I'm most grateful to both Bob L. for sharing his manuscript with FIS and to Loet for his new ms on 3-D mutual information. (I am on the road, but will read it as soon as I return home.)
It's so gratifying to live long enough to see these leads in information theory taken up by others and improved upon. I've been working with them for over 30 years, and it was beginning to look as though my interest had been in vain. Thanks so much for paying attention! Most now dismiss Shannon-type information as incapable of treating "meaning", when, in fact, we have only begun to fathom the potentialities of multi-dimensional and conditional forms of the Shannon formulation. Carry-on! There is an ambiguity in the meaning of "redundancy" in IT that I perhaps am responsible for. Conventional IT refers to redundancy as repetition of outcomes. In that sense it is connected with mutual information. I have always used the term to refer to multiplicity of pathways, or "functional redundancy" (as Henri Atlan called it). In that sense it is quantified by the conditional entropy. Of course, mutual information and conditional entropy are complementary attributes. I think Loet is using redundancy in the traditional sense. Ed is quite correct in his disagreement with the 3rd Window. He has convinced me that most of what I had labeled "Newtonian" in my book was more the work of Leibniz and Euler of the school of "Berliner Mechanik". I now labor to set the record straight. Best regards to all! Bob U. Quoting Loet Leydesdorff <l...@leydesdorff.net>: > Dear Bob, > > > > I should perhaps have clarified that in the text of which I sent the > abstract around yesterday, I formulate at p. 10 (in honour of Bob Ulanowicz) > as follows: > > > > With the same enthusiasm which Krippendorff (2009a) reports about Ashby > (1969), one of us embraced this potentially negative sign in the mutual > information in three dimensions as an indicator of potential reduction of > uncertainty in Triple-Helix configurations once it was brought to his > attention by Robert Ulanowicz, who had used the same indicator in the > context of his ascendancy theory in mathematical biology (Ulanowicz, 1986: > 143). This same indicator is used across disciplines (see for an overview: > Jakulin, 2005) and sometimes called "configurational information," but it > has remained controversial because it is poorly understood. As noted, a > signed information measure cannot be interpreted in Shannon information > theory, whereas alternative frameworks for its appreciation have remained > ill-defined (Krippendorff, 1980, 2009a and b). > > > > arXiv:1301.6849 <http://arxiv.org/abs/1301.6849> [pdf > <http://arxiv.org/pdf/1301.6849> ] > > Mutual Redundancies in Inter-human Communication Systems: Steps Towards a > Calculus of Processing Meaning > > > > Does the issue return in the book? Our argument is that this "mutual > information" is a redundancy and can then be integrated into the framework > of the mathematical theory of communication. > > > > Best wishes, > > Loet > > > > _____ > > Loet Leydesdorff > > Professor, University of Amsterdam > Amsterdam School of Communications Research (ASCoR), > Kloveniersburgwal 48, 1012 CX Amsterdam. > Tel.: +31-20- 525 6598; fax: +31-842239111 > <mailto:l...@leydesdorff.net> l...@leydesdorff.net ; > <http://www.leydesdorff.net/> http://www.leydesdorff.net/ ; > <http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ych9gNYAAAAJ&hl=en> > http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ych9gNYAAAAJ&hl=en > > > > From: fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es [mailto:fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es] On > Behalf Of Bob Logan > Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2013 5:02 AM > To: fis > Subject: Re: [Fis] Cognitive Effects of Cognitive Research: Photographic > evidence > > > > Dear Colleagues - I was very moved by Robert Ulanowicz's book A Third Window > - I saw parallels with the work of McLuhan and a project I co-authored with > Stuart Kauffman and others. That resulted in the attached paper. Some of you > on FIS will receive this email post twice as I do not know who all is on > FIS - I am sending this post to all folks that were copied on emails to or > from Robert Ulanowicz. > > I hope you will find time to read my paper and sent me your comments. If you > like this paper I have another that I submitted to Zygon that deals with > matters spiritual and theological also stimulated by Robert Ulanowicz's A > 3rd Window. I would be happy to send it to you. > > > > with kind regards to all - Bob Logan > > > > _______________________________________________ fis mailing list fis@listas.unizar.es https://webmail.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
