Dear Pedro and FIS colleagues, In Russian literature there exists an collective “author” Kuzma Prutkov , i.e. a group of writers who have used this common name to publish sentences. One of Kuzma Prutkov’s sentence is “Нельзя обнять небъятного!”, or in English “It is impossible to embrace the infinite”. What I mean? It is impossible to have only one information theory to cover all information phenomena. Because of this we need to have philosophical paradigm which will unite all particular information theories. I think we need to clear what theory will discuss in given moment. This way we will have a frame in which the concepts will be not contradictory. How such frames can be drawn is topic just of the common philosophical paradigm. Friendly regards Krassimir P.S. Many thanks to all who became members of the ITA 2011 GIT Int. Conference Committees. The updated Call for Papers is published for the FIS society at: http://www.ithea.org/fis
From: Pedro C. Marijuan Sent: Thursday, January 27, 2011 3:34 PM To: fis@listas.unizar.es Subject: [Fis] comments & next session Dear FIS colleagues, I found very intriguing the "fast & furious" messages of past days. One of the main triggers, I think, was Karl's response to Joseph's requests on his info theory... The logic of distinctions that Karl worked out years ago was in my view an outstanding contribution (the use of multidimensional partitions in set theory). Unfortunately he linked it to very idiosyncratic notions on cellular dynamics between DNA and cytoplasm, and he also miscalculated the number of multidimensional partitions. These are nontrivial matters that he has to solve or that we can discuss (necessarily in face to face exchanges!!), at least for me to accept any of his further developments. But let me insist that his "logic of distinctions" is highly original and very elegant. Then, among the many other exchanges (Jerry, Loet, Gavin, John, Bob...) my contention is that most of them were insisting in the predominance of some disciplinary orientation versus the competing ones. Jerry put it in a very clear way: "The abstract symbol systems of Dalton, Lavoisier, and Coulomb underly the foundations of thermodynamics as well as the Shannon theory of information as well as our concept of such abstractions as “energy” and “entropy.” These symbol systems are now firmly embedded in the logic of scientific communications..." Thus, was the exciting discussion basically a rhetorical contest between disciplinary orientations (where unfortunately neuroscience was missing)? Yes and No. Let me interpret it in favor of what I argued about the undefinability of information, and the possibility to establish a number of info conceptions after reliance on some particular disciplinary narrative. If we accept that undefinability, we can start to discuss in a different and more productive way: about conditions and procedures to establish the most elegant and economic general approach to information GIVEN THE DISCIPLINARY CONTENTS OF OUR TIME. Thus the past discussion on "intelligence and information" was very strategic (entering a new focus in our discussions), as can be the coming session, on the historical background of modern science. What kind of "info theory" and what conceptions of information could be framed or were present in the medieval world? How were they "recombining" their knowledge? Our presenter Dr. James Hannam (James in our friendly list) has recently written a very successful book. "God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science" in Icon Books (2009), which has been translated to several languages and has been shortlisted for the Royal Society Science Book Prize 2010 (and is now out in paperback). The "official" announcement of the session will be made in a few days. Information science is different, and fascinating, as it contains so many tricks and labyrinthine paths! best ---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
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