Dear Pedro,
thanks for food for thought. When talking about communication we should
not forget that Wiener defines cybernetics as "the theory of messages"
(not: as the theory of information) (Human use of human beings, London
1989, p. 15, p. 77 "cybernetics, or the theory of messages" et passim)
Even for Shannon uses the (undefined) concept of message 'as' what is
transmitted (which is not information) is of paramount importance. And
so also at the level of cell-cell communication.
The code or the difference message/messenger is, I think, a key for
interpreting biological processes. In this sense, message/messanger are
'archai' (in the Aristotelian) sense for different sciences (no
reductionism if we want to focus on the differences between the
phenomena). 'Archai' are NOT 'general concepts' (as you suggest) but
originating forces that underline the phenomena in their manifestations
'as' this or that.
From this perspective, information (following Luhmann) is the process
of interpretation taking place at the receiver. When a cell, excuse me
these thoughts from a non-biologist, receives a message transmitted by a
messenger, then the main issue is from the perspective of the cell, to
interpret this message (with a special address or 'form' supposed to
'in-form' the cell) 'as' being relevant for it. Suppose this
interpretation is wrong in the sense that the message causes death (to
the cell or the whole organism), then the re-cognition system (its
immune system also) of the cell fails. Biological fake news, so to
speak, with mortal consequences due to failures in the communication.
best
Rafael
Dear FISers,
I also agree with Ji and John Torday about the tight relationship
between information and communication. Actually Principle 5 was
stating : "Communication/information exchanges among adaptive
life-cycles underlie the complexity of biological organizations at all
scales." However, let me suggest that we do not enter immediately in
the discussion of cell-cell communication, because it is very
important and perhaps demands some more exchanges on the preliminary
info matters.
May I return to principles and Aristotle? I think that Rafael and
Michel are talking more about principles as general concepts than
about principles as those peculiar foundational items that allow the
beginning of a new scientific discourse. Communication between
principles of the different disciplines is factually impossible (or
utterly irrelevant): think on the connection between Euclidean
geometry and politics, biology, etc. I think Ortega makes right an
interpretation about that. When Aristotle makes the first
classification of the sciences, he is continuing with that very idea.
Theoretical sciences, experimental or productive sciences, and applied
or practical sciences--with an emphasis on the explanatory theoretical
power of both physics and mathematics (ehm, Arturo will agree fully
with him). I have revisited my old reading notes and I think that the
Aristotelian confrontation with the Platonic approach to the unity of
knowledge that Ortega comments is extremely interesting for our
current debate on information principles.
There is another important aspect related to the first three
principles in my original message (see at the bottom). It would be
rather strategic to achieve a consensus on the futility of struggling
for a universal information definition. Then, the tautology of the
first principle ("info is info") is a way to sidestep that
definitional aspect. Nevertheless, it is clear that interesting
notions of information may be provided relative to some particular
domains or endeavors. For instance, "propagating influence" by our
colleague Bob Logan, Stuart Kauffman and others, and many other
notions or partial definitions as well--I include my own "distinction
on the adjacent" as valuable for the informational approach in
biology. Is this "indefinability" an undesirable aspect? To put an
example from physics, time appears as the most undefinable of the
terms, but it shows up in almost all equations and theories of
physics... Principle three means that one can do a lot of things with
info without the need of defining it.
As for the subject that is usually coupled to the info term, as our
discussion advances further, entering the "information flows" will
tend to clarify things. The open-ended relationship with the
environment that the "informational entities" maintain via the
channeling of those info flows--it is a very special coupling
indeed--allows these entities the further channeling of the "energy
flows" for self-maintenance. Think on the living cells and their
signaling systems, or think on our "info" societies. Harold Morowitz's
"energy flow in biology" has not been paralleled yet by a similar
"information flow in biology". One is optimistic that the recent
incorporation of John Torday, plus Shungchul Ji and others, may lead
to a thought-collective capable of illuminating the panorama of
biological information.
(shouldn't we make an effort to incorporate other relevant parties,
also interested in biological information, to this discussion?)
Best wishes--Pedro
El 23/09/2017 a las 21:27, Sungchul Ji escribió:
Hi Fisers,
I agree.
Communication may be the key concept in developing a theory of
informaton.
Just as it is impossible to define what energy is without defining
the thermodynamic system under consideration (e.g., energy is
conserved only in an isolated system and not in closed or open
systems; the Gibbs free energy content decreases only when
a spontaneous process occurs in non-isolsted systems with a constant
temperature and pressure, etc), so it may be that 'information'
cannot be defined rigorously without first defining the
"communication system" under consideration. If this analogy is
true, we can anticipate that, just as there are many different kinds
of energies depending on the characteristics of the thermodynamic
systems involved, so there may be many different kinds of
'informations' depending on the nature of the communication systems
under consideration.
