[Fis] Concluding the Lecture?

[Pedro C. Marijuan]

Dear Terry and colleagues,

At your convenience, during the first week of February or so we may put 
an end to the ongoing New Year Lecture --discussants willing to enter 
their late comments should hurry up. Your own final or concluding 
comment will be appreciated.

Personally, my late comment will deal with the last exchange between Bob 
and Terry, It is about the point which follows:  "...there was no thesis 
other than the word information is a descriptor for so many different 
situations and that it is a part of a semantic web - no roadmap only a 
jaunt through the countryside of associations - a leisurely preamble." 

In my own parlance, we have been focusing this fis session on the 
microphysical foundations of information (thermodynamic in this case) 
which together with the quantum would look as the definite foundations 
of the whole field, or even of the whole "great domain of information." 
But could it be so? Is there such thing as a "unitary" foundation? My 
impression is that we are instinctively working "where the light is", 
reminding the trite story of the physicists who has lost the car keys 
and is looking closest to the street lamp.  The point I suggest is that 
the different informational realms are emergent in the strongest sense: 
almost no trace of the underlying information realms would surface. Each 
realm has to invent throughout its own engines of invention the 
different informational & organizational  principles that sustain its 
existence. It is no obligate that there will be a successful outcome.... 
In the extent to which this plurality of foundations is true, solving 
the microphysical part would be of little help to adumbrating the 
neuronal/psychological or the social information arena.

The roadmap Bob suggests is an obligatory exploration to advance; we may 
disagree in the ways and means, but not in the overall goal. It is a 
mind boggling exercise as we have to confront quite different languages 
and styles of thinking. For instance, the next session we will have at 
FIS (in a few weeks) is an attempt of an excursion on "Intelligence 
Science".  Presented by Zhao Chuan, the aim is of confronting the 
phenomenon of intelligence from a global perspective amalgamating 
science (artificial intelligence), emotions, and art (poetic and 
pictorial). Not easy, but we will try

Anyhow,  Terry, we much appreciate your insights and the responses you  
have produced along the Lecture. It was a nice intellectual exercise.

Best wishes to all---Pedro

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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 X
50009 Zaragoza, Spain
Tfno. +34 976 71 3526 (& 6818)
pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es
http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/
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