Message from QTQ --Qiao Tian-qing
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Dear Pedro and All,
Please allow me to frankly state my point of view:
Professor Y.X. Zhong wrote that we should define information
systematically. For example, information in the sense of ontology and
information in a sense of theory of knowledge, etc. This idea sounds
beautiful, but unpractical, for there are too many sons and daughters to
information. Statistics show that there were no less than 130
definitions of information until 1980. Information, as a word, has been
followed for decades and is hard to change for people used to their
conventional conceptions. Information becomes undefinable, because the
present fact is that the concept of information has become a
self--contradictory and common term used confusedly, universally. I
wonder whether we can build new relevant conceptions which are simpler
and more effective. What we need to research is the common features of
information in its old use.
According to my idea, the customarily named information is the
collection of three kinds of things´ attributes: things themselves
(including cause or effect formed through their interaction), the
attributes of things that someone thinks and simulates, and the
attributes of tools someone or something uses when considers, expresses,
or simulates something. The first kind of attributes of things is based
on facts, for example, the three states of water. These are physical,
chemical, biological, social or any other properties of things,
irrefutable and objective, which have nothing to do with any expressive
way related to the thing (such spoken and written languages, music or
pictures). The second kind is related with the inner thoughts, or
expressions through talk, or sentence, namely, some attributes of things
that someone can find; or the attributes of things that could be
simulate according to science and technology. Among which some are true
to the facts, but some are incompletely, while others are not in any
way. The third kind is the attributes of tools used by someone (or
something) when he himself thinks, or expresses, or simulates something,
i.e. the state of brain neurons when he thinks, the line trend of words
when writes, the vibration frequency and intensity of sound when speaks,
the bit of circuit devices in a computer, or the models of devices used
in an experiment, etc.. Supposing that the sign X represents the first
kind of attributes, X' the second, and X_nlfb the third, and info
represents the information, we can simply express the customarily named
information as follows:
info = X +X '+X _nlfb (FIS2010, in Beijing Conference).
Common features of information, i.e. things' attributes.
Moreover, please take care of those false information based on nothing.
Thanking the patience!
Qiao Tian-qing
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QTQ
Pedro C. Marijuan escribió:
Dear FISers,
Thanks to Javier, for the beautiful posting. Apart from those personal
factors he mentions, I would also include the organization of knowledge
itself. The discipline of rhetorics, included within the Trivium, was an
important cohesive force governing the relationships between disciplines
and stimulating the typically medieval "disputatio" method of knowledge
recombination. Richard Lanham (2006) discusses how governing "the
economy of attention" is as much important as the correctness of the
"logical flows" --and it is rhetorics who is in charge of handling that
attentional focus. In the long term, dropping rhetorics was a failure of
modern science, and somehow we are paying for it on the poor
understanding of inter/multi/pluri/trans/disciplinary processes. If my
views on the need of a "tripartite scheme" on information are not too
wrong (world, agents, collective observers), they could also be
interpreted as the search for a basic consensus on a new/old rhetorics
about the development of information science. If a medieval role-model
has to be pointed at, I would choose Raimon Lull (Raimundus Lulius) and
his "Ars Magna" scheme, mechanically organizing the mixing of knowledge
by means of rotating circular boards, that was so influential in
Leibniz's approach (as was the "digital" combinatorics of I Ching
itself; a very curious coincidence!)
best wishes
---Pedro
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