The properties or behaviors of all thermodynamic systems depend on
their environment, and there are three system-environment relations
-- (i) isolated (e.g., the Universe, or the thermos bottle), (ii)
closed (e.g., refriegerator), and (iii) open (e.g., the biosphere,
living cells).
It is interesting to note that, all communication systems (e.g.,
cell, organs, animals, humans) may embody ITR (Irreducible Triadic
Relation) which I found it convenient to represent diagramamatically
using a 3-node network arrows as shown below:
/ f g/
*A* ----------> *B *---------> *C*
| ^
| |
|__________________|
/h/
Figure 1. The Irreducible Triadic Relation (*ITR*) of C. S. Peirce
(1839-21914) represented as a 3-node, closed and directed network.
The arrows form the /commutative triangle /of category theory,
i.e., operations /f/ followed by /g/ leads to the same result as
operation /h/, here denoted as /fxg = h./
/f/ = information production; /g/ = information interpretation; /h/ =
correspondence or information flow. Please note that Processes f
and g are driven by exergonic physicochemical processes, and /h/
requires a pre-existing code or language that acts as the rule of
mapping A and C.
Again, just as generations of thermodynamicists in the 19-20th
centuries have defined various kinds of "energies" (enthalpy,
Helmholtz free energy, Gibbs free energy) applicable to different
kinds of thermodynamic systems, so 'information scientists' of the
21st century may have the golden opportunity to define as many kinds
of 'informations' as needed for the different kinds of "communcation
systems" of their interest, some examples of which being presented in
Table 1.
________________________________________________________________________
Table 1. A 'parametric' definition of information based on the
values of the three nodes
of the *ITR, *Figure 1.
________________________________________________________________________
*Communication system* *A B C *
(Information)**
________________________________________________________________________
/Cells / DNA/RNA Proteins Chemcal reactions
(Biological informations)
or chemical waves
_________________________________________________________________________
/Humans / Sender Message Receiver
(Linguistic informations)
_________________________________________________________________________
/Signs / Object Representamen Interpretant
(Semiotic informations, or
'Universal informations' (?))
__________________________________________________________________________
With all the best.
Sung
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*From:* Fis <fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es> on behalf of JOHN TORDAY
<jtor...@ucla.edu>
*Sent:* Saturday, September 23, 2017 10:44:33 AM
*To:* fis@listas.unizar.es
*Subject:* [Fis] Principles of IS
Dear Fis, I am a newcomer to this discussion, but suffice it to say
that I have spent the last 20 years trying to understand how and why
physiology has evolved. I stumbled upon your website because Pedro
Maijuan had reviewed a paper of ours on 'ambiguity' that was recently
published in Progr Biophys Mol Biol July 22, 2017 fiy.
Cell-cell communication is the basis for molecular
embryology/morphogenesis. This may seem tangential at best to your
discussion of Information Science, but if you'll bear with me I will
get to the point. In my (humble) opinion, information is the
'language' of evolution, but communication of information as a
process is the mechanism. In my reduction of evolution as
communication, it comes down to the interface between physics and
biology, which was formed when the first cell delineated its internal
environment (Claude Bernard, Walter B Cannon) from the outside
environment. From that point on, the dialog between the environment
and the organism has been on-going, the organism internalizing the
external environment and compartmentalizing it to form what we
recognize as physiology (Endosymbiosis Theory). Much of this thinking
has come from new scientific evidence for Lamarckian epigenetic
inheritance from my laboratory and that of many others- how the
organism internalizes information from the environment by chemically
changing the information in DNA in the egg and sperm, and then in the
zygote and offspring, across generations. So here we have a
fundamental reason to reconsider what 'information' actually means
biologically. If you are interested in any of my publications on this
subject please let me know (jtor...@ucla.edu
<mailto:jtor...@ucla.edu>). Thank you for any interest you may have
in this alternative way of thinking about information, communication
and evolution.
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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/
-------------------------------------------------
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--
-------------------------------------------------
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/
-------------------------------------------------
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--
Prof.em. Dr. Rafael Capurro
Hochschule der Medien (HdM), Stuttgart, Germany
Capurro Fiek Foundation for Information Ethics
(http://www.capurro-fiek-foundation.org)
Distinguished Researcher at the African Centre of Excellence for Information
Ethics (ACEIE), Department of Information Science, University of Pretoria,
South Africa.
Chair, International Center for Information Ethics (ICIE) (http://icie.zkm.de)
Editor in Chief, International Review of Information Ethics (IRIE)
(http://www.i-r-i-e.net)
Postal Address: Redtenbacherstr. 9, 76133 Karlsruhe, Germany
E-Mail: raf...@capurro.de
Voice: + 49 - 721 - 98 22 9 - 22 (Fax: -21)
Homepage: www.capurro.de
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