29/2015 2:39 PM, howlbl...@aol.com wrote:
>
>
> re: it is likely to be problematic to use language as the paradigm model
> for all communication--Terrence Deacon
>
> Terry  makes interesting points, but I think on this one, he may be
> wrong. Guenther Witzany is on to something.  our previous approaches
> to information have been what Barbara Ehrenreich, in her introduction to
> the upcoming paperback of my book The God Problem: How a Godless Cosmos
> Creates, calls "a kind of unacknowledged necrophilia."
>
> we've been using dead things to understand living things.  aristotle put
> us on that path when he told us that if we could break things down to their
> "elements" and understand what he called the "laws" of those elements, we'd
> understand everything.  Newton took us farther down that path when he said
> we could understand everything using the metaphor of the "contrivance," the
> machine--the metaphor of "mechanics" and of "mechanism."
>
> Aristotle and Newton were wrong.  Their ideas have had centuries to pan
> out, and they've led to astonishing insights, but they've left us blind to
> the relational aspect of things. utterly blind.
>
> the most amazing metaphor of relationality available to us is not math,
> it's not mechanism, and it's not reduction to "elements," it's language.
> by using the metaphor of a form of language called "code," watson and crick
> were able to understand what a strand of dna does and how.   without
> language as metaphor, we'd still be in the dark about the genome.
>
> i'm convinced that by learning the relational secrets of the body of work
> of a Shakespeare or a Goethe we could crack some of the secrets we've been
> utterly unable to comprehend, from what makes the social clots we call a
> galaxy's spiral arms (a phenomenon that astronomer Greg Matloff, a Fellow
> of the British interplanetary Society,  says defies the laws of Newtonian
> and Einsteinian physics) to what makes the difference between life and
> death.
>
> in other words, it's time we confess in science just how little we know
> about language, that we explore language's mysteries, and that we use our
> discoveries as a crowbar to pry open the secrets of this highly contextual,
> deeply relational, profoundly communicational cosmos.
>
> with thanks for tolerating my opinions.
>
> howard
>
> 
> Howard Bloom
> Author of: *The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the
> Forces of History* ("mesmerizing"-*The Washington Post*),
> *Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st
> Century* ("reassuring and sobering"-*The New Yorker)*,
> *The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of Capitalism* ("A
> tremendously enjoyable book." James Fallows, National Correspondent, *The
> Atlantic*),
> *The God Problem: How A Godless Cosmos Creates* ("Bloom's argument will
> rock your world." Barbara Ehrenreich),
> *How I Accidentally Started the Sixties* ("Wow! Whew! Wild!
> Wonderful!" Timothy Leary), and
> *The Mohammed Code* ("A terrifying book…the best book I've read on
> Islam." David Swindle,* PJ Media*).
> www.howardbloom.net
> Former Core Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute; Former Visiting
> Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University.
> Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; Founder, Space 

Re: [Fis] [Fwd: Re: Information is a linguistic description of structures]--T...

[Robert E. Ulanowicz]

Howard:

I applaud your critique of our legacy attempts to render life meaningful
in terms of what you call "necrophilia" and Hans Jonas has called an
"ontology of death".

In my last book, "A Third Window", I attempted to develop the metaphysics
of a process ecology of relationships as an alternative starting point.


I especially resonated with your mention of the failure of conventional
and relativistic physics to explain the spiral arms of some galaxies. This
I believe is due to the constraints of the continuum assumption laid down
by Euler and Leibniz, which conflates cause with effect. One can get away
with this assumption so long as the interval between cause and effect is
virtually immediate. In a galaxy 100,000 light years in diameter, however,
this assumption begins to fray. It likely breaks down altogether across
intergalactic distances.

The continuum assumption leads to symmetrical laws of nature, and as
Noether taught us, symmetry and conservation are joined at the hip. Is it
any wonder, then, that inconsistencies leading to the postulation of
"dark" matter and energy should arise if one uses only symmetrical laws?

