Message from Karl Javorszky ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Information – A Culture Shock Dear Fis, We keep coming back to the Middle Ages. The real achievement of the Fis group is, that here professionals both from biology and the hard sciences try to understand each other. If this endeavor will be successful – and there are reasons to believe that we are on the right path -, then we will have bridged a gap that has been created by the distinction between the trivial (artistic) and the quadrivial (scientific) arts, differentiating e.g. music from geometry. Biology belongs definitely not among the exact 4 of pastimes. Yet, it does have its own trade secrets, which may appear surprising to those, who have learnt to think according to the rules of exact sciences. It is not a big deal of intelligence to think in reverse mode, concluding from the effect to the cause, from the conclusion unto the praemisses. This is rather a state of the art technique one learns while having to do with systems that do not obey the rules, where one deducts the rules and hopes that one has deducted usefully. The main difference between the art of a psychologist, a composer or a painter and the knowledge of a geographer, astronomer or arithmetician is the technique of “framing”. One moves the set of references into a position which makes the picture feel good (conclusive, aesthetic, explanative, didactic, etc.). There is no pre-existence of a single ordering principle but rather the rivalry of ordering perspectives is assumed as a fact of life. We may wish for an ideal human, but such a thing does not exist, not even in the fashion as ideal gases exist, so we do not assume that any theory about whatsoever living will ever be all-explaining and paramount tautological. The tautological sub-system in which the quadrivial scientist operates is embedded in a complex web of interdependences, where the hope is not maintained that a single ordering principle can declare itself to be The Ultimate Ordering Principle. Wittgenstein says that one should not even try to explain (from within) that in which the exact tautologies are placed. There, Fis is more optimistic than the great thinker. We do try to understand by means of the exact rules of reasoning that what is presently outside of the realm of what can be said exactly. (Adorno’s critique of Wittgenstein is, that a defeatist attitude towards the inexplicable offers a deep misunderstanding about what the job description of a philosopher contains. The task is to try and try again to formulate in a reasonable fashion that what escapes an exact formulation.) If Fis succeeds, we will have made a Cultural Revolution. We now have a sufficiently diverse set of competent people who will translate - each into his own words – the deep structure of the message. The message the trivials and the exact can agree on might be that “generally, things are on their places, in an order. There are rules that govern the interplay between when, where and what. Order lies in the eyes of the spectator. Information is for a spectator that what deviates from his – the spectator’s – expectations about how the interplay between when, where and what will unfold.” This approach allows the dancers and the painters to be taken seriously, because they work with the complex harmony and transmit information by manipulating the expectations of the spectator. The only difference is that the followers of the exact faith have a common agreement that there is a paramount first ordering principle which overrides and consolidates all subsequent ordering principles. This goes back to the cultural achievement of going upright and observing Gravitation as common – all-pervasive, transcendent, ubiquitous, static, absolute, eternal – to all activities of the brain. They understand abstraction as a neurological process that aligns mental structures to one main ordering structure. The trivial thinkers do not underestimate the importance of a directed, continuous, thought-up (because we do not feel in the brain) main ordering principle. They try to make understand that there are many other forces affecting our organs and that using one main ordering principle is nice and all, but one should not eroticise his ability to neglect all other possible viewpoints. Ordering and reordering takes place in a human’s life like the natural process it actually is. One can learn to balance and manipulate the changes, but the changes are there. It is useless to make up a world in which the things are by definition stable and remain so unless otherwise instructed. The trivial people have as much resentment against the formally exact sciences as those against the trivially nonsensical. There is much to be understood and explained away before we make up and kiss. The culture shock that comes your way, my dear brethren from the 4 noble pastimes, is that Nature does not obey one’s wishes. Better, one learns the art of compromise. Mathematical compromises may not fit into the traditional ways of thinking exactly, but this is a point we trivially inclined can not compromise on. Either you understand that it is in the nature of things to be possibly – and equally legitimately – otherwise than one supposes and defines them to be, or not. The might of the definition is nice, but the normative force of the factual (namely, that Nature will not compromise) compels you to consider that any definition of “this is the right order” has – in the model we might find useful to use – 71 alternatives which also, and concurrently, say “no, mine is the right order and you are in deviation”. Now we have professionals in this group who can tell the general idea in a professional way. It would be really a breakthrough if prejudices and long-standing mutual declarations of incompetence about the others could be overcome. Let 72 flowers bloom and fight for pre-eminence, let the idea that there is more to a and b than c, and that it depends on the spectator, which aspect he prefers to see as main ordering aspect, blossom; and we shall have overcome a long division between those, who employ the difference property between a and b and those, who apply the similarity property of a and b. Karl -------------------- _______________________________________________ fis mailing list fis@listas.unizar.es https://webmail.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
