Re: [Fis] Scientific Communication and Publishing

[Loet Leydesdorff]

Dear Mark, 

 

The redundancy is apophatic. Redundancy is not "given", but generation by the 
specification of a model: what is specified as a system. Redundancy can also be 
considered as options other than the ones realized. As we argued in our 
Kybernetes paper, technological developments may enlarge the number of options 
by orders of magnitude. The redundancy and maximum entropy can then proliferate 
much faster than the realizations. This development of the economy is knowledge 
based. 

 

How can we study and operationalize redundancy or the apophatic? By studying 
and improving our models which generate them in the reflection. In operational 
terms, by the specification of informed hypotheses. Our imagination enables us 
to envisage options other than the ones realized and the communication 
(discourse) can entertain models that provide a phase space of options, other 
than realized or imagined. Hypotheses can be tested and modified.

 

Best,

Loet

 


Loet Leydesdorff, Inga Ivanova, and Mark Johnson, The Communication of 
Expectations and Individual Understanding: Redundancy as Reduction of 
Uncertainty, and the Processing of Meaning  , 
Kybernetes 43(9/10) (2014) 1362-1371.

 

Loet Leydesdorff 

Professor, University of Amsterdam

Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR)

l...@leydesdorff.net ; http://www.leydesdorff.net/ 

Associate Faculty, 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

 

-Original Message-
From: Fis [mailto:fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es] On Behalf Of Mark Johnson
Sent: Wednesday, October 05, 2016 10:04 AM
To: fis
Subject: Re: [Fis] Scientific Communication and Publishing

 

Dear Sergej, Rafeal, Loet, Dai and list,

 

First of all, thank you very much for the references – Gieryn looks fascinating 
(thanks Loet), and I will check out the Hobart and Schiffman (thanks to Pedro). 
It always strikes me how powerful acts of intellectual generosity are, and how 
much difference there is between pointing to a reference as if to say “This is 
the gang of academics who either agree with me or I disagree with them!” and 
“As someone who’s travelled along a similar path to you, I believe you might 
find this enlightening”. When we write academic papers, we tend to (indeed, 
have to) do the former. The latter is far more empathic - which leads me to 
reflect on Rafael’s comment about pre-understanding (I say more about this 
further down) On a forum like FIS, we can do the latter. I ask myself which is 
more useful or constructive in scientific discourse, and which should be 
encouraged?

 

Between the comments of Dai and Sergej I think there is what Pedro refers to as 
the ‘critical stance’ (as in critical theory etc, I guess). Here I would like 
to clarify my position. I do not believe that we “ought” to change the way we 
communicate about science because publishers and universities have too much 
power; that they have too much power is a systemic consequence of something 
else. Rather the argument is that the nature of the science we now practice 
(complex, uncertain, contingent) necessitates new forms of communication, and 
this science cannot effectively communicate itself through traditional media. 
It is not an argument about ‘oughts’, it is an argument about the ontology of 
complex science and communication; it is a complex science reflection on the 
communication of complex scientists.

 

That we currently have complex science and highly attenuated channels of 
communication is a source of pathology: we are at a transitional stage in 
history and such periods are often accompanied by all manner of social and 
political problems (just think of the pathologies of the early 1600s!). One 
feature of this is that we slip from talking about ‘is’ to ‘ought’ without 
reflection. I’m unconvinced by the power of political arguments (however much 
our professors of sociology would like to persuade us otherwise!) for moving 
things on – it only encourages what Bacon criticized in the Cambridge academics 
of the

1600s: “They hunt more after words than matter” (I worry about words like 
‘entanglement’ – what does it mean?); it is scientific arguments and practices 
which carry the greatest power and which (in the end) are ontologically 
inseparable from political change. I suspect the distinctions between different 
kind of arguments are the result of different kinds of constraint.

 

Having said all this about science, I want to say something about

theology(!) Rafael’s point about “pre-understanding” sent me to the work of 
Arthur Peacocke and to the relationship between ‘information’

and ‘logos’. To see information as constraint in both in the science we do, and 
in the way we communicate our scientific understanding, is to emphasise the 
‘not-there’. 