What is known to few is that Newton (who ironically gets a lot of the
blame for the Eulerian assumption) inveighed strongly against equating
cause with effect. Historian of science, Ed Dellian, gives the full story
on his website.  I offer
some consequences in my talk at "Seizing an Alternative", which took place
back in June.


Having thus waxed ebullient over your insights, I nonetheless tend to
agree with Terry that discussion on communication or information should
not be confined to language or genomics. In fact, I would contend that
information should not be limited to association with communication. As
Stan Salthe contends, it is more generally tied to any form of constraint.
John Collier, for example, identifies such information as inheres in
structures as "enformation", and this form is readily quantifiable using
the information calculus of Shannon.
 Such reckoning permits
us to develop an alternative phenomenology to the "dead objects moving
according to universal laws"  attempts to apprehend life.


Prodded by Jonas, we need to give intensive effort to articulating an
"ontology of life".

Peace,
Bob U.

>
> re: it is likely to be problematic to use language as the paradigm model
> for all communication--Terrence Deacon
>
> Terry  makes interesting points, but I think on this one, he may be
> wrong.
> Guenther Witzany is on to something.  our previous  approaches  to
> information have been what Barbara Ehrenreich, in her  introduction to the
> upcoming
> paperback of my book The God Problem: How a Godless  Cosmos Creates, calls
> "a kind of unacknowledged necrophilia."
>
> we've been using dead things to understand living things.  aristotle  put
> us on that path when he told us that if we could break things down to
> their
> "elements" and understand what he called the "laws" of those elements,
> we'd
> understand everything.  Newton took us farther down that path when he said
> we could understand everything using the metaphor of the "contrivance,"
> the
>  machine--the metaphor of "mechanics" and of "mechanism."
>
> Aristotle and Newton were wrong.  Their ideas have had centuries to  pan
> out, and they've led to astonishing insights, but they've left us blind
> to
> the relational aspect of things. utterly blind.
>
> the most amazing metaphor of relationality available to us is not math,
> it's not mechanism, and it's not reduction to "elements," it's language.
> by
> using the metaphor of a form of language called "code," watson and  crick
> were able to understand what a strand of dna does and  how.   without
> language
> as metaphor, we'd still be in the dark  about the genome.
>
> i'm convinced that by learning the relational secrets of the body of work
> of a Shakespeare or a Goethe we could crack some of the secrets we've been
> utterly unable to comprehend, from what makes the social clots we call a
> galaxy's spiral arms (a phenomenon that astronomer Greg Matloff, a  Fellow
> of
> the British interplanetary Society,  says defies the laws  of Newtonian
> and
> Einsteinian physics) to what makes the difference between  life and death.
>
> in other words, it's time we confess in science just how little we know
> about language, that we explore language's mysteries, and that we use our
> discoveries as a crowbar to pry open the secrets of this highly
> contextual,
> deeply relational, profoundly communicational cosmos.
>
> with thanks for tolerating my opinions.
>
> howard
>
> 
> Howard Bloom


___

Re: [Fis] [Fwd: Re: Information is a linguistic description of structures]--T...

[HowlBloom]

bob,
 
thanks for an extraordinary answer.  riddled with extraordinary  knowledge.
 
I've just bought your book from Amazon and it should be in my kindle  
momentarily.  if you'd like a copy of mine--The God Problem: How a Godless  
Cosmos Creates--i can email it to you.  and to anyone else on the FIS list  who 
wants it.  
 
our books intersect. we both attempt to lay out new assumptions for  
science.
 
most important, I agree with you and Terrence Deacon that our analysis of  
information should not be limited to the metaphors of language, code, and  
genomics.  a metaphor is a tool.  each metaphor opens a different  trove of 
insights.  so the more metaphors--the more tools--the  better.
 
