Re: [Fis] Fwd: PRINCIPLES OF IS

[Michel Godron]

I quite agree with Rafael's   "Ortega's view of Aristotle conceiving 
sciences (epistemai) as "uncommunicated" because based on different 
"principles" (archai) is, in my view, a misunderstanding. Aristotle is 
very careful in his starting (!) analysis of concepts (before 
delimitating / terminus their fields) having different meanings also in 
everyday language."



 Cordialement. M. Godron

Le 23/09/2017 à 09:23, Rafael Capurro a écrit :
Ortega's view of Aristotle conceiving sciences (epistemai) as 
"uncommunicated" because based on different "principles" (archai) is, 
in my view, a misunderstanding. Aristotle is very careful in his 
starting (!) analysis of concepts (before delimitating / terminus 
their fields) having different meanings also in everyday language.


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Re: [Fis] Fwd: PRINCIPLES OF IS

[Michel Godron]

About the principles :

La philosophie, seule, se trouve présenter ce double caractère[parce 
qu'elle propose ] une cause de toute chose et un_principe,_ (...) Toutes 
les autres sciences sont donc plus nécessaires qu'elles, mais aucune ne 
l'emporte en excellence." (Métaphysique A, 983 a).



"Il est extrêmement difficile pour les hommes d'arriver aux 
connaissances universelles, car elles sont le plus en dehors de la 
portée des sens. Les sciences les plus exactes sont celles qui sont le 
plus sciences des principes (ta prwta). Celles qui partent de principes 
plus simples sont plus exactes que celles qui partent de principes plus 
complexes, comme l'arithmétique est plus exacte que la géométrie. Mais 
une science est d'autant plus propre à enseigner qu'elle approfondit 
davantage les causes, car ceux-là enseignent qui disent les causes de 
chaque chose ... Le connaissable par excellence, ce sont les principes 
et les causes. La science la plus élevée, et qui est supérieure à tout 
science subordonnée, est celle qui connaît en vue de quelle fin il faut 
faire quelque chose. Et cette fin est le bien de chaque être et, d'une 
manière générale c'est le souverain Bien dans l'ensemble de la nature 
... ce doit être en effet la science théorétique des premiers principes 
et des premières causes, car le bien, c'est-à-dire la fin est l'une de 
ces causes. (Métaphysique A, 982 a et b).


Cordialement. M. Godron


Le 22/09/2017 à 14:20, Pedro C. Marijuan a écrit :

Dear FISers,

Taking seriously the idea of information principles, quite probably 
demands a specific discussion on principles. Why do we need 
"principles" at all? Because of our cognitive limitations. An infinite 
intellect would traverse all spans of knowledge without any 
discontinuity--presumably. In our collective scientific enterprise, 
however, we create special disciplines in order to share 
understandable discourses between the limited individuals of each 
thought-collective. As knowledge accumulates and gets more and more 
complex, particularly in the encounter with other discourses, the 
growing epistemic distances fragment the original discipline, and a 
new subdiscipline becomes necessary. It starts then a fresh new 
discourse, with its own principles. In my brief mention of Ortega, 
what he accuses Leibnitz is that being the champion of principles in 
science, he becomes fragmentary and asystematic in his 
meta-scientific/philosophical "mode of thinking": the hypersystematic 
expresses himself fragmentarily (Ortega dixit). It is curious that 
along the survey of principles in Ortega's book, the most frequent 
interlocutor is not Leibnitz, but Aristotle! Although Husserl, 
Heidegger, Descartes, Pappus, Plato, Suarez, Spinoza... and some 
others big names also appear, his main concern (to my taste) is 
discussing Aristotle's view of specialized disciplines starting from 
their respective principles, empirically-sensuously obtained and 
"uncommunicated" in between the different fields. It is very intriguing.


If the principles of different disciplines are factually 
uncommunicated,  the info science view of a new body of knowledge 
running across all scales is caught into a difficult "principled" 
position. Nevertheless,  the three blocks I distinguished (info per 
se, bioinfo, ecology of knowledge) seem to allow some fertile 
conjugation inside/outside... but the problem remains. I think it is 
solvable, as in our times there is a central element that allows a 
whole new scientific discourse on information. The dense relationship 
between life and information has nowadays acquired a formidable 
empirical background, leveraged by the most basic 
disciplines--physics, chemistry, computer science, and biology itself.


More concretely, the notion of the "information flow" can almost be 
sketched properly, both in its signaling textures and in the 
fundamental relationship with the life cycle--and not very differently 
along the evolutionary process. Thereafter, recombination appears as 
one of the fundamental emergences in the growing complexity of the 
evolving information dynamics around life cycles and 
information/energy flows. The recombination phenomenon happens for the 
knowledge-stocks of cells, nervous systems, enterprises, 
sciences-technologies-cultures... It accumulates amazing combinatoric, 
topological, dynamic, and closure properties in the different realms, 
flowing up and down among scales, multidimensionally, and maintaining 
afloa the whole game of adaptive existences.


