Dear Xueshan and colleagues,
Your points about hierarchies are quite interesting. Let me remind
however, in my second message of this week, the discussion in last month
about "momenta" and "itineraries". It is another way to approach the
hierarchy discussion that comes closer, I think, to the enormous variety
of contents that one can find in those different realms. Aligning the
different momenta, as I understand that Nikhil has been proposing for
those self-organizing instances, discards the rhetorical excesses and
allows a better concentration on the essential topics. One can arrange
an autonomous "informational entity" in many ways, provided that the
necessary communication and self-production activities are properly
intertwined so that they allow sufficient adaptation to the changing
environment. Life has been playing that game endlessly, so we find
plenty of parallels ("momenta to align") with most of our
social-informational problems. For instance, in the organization of
metabolism, the use of inner "depots" as a backup of the whole metabolic
network (ATP, GTP, and a few others) strongly reminds the currency
problem --from a different angle, not just from the ecosystemic one or
from the gut microbiome. It is clear that advancing on the
sustainability problems has to be socially distributed, and put both
into the accounting of States, and of the companies and Institutions,
and even more into the citizenship at large. A new scientific
description on how info circulates among all those realms, via
individuals and e-machines, is not an easy matter at all. It belongs
more to the parlance of "phase transitions", and even more to the
"organismic" dimension mentioned below. And so... in this juncture we are!
Best--Pedro
PS. to Nikhil, in Jared Diamond book (Guns, Germs...) there is an
excellent table summarizing the "info inventions" necessary for
societies to transcend the basic complexity of natural groups. It is
another way to approach the theme you deal with in last message.
Xueshan Yan wrote:
> Dear Stan，
> Generally speaking, we have two kinds of Information Science, one is
> materialist, another is imformationist. Of course, what FIS colleagues
> are discussing here is materialist one. As to the imformationist
> information science, it sprang from John Wheeler and is becoming
> confirmative in some frontiers of physics recently, for example, the
> string-net theory advocated by some theoretical physicists of MIT.
> In materialistic information science, self-organization and
> autopoiesis are two wonderful criteria, they can exclude those
> information sciences based on information technology from real
> information science for their hetero-organization and heteropoiesis.
> As to the information science based on library science spread through
> the United States, whether it is a real information science,
> undoubtedly, it is questionable.
> Let’s come back to our topic. Facing so many kinds of information and
> disciplines of information theory/informatics/information science, we
> urgently need a classification to handle them, and the hierarchy
> consideration maybe is more fundamental. Which was activated by Pedro
> (He said it is Fisher’s idea, really Pedro?) with Cell, Brain, Firm
> many years ago, and advanced by Joshi these days.
> In fact, Joseph and I had some private communication about this issue
> several weeks ago, the topic is something I named “From Mechanism to
> Organicism” which was arisen when I predict the paradigm shift of
> information studies in the next 10 years or more. In those mails, we
> have touched this problem.
> According to your expression, we have several different hierarchies:
> 1. [firm [brain [cell]]]: Pedro
> 2. [society [cell [molecule]]]: Joshi
> 3. [social [organism [cell [molecular [microphysical ]]]]]: Stan
> 4. [organism [cell [molecule [fundamental particle]]]]: Xueshan
> 5. [organism [cell [molecule]]]: Xueshan
> From its narrow sense, social character only belongs to organism, so
> we can absorb “society” into “organism”. In the organism group, we
> have animal and plant. In animal, we have man, chicken, dog, tiger,
> lion, etc. Of course, our main object is man, just like medicine and
> physiology that claim their object over all animals, but man is their
> main object. Man’s information problem is our main aim here.
> From communication standpoint, that man (of course also all organism),
> cell, molecule (at lest organic molecule) can communicate each other
> are undoubtedly, so the information disciplines can emerge from this
> level undoubtedly naturally. But question is: can communication take
> places between two fundamental particles, such as two atoms? So, I am
> not sure if we can have a physical informatics at last.
> It is very humorous, this will bring us to the FIS discussion 13 year
> ago again: Is informational existences still only start with the
> biological? Is it still a huge black hole? (Gyorgy Darvas).
> Best wishes,
> Xueshan
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* Stanley N Salthe [mailto:ssal...@binghamton.edu]
> *Sent:* Wednesday, December 02, 2015 5:01 AM
> *To:* y...@pku.edu.cn
> *Subject:* Re: [Fis] Sustainability through multilevel research: The
> Lifel, Deep Society Build-A-Thon - 1
>
> Xueshan -- Your hierarchy
> nformation studies.
> Cellular (level2): It can indicate the all cellular/biological
> information studies.
> Molecular (level1): It can indicate the all molecular/chemical
> information studies.
> XXXXXXX (level0): Particlate/physical information studies??
> is OK, but, since it may be that not all organisms are social, to be
> more general one could insert:
>
> [social [organism [cell [molecular [microphysical ]]]]]
>
> Of course, it could be argued that organisms are societies of cells!
>
> STAN
>
> On Tue, Dec 1, 2015 at 9:40 AM, Xueshan Yan <y...@pku.edu.cn
> <mailto:y...@pku.edu.cn>> wrote:
>
> Dear Joshi,
> No matter what topic/title you used, no matter what goal you want
> to reach, your post has raised a very important theory which can
> decide the future of information science: Three Level Theory:
> Molecular (level1), Cellular (level2), Social (level3). (Please
> excuse my minor modification).