with warmth and oomph--howard
 

Howard Bloom
Author of: The Lucifer Principle:  A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces 
of History ("mesmerizing"-The  Washington Post),
Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The  Big Bang to the 21st 
Century ("reassuring and sobering"-The New  Yorker),
The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of  Capitalism ("A 
tremendously enjoyable book." James Fallows, National  Correspondent, The 
Atlantic),
The God Problem: How A Godless Cosmos  Creates ("Bloom's argument will rock 
your world." Barbara  Ehrenreich),
How I Accidentally Started the Sixties ("Wow! Whew!  Wild!
Wonderful!" Timothy Leary), and
The Mohammed Code ("A  terrifying book…the best book I've read on Islam." 
David Swindle, PJ  Media).
www.howardbloom.net
Former Core Faculty Member, The Graduate  Institute; Former Visiting 
Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York  University.
Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; Founder, Space  Development 
Steering Committee; Founder: The Group Selection Squad; Founding  Board 
Member: Epic of Evolution Society; Founding Board Member, The Darwin  Project; 
Founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of  
Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American  
Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and  
Evolution 
Society, International Society for Human Ethology, Scientific Advisory  Board 
Member, Lifeboat Foundation; Editorial Board Member, Journal of Space  
Philosophy; Board member and member of Board of Governors, National Space  
Society.


In a message dated 9/29/2015 10:44:26 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,  
u...@umces.edu writes:

Howard:

I applaud your critique of our legacy attempts to  render life meaningful
in terms of what you call "necrophilia" and Hans  Jonas has called an
"ontology of death".

In my last book, "A Third  Window", I attempted to develop the metaphysics
of a process ecology of  relationships as an alternative starting  point.


I  especially resonated with your mention of the failure of conventional
and  relativistic physics to explain the spiral arms of some galaxies. This
I  believe is due to the constraints of the continuum assumption laid down
by  Euler and Leibniz, which conflates cause with effect. One can get away
with  this assumption so long as the interval between cause and effect  is
virtually immediate. In a galaxy 100,000 light years in diameter,  however,
this assumption begins to fray. It likely breaks down altogether  across
intergalactic distances.

The continuum assumption leads to  symmetrical laws of nature, and as
Noether taught us, symmetry and  conservation are joined at the hip. Is it
any wonder, then, that  inconsistencies leading to the postulation of
"dark" matter and energy  should arise if one uses only symmetrical laws?

What is known to few is  that Newton (who ironically gets a lot of the
blame for the Eulerian  assumption) inveighed strongly against equating
cause with effect.  Historian of science, Ed Dellian, gives the full story
on his website.   I offer
some  consequences in my talk at "Seizing an Alternative", which took place
back  in  June.


Having  thus waxed ebullient over your insights, I nonetheless tend to
agree with  Terry that discussion on communication or information should
not be  confined to language or genomics. In fact, I would contend that
information  should not be limited to association with communication. As
Stan Salthe  contends, it is more generally tied to any form of constraint.
John  Collier, for example, identifies such information as inheres in
structures  as "enformation", and this form is readily quantifiable using
the  information calculus of  Shannon.
 Such  reckoning permits
us to develop an alternative phenomenology to the "dead  objects moving
according to universal laws"  attempts to apprehend  life.


Prodded  by Jonas, we need to give intensive effort to 

Re: [Fis] [Fwd: Re: Information is a linguistic description of structures]--T...

[HowlBloom]

re: it is likely to be problematic to use language as the paradigm model  
for all communication--Terrence Deacon
 
Terry  makes interesting points, but I think on this one, he may be  wrong. 
Guenther Witzany is on to something.  our previous  approaches  to 
information have been what Barbara Ehrenreich, in her  introduction to the 
upcoming 
paperback of my book The God Problem: How a Godless  Cosmos Creates, calls 
"a kind of unacknowledged necrophilia."
 
we've been using dead things to understand living things.  aristotle  put 
us on that path when he told us that if we could break things down to their  
"elements" and understand what he called the "laws" of those elements, we'd  
understand everything.  Newton took us farther down that path when he said  
we could understand everything using the metaphor of the "contrivance," the 
 machine--the metaphor of "mechanics" and of "mechanism."  
 
