Re: [Fis] Chemical information: a field of fuzzy contours ?
Dear FISers, Pedro raises several points. Among them: 1. Chemoinformatics or Cheminformatics ? Both terms are encountered. I would say that unless some authority takes a decision, both terms will continue to be used. 2. Despite I gave an example of what could be cheminformation in a concrete case, I did not tell what was exactly cheminformation in this concrete case. I just asked the question of what it could be. Now, I ask you the following: please can you provide an extremely simple example (the most simple you could imagine) of situation in which you can say: in this situation, information is ... . Chemical information is welcome, but an example from physics would be great, too. However, please, no biology example, that will be dicussed at the occasion of a future session. These examples are expected to help us to define information in more general situations. 3. The comparison Pedro did with symmetry is of interest: can anyone define symmetry ? During a long time, symmetry had in common with information that many people attempted to define it in its own field, giving raise to many particular definitions, but not to a common and widely accepted one. Some years ago, although I needed to mention a definition of symmetry in one of my papers, I was surprised that I could not find an unifying one (symmetry is known since millenaries!!). Even in the book of Weyl I did not find the expected one. So, I decided to build my own one (Symmetry: Culture and Science, 2007, 18[2-3], 99-119; free reprint at http://petitjeanmichel.free.fr/itoweb.paper.SCS.2007). See also: http://petitjeanmichel.free.fr/itoweb.petitjean.html In fact, the group structure which is generally a priori imposed, is a consequence of several properties that the definition should satisfy to be in agreement with some obvious intuitive requirements (and so, five different groups appear naturally, none of them being imposed a priori). Of course, the proposed unifying definition applies to a broad spectrum of situations, not only the geometric one: matrices, functions, distributions, graphs, etc. But that was possible because I already had knowledge of the many definitions in particular domains or situations. Thus I expect that that you will post several examples of information in very simples cases. From the analysis of these situations we should move forward. E.g., for symmetry, one of the simple examples I gave was the set of three points of the real line: if one point is the mid of the two other, there is symmetry (in fact, it is a case of achirality, i.e. indirect symmetry, because here we deal with reflections rather than with rotations). It would be great to have so simple situations for information in chemistry or physics. Thanks by advance, ll my best, Michel. ___ fis mailing list fis@listas.unizar.es https://webmail.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
Re: [Fis] Chemical information: a field of fuzzy contours ?
Friday, September 23, 2011, 1:07:07 PM, Michel wrote: Now, I ask you the following: please can you provide an extremely simple example (the most simple you could imagine) of situation in which you can say: in this situation, information is ... . Chemical information is welcome, but an example from physics would be great, too. I'm no physicist but I'm interested in physical information. It continues to amaze me how little attention is paid by most non-physicists to the very well established concept of information in physics. Of course, there is no law or formula that relates a bit of information to, say, quarks, spin, or whatever. These are different ways of looking at the same thing. Spin is a bit of information (I think it's just one bit, but I might be wrong, as I said, I'm no physicist.) Physical information is a re-conceptualisation of material form that allows it to be quantified. So, for example, physicists can (and do) say that information is generally conserved within black holes. (See the Black Hole Information Paradox, and the bet between physicists concerning it, http://www.theory.caltech.edu/~preskill/jp_24jul04.html) Now, there is obviously more to semantic information than material form, but it is my strongly-held belief that it should be possible to relate all other concepts of information back to physical information, and, in fact, I have proposed a way of doing that for semantic information, which I presented at the DTMD2011 workshop (I've also mentioned it in previous posts on this list), but I'll say no more about it here, because I think that's going too far off the current topic. -- Robin Faichney http://www.robinfaichney.org/ ___ fis mailing list fis@listas.unizar.es https://webmail.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
Re: [Fis] Chemical information: a field of fuzzy contours ?
Dear Michel， It is very interesting for you telling us so many stories about the study of chemical information which took place in France and your university. As an information researcher, I once was invited to deliver a speech on Information Science at a meeting about chmoinformatics here a few years ago; I found their interests are far different from mine. Their main concerns are what information technology can be applied to chemistry――It seems as if you like this one according to your introductory post.But what we are eager to know is where the chemical information exists and how it functions between two molecules or supermolecules. As a matter of fact, I found there are three kinds of studies about information in chemistry. 1. Chmoinformatics: A study about how to manage and compute chemical information, such as management of chemical abstracts, retrieval of chemical information through internet, molecules represented by graphs, data mining etc. there are many books like this in the bookstore. Of course, this may not be a subject that could arouse real interests among true information researchers, because there are thousands of applications of information technology in different areas, it is difficult for us to call all these applications of information technology as informatics or information science. 2. Chmoinformatics: A study about how chemical information function between two molecules or two supermolecules, according to the terms in biology and chemistry: between substrate and receptor, or in coordination chemistry: between donor and acceptor, or host and guest, we can only consider this thought as a conjecture which proposed by Jean-Marie Lehn of University Louis Pasteur――the noble prize winner of 1987. As a matter of fact, we all know that in the process of molecule reaction and recognition, an intelligent is in esse. This has been proved by Fischer’s lock-and-key model early in 1894. 3. Semiochemistry: A study about chemical information materials that mediate interactions between members of different species. This study consider pheromone, quinonyl compounds etc. as messengers. It is an interdiscipline of chemistry and biology. We especially want to know what advance about the second study about chemical information in chemists has made recent years. Because Lehn said in many places: “Supramolecular chemistry (chmoinformatics) has paved the way toward apprehending chemistry as an information science”. Best wishes, Xueshan Yan Peking University, FIS Beijing Group ___ fis mailing list fis@listas.unizar.es https://webmail.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