Re: [Fis] Scientific Communication and Publishing

[Mark Johnson]

Dear Sergej, Rafeal, Loet, Dai and list,

First of all, thank you very much for the references – Gieryn looks
fascinating (thanks Loet), and I will check out the Hobart and
Schiffman (thanks to Pedro). It always strikes me how powerful acts of
intellectual generosity are, and how much difference there is between
pointing to a reference as if to say “This is the gang of academics
who either agree with me or I disagree with them!” and “As someone
who’s travelled along a similar path to you, I believe you might find
this enlightening”. When we write academic papers, we tend to (indeed,
have to) do the former. The latter is far more empathic - which leads
me to reflect on Rafael’s comment about pre-understanding (I say more
about this further down) On a forum like FIS, we can do the latter. I
ask myself which is more useful or constructive in scientific
discourse, and which should be encouraged?

Between the comments of Dai and Sergej I think there is what Pedro
refers to as the ‘critical stance’ (as in critical theory etc, I
guess). Here I would like to clarify my position. I do not believe
that we “ought” to change the way we communicate about science because
publishers and universities have too much power; that they have too
much power is a systemic consequence of something else. Rather the
argument is that the nature of the science we now practice (complex,
uncertain, contingent) necessitates new forms of communication, and
this science cannot effectively communicate itself through traditional
media. It is not an argument about ‘oughts’, it is an argument about
the ontology of complex science and communication; it is a complex
science reflection on the communication of complex scientists.

That we currently have complex science and highly attenuated channels
of communication is a source of pathology: we are at a transitional
stage in history and such periods are often accompanied by all manner
of social and political problems (just think of the pathologies of the
early 1600s!). One feature of this is that we slip from talking about
‘is’ to ‘ought’ without reflection. I’m unconvinced by the power of
political arguments (however much our professors of sociology would
like to persuade us otherwise!) for moving things on – it only
encourages what Bacon criticized in the Cambridge academics of the
1600s: “They hunt more after words than matter” (I worry about words
like ‘entanglement’ – what does it mean?); it is scientific arguments
and practices which carry the greatest power and which (in the end)
are ontologically inseparable from political change. I suspect the
distinctions between different kind of arguments are the result of
different kinds of constraint.

Having said all this about science, I want to say something about
theology(!) Rafael’s point about “pre-understanding” sent me to the
work of Arthur Peacocke and to the relationship between ‘information’
and ‘logos’. To see information as constraint in both in the science
we do, and in the way we communicate our scientific understanding, is
to emphasise the ‘not-there’. Alongside Loet’s work on redundancy
(which is Shannon’s ‘not-there’), I’m fascinated by Bob Ulanowicz’s
‘apophatic’ information: the term ‘apophatic’ is also theological. I
hope the point is not seen to be a fuzzy or ‘god squad’ one (that’s
not me): it is simply to say that focus on the ‘not-there’ –
particularly if it can be given an empirical dimension – presents a
way of seeing the ‘not-there’ of multivariate empirical practice in
the same scope as the ‘not-there’ of scientific communication. The
theologians (Keith Ward and John Haught should also be mentioned here)
have an important contribution to make. I’d be grateful if anyone on
the list has looked into this further. Paul Davies’s edited collection
“Information and the nature of reality” is a good starting point.

So there’s a scientific question: There is a ‘not-there’ in my videos
(actually, a lot of redundancy); there is a ‘not-there’ in our
experiments; there is a not-there in our academic papers; and there is
a not-there in this message too. How might we go about analysing it?
How can we connect this up?

Best wishes,

Mark



On 3 October 2016 at 18:46, Dai Griffiths  wrote:
> Dear Mark, and all,
>
> Great videos. Sorry to be slow on this important theme, I have just got back
> from some intensive travel in China.
>
> Mark asks at the end of the first video "why (in an uncertain world) do we
> continue to put so much emphasis on the academic journal".
>
> In answering, I would not disagree with any of Mark's comments, but I would
> stress the policy and political entanglement of technology. In the past
> there was no alternative to print media, and so no need to enforce the
> hegemony of the journal in the ways that Mark has outlined. The publishers
> and universities who were passive recipients of the tribute of the academic
> community as if by right (where else would you go), are now forced