Sung,
We'll just have to disagree about Sokal. I don't usually suspect that
you're a prankster; it's a passing impression that I've had a few times.
Anyway I'm glad that you seem now to have read The Fixation of Belief
and to have upped your game, as the phrase goes.
Nobody expects you to
Sung, List,
From a mathematical point of view, an “entropy” or “uncertainty” measure is
simply a measure on distributions that achieves its maximum when the
distribution is uniform. It is thus a measure of dispersion or uniformity.
Measures like these can be applied to distributions that arise
Hi,
The mathematical theory of categories may provide a rational framework for
characterizing and analyzing the possible connections between physics,
biology, and semiotics. It is for this reason that I begin this post with
some definitions in category theory:
(1) “Comparison and analogy are
List, Sung
On Apr 4, 2015, at 12:22 AM, Sungchul Ji wrote:
(18) The concept of entropy has had a long and interesting history,
beginning with its implicit introduction by Carnot to its explicit
formalization as a state function by Clausius to its statistical treatment by
Boltzmann and
Hello Jon,
Thanks for the explanation of an uncertainty measure and the link to your work
on information. If you have worked on Peirce's general account of measurement
(e.g., the account laid out in the CP at CP 7.280), I'd like to see what you
have to say. I see that you have a subchapter
List,
not having read Shannon and Weaver, my concept of entropy now relates only to the physical world, that is realworld systems with their system space being the real dimensions x, y, z, resp. longitude, broadness and altitude. And I think, that Jons definition is correct. The other kind of
Helmut, List,
Yes, a good mathematical workshop is stocked with a wide variety of models and
tools, which we can try out in various applications. In this regard we must be
wary of a certain “ontologizing tendency” that tends to get us stuck on only
one way of seeing things.
Regards,
Jon
Helmut, List,
Measures of dispersion, entropy, indeterminacy, uncertainty, whatever we choose
to call them are abstract mathematical thingies that can be defined in a wide
variety of settings. Whether any piece of mathematics has utility in a given
setting is one of those “proof of the pudding