> The FIS colleagues can easily recollect the theory of Cell, Brain,
> Firm which was advocated by Pedro about 10 years ago, but I think
> this hierarchy is could be much better spent taking some positive
> action.
> Social (level3): It can indicate the all human/social information
> studies.
> Cellular (level2): It can indicate the all cellular/biological
> information studies.
> Molecular (level1): It can indicate the all molecular/chemical
> information studies.
> XXXXXXX (level0): Particlate/physical information studies??
> As we know, due to the Technological Information Science (It
> includes computer science and telecommunications) is not
> self-organizational, or antipoetic, so we generally don't consider
> it as a real information science.
> With my best regards!
> Xueshan
> Peking University
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es
> <mailto:fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es>
> [mailto:fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es
> <mailto:fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es>] *On Behalf Of *Nikhil Joshi
> *Sent:* Tuesday, December 01, 2015 7:35 PM
> *To:* fis@listas.unizar.es <mailto:fis@listas.unizar.es> >>
> fis@listas.unizar.es <mailto:fis@listas.unizar.es>
> *Cc:* Nikhil Joshi
> *Subject:* Re: [Fis] Sustainability through multilevel research:
> The Lifel, Deep Society Build-A-Thon - 1
>
> Dear Joseph and Stan,
> Both of you mention about earlier work on isomorphisms, and you
> also mention hetero-organization. If it is not inconvenient, may I
> request more information on this? You also mention that the use of
> self-organisation could be a distracting, could you recommend an
> alternate formulation?
> At this time, I must clarify that I am not suggesting a
> hierarchical relationship between the three levels. I am referring
> to hierarchical organisation within the species at each level -
> molecules (level1), cellular species (level2) and social groups
> (level3).
> Coming to your question- how does the concept of hierarchy affect
> the analysis?
> The common multilevel organisational pattern presented here
> suggests that a core element in human social organisation involves
> exchange networks based on flow of human resources between kinship
> based social groups (like families) and non-kinship based social
> groups (like businesses). This implies that evolution of social
> organisation is based on the emergence of two species classes with
> greater complexity and greater compositional hierarchy- kinship
> based social groups and non-kinship.
> The question then are- why and how do living species give rise to
> exchange networks between species with increasing complexity (and
> compositional hierarchy) ? Will this pattern continue at the next
> higher level?
> Bob Logan and others point to the role of human language and the
> generation of conceptual knowedge in the emergence of non-kinship
> based social groups. It is interesting that Timo Honkela and
> Kohonen generalise these ideas and describe processes that gives
> rise to conceptual knowledge in systems of interacting agents. Do
> Alphabetic catalysts like DNA and Proteins play a similar role as
> human language in the emergence of exchange networks at two
> different levels? (see section 4.4., paper II in this kick off email).
> While many theoretical perspectives have been presented on the
> evolution of such systems (Stanley Salthe- Evolving Hierarchial
> Systems, Ch 8, John Holland- aggregate agents, Eric Chaission-
> growing energy rate density, and others) what is most interesting
> here is that the CMOP provides opportunity to examine processes
> that give rise to such organisation in much greater details. This
> could provide more insights into the emergence and evolution of
> such organisations.
>
> Given the diverse research interests and great depth in this
> group, I would love to get your views on these questions. Your
> views are greatly appreciated.
> Thanking you,
> Regards,
> Nikhil Joshi
> Given the wide
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Dear Nikhil,
>
> I think it is a very interesting exercise to see how a consensus
> might be reached on your work by both adding to and subtracting
> from the different perspectives. Thus, I agree with Stan that we
> are looking at instances of isomorphism at different levels, and
> this for me is entirely logical (;-). Levels of reality exist and
> the rules that apply in them are not identical, and this
> constitutes a discontinuity between them. Also, within a given
> level involving three elements, even if they all influence one
> another, it should be possible to decompose the interactions into
> those between A and B, the resultant of which interacts with C.
> This is Pedro's comment in somewhat different terms.
>
> On the other hand, as I have argued elsewhere, the use of the term
> 'self-organization' does not bring any additional knowledge. It
> diverts attention from the dynamics of the different flows, which
> are also affected by such a multitude of external factors, actual
> and potential, that the process could equally well be called
> hetero-organization. Also, and I really just ask this as a
> question, how does the concept of hierarchy affect the analysis?
> If as you write there are different species involved in exchange
> networks across ascending levels, what would be important to know
> are the details of these exchanges. Here, the above discontinuity
> between levels seems to be replaced by a degree of continuity.
> Your statement implies to me interactions /between/ different
> levels, but are these interactions bi-directional reactions? How
> would the rates of forward and back reactions be related?
>
> I look forward to your comments on the above which I assure you is
> intended to be constructive.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Joseph
>
> _______________________________________________
> Fis mailing list
> Fis@listas.unizar.es <mailto:Fis@listas.unizar.es>
> http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
>
>
--
-------------------------------------------------
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 X
50009 Zaragoza, Spain
Tfno. +34 976 71 3526 (& 6818)
pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es
http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/
-------------------------------------------------
_______________________________________________
Fis mailing list
Fis@listas.unizar.es
http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