Our disciplines may apparently work by themselves, autonomously, but 
actually they do not. Rather than "on top", they work "on tap". They 
endlessly recombine in the ecology of knowledge, differently for each 
problem and for each occasion, creating new theoretical and applied 
subdisciplines in the thousands. Information science has to shed light 
on that fundamental factor of contemporary societies. And more 
"psychologically" this discipline has to 

Re: [Fis] Fwd: PRINCIPLES OF IS

[Pedro C. Marijuan]

Dear FISers,

Taking seriously the idea of information principles, quite probably 
demands a specific discussion on principles. Why do we need "principles" 
at all? Because of our cognitive limitations. An infinite intellect 
would traverse all spans of knowledge without any 
discontinuity--presumably. In our collective scientific enterprise, 
however, we create special disciplines in order to share understandable 
discourses between the limited individuals of each thought-collective. 
As knowledge accumulates and gets more and more complex, particularly in 
the encounter with other discourses, the growing epistemic distances 
fragment the original discipline, and a new subdiscipline becomes 
necessary. It starts then a fresh new discourse, with its own 
principles. In my brief mention of Ortega, what he accuses Leibnitz is 
that being the champion of principles in science, he becomes fragmentary 
and asystematic in his meta-scientific/philosophical "mode of thinking": 
the hypersystematic expresses himself fragmentarily (Ortega dixit). It 
is curious that along the survey of principles in Ortega's book, the 
most frequent interlocutor is not Leibnitz, but Aristotle! Although 
Husserl, Heidegger, Descartes, Pappus, Plato, Suarez, Spinoza... and 
some others big names also appear, his main concern (to my taste) is 
discussing Aristotle's view of specialized disciplines starting from 
their respective principles, empirically-sensuously obtained and 
"uncommunicated" in between the different fields. It is very intriguing.


If the principles of different disciplines are factually 
uncommunicated,  the info science view of a new body of knowledge 
running across all scales is caught into a difficult "principled" 
position. Nevertheless,  the three blocks I distinguished (info per se, 
bioinfo, ecology of knowledge) seem to allow some fertile conjugation 
inside/outside... but the problem remains. I think it is solvable, as in 
our times there is a central element that allows a whole new scientific 
discourse on information. The dense relationship between life and 
information has nowadays acquired a formidable empirical background, 
leveraged by the most basic disciplines--physics, chemistry, computer 
science, and biology itself.


More concretely, the notion of the "information flow" can almost be 
sketched properly, both in its signaling textures and in the fundamental 
relationship with the life cycle--and not very differently along the 
evolutionary process. Thereafter, recombination appears as one of the 
fundamental emergences in the growing complexity of the evolving 
information dynamics around life cycles and information/energy flows. 
The recombination phenomenon happens for the knowledge-stocks of cells, 
nervous systems, enterprises, sciences-technologies-cultures... It 
accumulates amazing combinatoric, topological, dynamic, and closure 
properties in the different realms, flowing up and down among scales, 
multidimensionally, and maintaining afloa the whole game of adaptive 
existences.


Our disciplines may apparently work by themselves, autonomously, but 
actually they do not. Rather than "on top", they work "on tap". They 
endlessly recombine in the ecology of knowledge, differently for each 
problem and for each occasion, creating new theoretical and applied 
subdisciplines in the thousands. Information science has to shed light 
on that fundamental factor of contemporary societies. And more 
"psychologically" this discipline has to put LIFE, both individual life 
and social life, at the very center of the sharing of meaning. A new way 
of thinking starting from specific information principles will liberate 
our limited intellects to more creative endeavors. It is time to quote 
Whitehead: "Civilization advances by extending the number of important 
operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations 
of thought are like cavalry charges in a battle —they are strictly 
limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at 
decisive moments."


