Re: [Fis] FIS News
Dear Karl and FIS colleagues,
Many thanks for the comprehensive response. You have made a reference to
the tension between the empirical and the abstract in FIS. I quite
agree, it is one of the essential tensions in any healthy scientific
development (whenever it is possible to maintain it). My tongue-in-cheek
complain was precisely addressed to the usual abscence of such tension
in our discussions, or say, the insufficient presence of the empirical.
For instance, in the current exchange I was mentioning the
ecological-sociological views of Jared Diamond, as one of the most vocal
authors on the collapse of historical societies, even pretty complex
ones. His views on the structural traits involving the complexification
of the daily interactions could be quite interesting to discuss along
the present theme.
Nowadays there also a number of network science studies on
person-to-person interactions, often along cell-phone technologies.
Other more general approaches look for the influence of new technologies
in human relationships (in Xian an excellent presentation on
friendship from an Aristotelian background in the i-society was made
by Michael Patrick). Another interesting angle concerns the studies on
smart cities , how individual life stories are carried out among
energy-material flows coupled with information flows of a new nature.
The contemporary acceleration of artificial information flows
impinging on the individual and the parallel decrease in the standards
of mental health may be a matter of concern --are there any correlations?
Finally, I remake informationally some of the points raised by Karl
below on forestry --what about making sense on the info flows between
heterogeneous species that couple the life cycles, eg, pheromones
between cattle and grass? About the cell, what about the signaling and
communication infostructure that guides the life cycle of each cell? And
about social groups, that's the theme now in question, on how
conversation becomes the essential info flow knitting them. In short,
there are plenty of informational applied themes that can be put in
general language of information science and can help to maintain more
lively and fertile exchanges. Yes, in the mutual creative tension.
best wishes
---Pedro
Karl Javorszky wrote:
Dear FIS,
welcome new colleagues. Pedro has over the years built a scientific
community that is a pleasant and awakening environment for the
participants.
There has always been a tension between the empirical and the abstract
in FIS. The name of the setup is Foundations of Information Science.
It is not easy to speak about foundations in a concrete, specific way.
The fundament is the integral of all that are constructed based on
these fundamental insights and rules. One has to abstract from each of
the applications and find that what is common to all of them to speak
about fundamental truths that are valid in each of the particular
ancounters with reality, the applied research.
Basic science is necessarily abstract. There is a strong
mathematical-logical current also in FIS. The rules of speaking
clearly in a rational dialogue were set up and codified by
Wittgenstein in his Tractatus logico-philosophicus. To transmit an
idea with clarity, one should use such words that have a meaning
commonly agreed on, and while speaking obey the grammatical rules of
the logical language. (By using this technique for contrasting, we can
recognise empty blah-blah, manipulative advertisement, PR sermons
etc., as these are grammatically correct but lack the common agreement
on the content. Then again, we can enjoy opera, drama and maintain
social empathy, if the common understanding is there, even when formal
correctness of a logical language is missing, like in exclamations or
laughter.)
By using natural numbers as tokens for words, and performing tricks on
them, we can discuss possible logical sentences. The grammar of the
sentences will be by all means correct, because we use simple rules
like {=,+,,}, but the common understanding is not present yet in the
necessary extent.
Understanding how societies, economies, the ecosystem, human thinking,
strategies of collaboration work: these are noble goals. On these
fields, we can conduct experiments, observe facts, enjoy empirics.
Sadly, we cannot communicate our findings among each other in the
necessary clarity, because we do not share a common language to
discuss the phenomena in. Previously, we had the concept of God (or
gods or nature, etc.) as an active instance that creates and manages
order, the discovery of which is what we call information. This
generation is too much multicultural to agree on a central cause that
is the principle (G. Bruno: Of Cause, Principle and Unity).
There is order in nature, societies, in human thinking, climate
changes and genetics. We can talk about the central order concept
Re: [Fis] fis Digest, Vol 577, Issue 10
Pedro, List: You write: ...a reference to the tension between the empirical and the abstract in FIS. I quite agree, it is one of the essential tensions in any healthy scientific development (whenever it is possible to maintain it). Tensions? Tensions between the empirical and the abstract? From my reading of the posts of various contributors over the past 3-5 years, I heartily disagree with this view of the current situation on this FIS list serve. Shannon's information theory was published about 65 years ago. It has become the logical foundation of a huge industry employing millions of workers, globally. The principle abstraction of information theory can be roughly stated. If one encoded information (numbers, letters, images, mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, art, music, literature, feeling, emotions, etc.) into a binary code, then the encoded information can be electronically encoded and transmitted (transferred) to other electronic devices and decoded by other machines or individuals. This dependency, in turn, relies upon Boolean Algebra and associated mathematics. It now appears that the overwhelming majority of contributors to list serve find this externalist's view of information to be in complete harmony with the empirical and the abstract. Where is the tension? Do you not believe in the validity of Boolean algebra? Do you not believe in the validity of encoding processes? Do you not believe in the validity of transmission processes/error correction codes? The overwhelming majority of contributors find this externalist's view of information to be acceptable, and seek to make it more acceptable by tweaking the word-smithing a bit in order to become congruent with their personal philosophy. At least that is my view of the current status. Why do I write this message, perhaps a bit on the side of harshness? Quite simple. The current foundation of information sciences does not meet the needs of chemistry, biology or medicine. A second foundation must be built to express the role of information in communications within living systems. For example, central to the tree of life are the informative feed-forwards processes that transmit genetic information into individual anatomies and logical processes, life itself. Of particular theoretical interest, from the perspective of FIS, are the feed-forward processes that start with the messages encoded in a fertilized egg and generate, through a sequence of biochemical process, the mind. Perhaps one or more of the externalists can determine whether the genesis of mind, a process common to almost all human descendants, is Turing Computable or not? Cheers Jerry Research Professor Krasnow Institute for Advanced Studies GMU On Nov 7, 2013, at 11:00 AM, fis-requ...@listas.unizar.es wrote: Send fis mailing list submissions to fis@listas.unizar.es To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit https://webmail.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to fis-requ...@listas.unizar.es You can reach the person managing the list at fis-ow...@listas.unizar.es When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than Re: Contents of fis digest... Today's Topics: 1. Re: FIS News (Pedro C. Marijuan) From: Pedro C. Marijuan pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es Subject: Re: [Fis] FIS News Date: November 7, 2013 7:11:48 AM CST To: fis@listas.unizar.es Dear Karl and FIS colleagues, Many thanks for the comprehensive response. You have made a reference to the tension between the empirical and the abstract in FIS. I quite agree, it is one of the essential tensions in any healthy scientific development (whenever it is possible to maintain it). My tongue-in-cheek complain was precisely addressed to the usual abscence of such tension in our discussions, or say, the insufficient presence of the empirical. For instance, in the current exchange I was mentioning the ecological-sociological views of Jared Diamond, as one of the most vocal authors on the collapse of historical societies, even pretty complex ones. His views on the structural traits involving the complexification of the daily interactions could be quite interesting to discuss along the present theme. Nowadays there also a number of network science studies on person-to-person interactions, often along cell-phone technologies. Other more general approaches look for the influence of new technologies in human relationships (in Xian an excellent presentation on friendship from an Aristotelian background in the i-society was made by Michael Patrick). Another interesting angle concerns the studies on smart cities , how individual life stories are carried out among energy-material flows coupled with information flows of a new nature. The contemporary acceleration of artificial information
