Dear Pedro and FIS Colleagues,
I agree with you that:
“Nevertheless, the three blocks (info per se, bioinfo, ecology of
knowledge) seem to allow some fertile conjugation inside/outside... but
the problem remains...”
I think, these blocks are the three main categories of IS – “Information”,
“Information Subject”, and “Information Interaction”.
Further we may discuss the details, but, I hope, we may try to accept
these categories as very beginning foundation.
Friendly greetings
Krassimir
------------------------------------------------
Krassimir Markov
Director
ITHEA Institute of Information Theories and Applications
PO Box 775, Sofia 1000, Bulgaria
presid...@ithea.org
www.ithea.org
From: Pedro C. Marijuan
Sent: Friday, September 22, 2017 3:20 PM
To: 'fis'
Subject: Re: [Fis] Fwd: PRINCIPLES OF IS
Dear FISers,
Taking seriously the idea of information principles, quite probably
demands a specific discussion on principles. Why do we need "principles"
at all? Because of our cognitive limitations. An infinite intellect would
traverse all spans of knowledge without any discontinuity--presumably. In
our collective scientific enterprise, however, we create special
disciplines in order to share understandable discourses between the
limited individuals of each thought-collective. As knowledge accumulates
and gets more and more complex, particularly in the encounter with other
discourses, the growing epistemic distances fragment the original
discipline, and a new subdiscipline becomes necessary. It starts then a
fresh new discourse, with its own principles. In my brief mention of
Ortega, what he accuses Leibnitz is that being the champion of principles
in science, he becomes fragmentary and asystematic in his
meta-scientific/philosophical "mode of thinking": the hypersystematic
expresses himself fragmentarily (Ortega dixit). It is curious that along
the survey of principles in Ortega's book, the most frequent interlocutor
is not Leibnitz, but Aristotle! Although Husserl, Heidegger, Descartes,
Pappus, Plato, Suarez, Spinoza... and some others big names also appear,
his main concern (to my taste) is discussing Aristotle's view of
specialized disciplines starting from their respective principles,
empirically-sensuously obtained and "uncommunicated" in between the
different fields. It is very intriguing.
If the principles of different disciplines are factually uncommunicated,
the info science view of a new body of knowledge running across all scales
is caught into a difficult "principled" position. Nevertheless, the three
blocks I distinguished (info per se, bioinfo, ecology of knowledge) seem
to allow some fertile conjugation inside/outside... but the problem
remains. I think it is solvable, as in our times there is a central
element that allows a whole new scientific discourse on information. The
dense relationship between life and information has nowadays acquired a
formidable empirical background, leveraged by the most basic
disciplines--physics, chemistry, computer science, and biology itself.
More concretely, the notion of the "information flow" can almost be
sketched properly, both in its signaling textures and in the fundamental
relationship with the life cycle--and not very differently along the
evolutionary process. Thereafter, recombination appears as one of the
fundamental emergences in the growing complexity of the evolving
information dynamics around life cycles and information/energy flows. The
recombination phenomenon happens for the knowledge-stocks of cells,
nervous systems, enterprises, sciences-technologies-cultures... It
accumulates amazing combinatoric, topological, dynamic, and closure
properties in the different realms, flowing up and down among scales,
multidimensionally, and maintaining afloa the whole game of adaptive
existences.
Our disciplines may apparently work by themselves, autonomously, but
actually they do not. Rather than "on top", they work "on tap". They
endlessly recombine in the ecology of knowledge, differently for each
problem and for each occasion, creating new theoretical and applied
subdisciplines in the thousands. Information science has to shed light on
that fundamental factor of contemporary societies. And more
"psychologically" this discipline has to put LIFE, both individual life
and social life, at the very center of the sharing of meaning. A new way
of thinking starting from specific information principles will liberate
our limited intellects to more creative endeavors. It is time to quote
Whitehead: "Civilization advances by extending the number of important
operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of
thought are like cavalry charges in a battle —they are strictly limited in
number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive
moments."