Best wishes--Pedro


El 20/09/2017 a las 17:46, Michel Godron escribió:


My remarks are written in red

Bien reçu votre message. MERCI. Cordialement. M. Godron
Le 20/09/2017 à 13:54, Pedro C. Marijuan a écrit :

Dear FISers,

Many thanks for all the comments and criticisms. Beyond concrete 
agreements/disagreements the discussion is lively, and that is the 
main point. It is complicate pointing at some fundamental, ultimate 
reality based on disciplinary claims. Putting it differently, the 
hierarchies between scientific disciplines were fashionable 
particularly in the reductionism times; but now fortunately those 
decades (70s, 80s) are far away. Actually, the new views taking shape 
are not far from the term "knowledge recombination" that appears in 
some of the principles discussed. Modern research could be typified 
by being: curiosity-led, technologically driven, multi-scaled, 
interdisciplinary, and 

Re: [Fis] Fwd: PRINCIPLES OF IS

[Arthur Wist]

Dear Pedro,

I have only one request to you, in regards to your principles:
Please reformulate them in Alfred Korzybski's 'English Prime', better known
as 'E-Prime'.¹

I ask this as nearly all users of E-Prime have made one observation -
consciously or not, an aspect perhaps best summarized by Robert Anton
Wilson in his book 'Quantum Psychology'² - about it:
It forces every statement written to become an operationally testable
statement, provided one maps each word to a specific definition. In other
words, it ensures the - purely mental & metaphorical! - spectres of Karl
Popper, Wolfgang Pauli & Imre Lakatos will avoid haunting one. ;)

I assume restating them in this way should pose no big difficulty for you,
as 'all' this would require of you consists of the complete avoidance of
any conjugations of "to be" (such as: "is") in the outcome of the process
of restating the principles.

Note: The writing of this email should follow this same principle, and it
seems that it indeed does.³

Kind regards,


Arthur Wist



¹ See Kellogg, E. W., and D. David Bourland. “WORKING WITH E-PRIME: SOME
PRACTICAL NOTES.” ETC: A Review of General Semantics, vol. 47, no. 4, 1990,
pp. 376–392. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/42577258. Available in full
at http://www.generalsemantics.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/
articles/etc/47-4-kellogg-bourland.pdf

² A book which has a very unfortunate name and history, as it reminds of
the well known problem of highly  pseudoscientific "Quantum mysticism",
although it has precisely nothing to do with this pseudoscience nonsense
and instead describes a highly novel thesis within the field of
transactional psychology, which merely uses parts of physics as an analogy
and as a metaphor, and nothing more. Combined with the fact that the author
has - in an act of self-admittedly intentional, discordian guerilla-
ontological 'terrorism' - previously disseminated various pseudoscience
under the pretense of fringe science doesn't exactly make this a popular
work. The fact that it has - until very recently! - remained out of print
didn't help, either.

³ Or at least, so the E-Primeness checker at
https://www.compendiumdev.co.uk/page.php?title=eprimer claims.

On 20 Sep 2017 13:56, "Pedro C. Marijuan"  wrote:

> Dear FISers,
>
> Many thanks for all the comments and criticisms. Beyond concrete
> agreements/disagreements the discussion is lively, and that is the main
> point. It is complicate pointing at some fundamental, ultimate reality
> based on disciplinary claims. Putting it differently, the hierarchies
> between scientific disciplines were fashionable particularly in the
> reductionism times; but now fortunately those decades (70s, 80s) are far
> away. Actually, the new views taking shape are not far from the term
> "knowledge recombination" that appears in some of the principles discussed.
> Modern research could be typified by being: curiosity-led, technologically
> driven, multi-scaled, interdisciplinary, and integrative (paraphrasing
> Cuthill et al., 2017). Contemporary philosophers like John Dupré have dealt
> with some soft "perspectivism" but they do not deal with the disciplinary
> recombination rigorously. I think this is one of the main concerns of our
> nascent info-science.
> Rafael in his message enters into some undergrounds of the idea of
> Principles/Methods/Explanations in the way Ortega discusses it for
> Leibnitz. That book is particularly dense, and I am not aware of
> interesting synthesis about it. One of its early claims is that Principles
> have to be evident (intuitive for Husserl), useful for verification and for
> the construction of logical proofs, and further they  have to open "new
> ways of thinking" ("modos de pensar" for Ortega).  For Leibnitz, according
> to Ortega, "thinking is proving" so the classical emphasis was on the
> logical power of principles. But their capability to support an inspiring
> new way of thinking was ignored or just left implicit. And this is a big
> problem not only in our field but in many multidisciplinary endeavors:
> excellent research ideas are accompanied by really vulgar "metaphysics" (or
> better, metadisciplinary views). See for instance the Big Data research on
> so-called "social physics". Or the excellent book on "Scale" recently
> published (great at climbing from atoms to cells, organisms, enterprises,
> and cities; but really poor in the multifarious information/communication
> underlying worlds).
> Anyhow, these are superficial comments inspired by the many excellent
> messages exchanged. There is a self-organization of the discussion taking
> place, and it is nice that we are concentrating discussion on the 3 first
> principles, somehow devoted to information per se. Once we smash these
> topics, we may go for the biologically related (principles 4-6), later on
> for the recombination and ecology of knowledge (principles 7-9), and
> finally for the ethical goals of our new science