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)

  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...

[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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