Dear Pedro, Dear FISers,
In the 2 weeks I have been away, an excellent discussion has self-organized as Pedro noted. Any preliminary comments and criticisms of Pedro’s 10 Principles I could make now can refer to this. I would have said first that Pedro is to be thanked for this construction. Preparing a list of principles involves defining not only the content but also the number, order and relation between the entries. Zou, Stan and Ted in particular have recognized the existence of the list as such and the work involved. My own view is that we are all currently involved in reworking the Foundations of Information Science. These Foundations are not themselves science, but they look forward to the increased understanding of Information Science as Terry suggests. I propose the term “Pre-Science” for this process activity, a pun on the word ‘prescience’ whose normal definition is foreknowledge or foresight. The people who tend to make mistakes in this effort will be those who claim that any simple concept or set of concepts can do the job itself, supported by claims to authorities such as Peirce. Sets of principles, on the other hand, are tools more difficult to use but they permit directed consideration of several perspectives at the same time. Principles are the basis for an interpretation of what is in the physical and biological processes that are the proper subjects for non-computational Information Science, without – yet – providing any explanations. Now this is a lot more philosophical that may have been expected when the discussion started. However, today, unlike when Pedro and his colleagues started out, we have the Philosophy of Information of Luciano Floridi and Wu Kun to work with, as well as my logic. I am surprised that no-one has yet referred to Floridi or Wu. Going back over the postings to-date, I have noted a few which seem constitutive of a ‘Pre-Science’ of Information: Emmanuel’s ‘duality’, Stan’s hierarchies; Michel Godron’s and John Torday’s bridges to biology, Pedro’s reworking of communication, etc. I will resist comments that the concepts of Pre-Science are to be thrown out as part of non-science or ‘just’ philosophy. As Koichiro clearly said on 20.09, information can, and in my view is already, bringing in something new empirically to questions of space and time. In the Pre-Science of Information, ideally, it should be possible to retain mechanism and materialism or realism; computationalism and non- or natural computationalism; information as a physical reality and a non-physical appearance. I look forward with great interest to the lines of development of this thread. Best wishes, Joseph ----- Original Message ----- From: Pedro C. Marijuan To: 'fis' Sent: Friday, September 15, 2017 2:13 PM Subject: [Fis] PRINCIPLES OF IS Dear FIS Colleagues, As promised herewith the "10 principles of information science". A couple of previous comments may be in order. First, what is in general the role of principles in science? I was motivated by the unfinished work of philosopher Ortega y Gasset, "The idea of principle in Leibniz and the evolution of deductive theory" (posthumously published in 1958). Our tentative information science seems to be very different from other sciences, rather multifarious in appearance and concepts, and cavalierly moving from scale to scale. What could be the specific role of principles herein? Rather than opening homogeneous realms for conceptual development, these information principles would appear as a sort of "portals" that connect with essential topics of other disciplines in the different organization layers, but at the same time they should try to be consistent with each other and provide a coherent vision of the information world. And second, about organizing the present discussion, I bet I was too optimistic with the commentators scheme. In any case, for having a first glance on the whole scheme, the opinions of philosophers would be very interesting. In order to warm up the discussion, may I ask John Collier, Joseph Brenner and Rafael Capurro to send some initial comments / criticisms? Later on, if the commentators idea flies, Koichiro Matsuno and Wolfgang Hofkirchner would be very valuable voices to put a perspectival end to this info principles discussion (both attended the Madrid bygone FIS 1994 conference)... But this is FIS list, unpredictable in between the frozen states and the chaotic states! So, everybody is invited to get ahead at his own, with the only customary limitation of two messages per week. Best wishes, have a good weekend --Pedro 10 PRINCIPLES OF INFORMATION SCIENCE 1. Information is information, neither matter nor energy. 2. Information is comprehended into structures, patterns, messages, or flows. 3. Information can be recognized, can be measured, and can be processed (either computationally or non-computationally). 4. Information flows are essential organizers of life's self-production processes--anticipating, shaping, and mixing up with the accompanying energy flows. 5. Communication/information exchanges among adaptive life-cycles underlie the complexity of biological organizations at all scales. 6. It is symbolic language what conveys the essential communication exchanges of the human species--and constitutes the core of its "social nature." 7. Human information may be systematically converted into efficient knowledge, by following the "knowledge instinct" and further up by applying rigorous methodologies. 8. Human cognitive limitations on knowledge accumulation are partially overcome via the social organization of "knowledge ecologies." 9. Knowledge circulates and recombines socially, in a continuous actualization that involves "creative destruction" of fields and disciplines: the intellectual Ars Magna. 10. Information science proposes a new, radical vision on the information and knowledge flows that support individual lives, with profound consequences for scientific-philosophical practice and for social governance. -- ------------------------------------------------- Pedro C. Marijuán Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud Centro de Investigación Biomédica de Aragón (CIBA) Avda. San Juan Bosco, 13, planta 0 50009 Zaragoza, Spain Tfno. +34 976 71 3526 (& 6818) pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/ ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Fis mailing list Fis@listas.unizar.es http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
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