Dear Xueshan and Beijing colleagues, After the salutation, given that the main business of the FIS list is discussion, let me make a few comments on your methodological point.
> 3. OUR COMMON VISION ON INFORMATION SCIENCE: Within the > diversity of opinions of the group, a common position is > that the advancement of Information Science should be fueled > by theoretical and empirical work inside the major > disciplines, both in the natural sciences and the > humanities. > There is a little difference from our colleagues in Europe, > as they are adopting a top-down process while we do > like a down-top (bottom-up) process in methodology to unify > the different informational realms. We advocate the gradual > convergence among Natural Information Sciences, Technical > Information Sciences, and Social Information Sciences. > I completely agree with the common position of the Group in the first paragraph. However (that wonderful term for disagreeing!) there is a lot to say about the second paragraph. My personal opinion is close to what you mean, but I want to emphasize a couple of aspects. First, that the construction of new disciplines is not a clean "theoretical" act after a great new, central theory as we usually assume; rather it becomes a haphazard process with lots of historical accidents and non-formal components. In the conference I made some references to the historical origins of major disciplines along the "Founding fathers" and ""Great Books" scheme. But presumably this is not going to work for Info Science. Rather than around a central theory, the new discipline may revolve about the establishment of a "new way of thinking" (the case of Biology, with the hegemony of the evolutionary thinking two generations in advance of the modern NeoDarwinian Theory is a clear case). Thus, I think that the "gradual convergence" you mention (and which I agree) will be possible in the extent to which a common way of thinking is advanced. Thus, in contra-position to the hegemonic view in natural sciences (things in parts, atomism, reductionism, specialism, etc.) an informational way of thinking would contain maybe --entities in the making, constructivism & communication, integrationism, perspectivism... Well, and this leads to the second aspect, about the model systems on which a "Science of Information" can more easily fit (and say original things or solve some entrenched problems). Cells, Brains, Societies (and the quantum) are my bet. Information Science becomes sort of "the scientific study of informational entities", those entities that self-construct in continuous communication with their environment... and a workable notion of information seems achievable for living cells and beyond: information as distinction on the adjacent. It was very pleasant realizing in the conference that there are new ideas on Artificial & Natural Intelligence, information physics, logics, etc. where these info ideas can be confronted and "recombined". The whole field seems to be in a "metastable" state that can easily conduce to a reordenation/ crystallization of the new science ---a fast and intense episode in the social evolution of knowledge. Thanks for the opportunity to discuss! Pedro -- ------------------------------------------------- Pedro C. Marijuán Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud Avda. Gómez Laguna, 25, Pl. 11ª 50009 Zaragoza, Spain Telf: 34 976 71 3526 (& 6818) Fax: 34 976 71 5554 pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/ ------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ fis mailing list fis@listas.unizar.es https://webmail.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