Best wishes--Pedro
El 20/09/2017 a las 17:46, Michel Godron escribió:
My remarks are written in red
Bien reçu votre message. MERCI. Cordialement. M. Godron
Le 20/09/2017 à 13:54, Pedro C. Marijuan a écrit :
Dear FISers,
Many thanks for all the comments and criticisms. Beyond concrete
agreements/disagreements the discussion is lively, and that is the main
point. It is complicate pointing at some fundamental, ultimate reality
based on disciplinary claims. Putting it differently, the hierarchies
between scientific disciplines were fashionable particularly in the
reductionism times; but now fortunately those decades (70s, 80s) are far
away. Actually, the new views taking shape are not far from the term
"knowledge recombination" that appears in some of the principles
discussed. Modern research could be typified by being: curiosity-led,
technologically driven, multi-scaled, interdisciplinary, and integrative
(paraphrasing Cuthill et al., 2017). Contemporary philosophers like John
Dupré have dealt with some soft "perspectivism" but they do not deal with
the disciplinary recombination rigorously. I think this is one of the main
concerns of our nascent info-science.
Rafael in his message enters into some undergrounds of the idea of
Principles/Methods/Explanations in the way Ortega discusses it for
Leibnitz. That book is particularly dense, and I am not aware of
interesting synthesis about it. One of its early claims is that Principles
have to be evident (intuitive for Husserl), useful for verification and
for the construction of logical proofs, and further they have to open
"new ways of thinking" ("modos de pensar" for Ortega).I fully agree. For
Leibnitz, according to Ortega, "thinking is proving" so the classical
emphasis was on the logical power of principles. Leibniz has built une
"combinatoire" calculable .But their capability to support an inspiring
new way of thinking was ignored or just left implicit. Leibniz has largely
developed new ways of thinking, mainly in his Théodicée. ! And this is a
big problem not only in our field but in many multidisciplinary endeavors:
excellent research ideas are accompanied by really vulgar "metaphysics"
(or better, metadisciplinary views). See for instance the Big Data
research on so-called "social physics". Or the excellent book on "Scale"
recently published (great at climbing from atoms to cells, organisms,
enterprises, and cities; but really poor in the multifarious
information/communication underlying worlds). The book Ecologie et
évolution du monde vivant showed how Brillouin's information helps to
understand Life at all scales by self-organization. Would you like that I
send two or three pages explaining that in my poor english ?
Anyhow, these are superficial comments inspired by the many excellent
messages exchanged. There is a self-organization of the discussion taking
place, and it is nice that we are concentrating discussion on the 3 first
principles, somehow devoted to information per se. Once we smash these
topics, we may go for the biologically related (principles 4-6), later on
for the recombination and ecology of knowledge (principles 7-9), and
finally for the ethical goals of our new science efforts, as Joseph has
commented (principle 10).
Best whishes to all
--Pedro
The El 19/09/2017 a las 11:30, Pedro C. Marijuan escribió:
-------- Mensaje reenviado --------
Asunto: Re: [Fis] PRINCIPLES OF IS
Fecha: Tue, 19 Sep 2017 09:21:51 +0200
De: Rafael Capurro mailto:raf...@capurro.de
Responder a: raf...@capurro.de
Para: Pedro C. Marijuan mailto:pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es
Dear Pedro,
a short comment to your intro to the 10 principles: I very much agree with
your views (following Ortega) that information science can be conceived as
a multifaceted or "multifarious" network of concepts and theories dealing
phenomena partly related partly not (yet) related with each other for
which we need different languages/concepts and 'translations' and kinds of
calculations also with regard to their goals and 'utility'.
If this makes sense, then we should try to develop some kind of
'principles' or 'archai' in the Greek sense, i.e., of 'initial forces'
that give rise to possibilities of 'un-concealing' different kinds of
phenomena that we could not see when disregarding other paths or by not
entering through other 'portals' each portal announcing different kinds of
what makes sense or not when entering the path.
Sometimes it makes sense to go up and see the landscapes from the top,
knowing that this view(s) from the top also conceal a lot of things on the
bottom. It is easiear to understand these 'principles' if we have
experience with walking in the mountains (but also in other natural and
artificial environments like a forest, a desert, cities etc.). Maybe we
could learn from such experiences which kind of 'principles' are to be
conssidered in the 'methods' (hodos = path) of scientific research.
So, my suggestion is to invite our FIS colleagues to describe
phenomenologically their walking experiences and 'principles' in different
enviroments (mountains etc.) and try to 'translate' (trans-late) them into
the field of information science.
Best
Rafael
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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--
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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--
-------------------------------------------------
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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