Aristotle and Newton were wrong.  Their ideas have had centuries to  pan 
out, and they've led to astonishing insights, but they've left us blind  to 
the relational aspect of things. utterly blind.
 
the most amazing metaphor of relationality available to us is not math,  
it's not mechanism, and it's not reduction to "elements," it's language.   by 
using the metaphor of a form of language called "code," watson and  crick 
were able to understand what a strand of dna does and  how.   without language 
as metaphor, we'd still be in the dark  about the genome.
 
i'm convinced that by learning the relational secrets of the body of work  
of a Shakespeare or a Goethe we could crack some of the secrets we've been  
utterly unable to comprehend, from what makes the social clots we call a  
galaxy's spiral arms (a phenomenon that astronomer Greg Matloff, a  Fellow of 
the British interplanetary Society,  says defies the laws  of Newtonian and 
Einsteinian physics) to what makes the difference between  life and death.
 
in other words, it's time we confess in science just how little we know  
about language, that we explore language's mysteries, and that we use our  
discoveries as a crowbar to pry open the secrets of this highly contextual,  
deeply relational, profoundly communicational cosmos.
 
with thanks for tolerating my opinions.
 
howard
 

Howard Bloom
Author of: The Lucifer Principle:  A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces 
of History ("mesmerizing"-The  Washington Post),
Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The  Big Bang to the 21st 
Century ("reassuring and sobering"-The New  Yorker),
The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of  Capitalism ("A 
tremendously enjoyable book." James Fallows, National  Correspondent, The 
Atlantic),
The God Problem: How A Godless Cosmos  Creates ("Bloom's argument will rock 
your world." Barbara  Ehrenreich),
How I Accidentally Started the Sixties ("Wow! Whew!  Wild!
Wonderful!" Timothy Leary), and
The Mohammed Code ("A  terrifying book…the best book I've read on Islam." 
David Swindle, PJ  Media).
www.howardbloom.net
Former Core Faculty Member, The Graduate  Institute; Former Visiting 
Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York  University.
Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; Founder, Space  Development 
Steering Committee; Founder: The Group Selection Squad; Founding  Board 
Member: Epic of Evolution Society; Founding Board Member, The Darwin  Project; 
Founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of  
Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American  
Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and  
Evolution 
Society, International Society for Human Ethology, Scientific Advisory  Board 
Member, Lifeboat Foundation; Editorial Board Member, Journal of Space  
Philosophy; Board member and member of Board of Governors, National Space  
Society.


In a message dated 9/28/2015 11:47:26 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,  
pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es writes:

>From  Terry...

 Original Message  Subject:  Re: [Fis] Information is a 
linguistic description of  structures  Date:  Sun, 27 Sep 2015 22:13:14 
-0700  From:  Terrence W. Deacon __ 
(mailto:dea...@berkeley.edu)   To:  Pedro C. Marijuan 
__ 
(mailto:pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es)   CC:  Günther Witzany __ 
(mailto:witz...@sbg.at) , __ 
(mailto:fa...@howardbloom.net) ,  fis 
__ (mailto:fis@listas.unizar.es) ,  Emanuel Diamant 
__ (mailto:emanl@gmail.com)   References:  
_<000201d0f68c$77d02b50$677081f0$@gmail.com>_ 
(mailto:000201d0f68c$77d02b50$677081f0$@gmail.com)   
_<0d34f6ef-19e6-4c9c-a9d3-aba4f5f2e...@sbg.at>_ 
(mailto:0d34f6ef-19e6-4c9c-a9d3-aba4f5f2e...@sbg.at)   
_<56053208.2000...@aragon.es>_ 
(mailto:56053208.2000...@aragon.es) 

As exemplified in Guenther's auxin example, and Pedro's worries  about the 
procrustean use of language metaphors in the discussion of