[Fis] Krassimir's Notes . . .

[Pedro C. Marijuan]

Dear Steven and FIS Colleagues,

Your message has arrived to the list perfectly: fears are unjustified. 
There is no censorship in this list --and never will be any (well, as 
the movie tells "never say never again"!). Anyhow, I would dis-dramatize 
the discussion. The Vienna conference has been very exciting and full of 
oral discussions that somehow continue now. Quite many of those good 
ideas have been rediscussed in the exchanges of these days. However, for 
my taste, the essential connection between information and life has not 
properly surfaced yet. The explosion of complexity in the living and the 
explosion of complexity in modern societies is clearly depending on 
information and communication flows (or whatever we may denominate). 
Comparatively with the complexity of merely physical systems, there is 
no point about that.  Apart from following the physics, most of the 
alternative approaches so far discussed go for the discursive, 
conceptual domain as the place where information should be 
ascertained... What if information belongs to action, to the adaptive 
changes arranged by the living  and socioeconomic agents, to the 
tentative advancement of their life cycles, to the difficult achievement 
of their fitness in an ever changing environment as communicating 
members of bigger entities and societies... then we are leaving that 
action track of life just as a fragmented scenario of multiple 
specialized points of view--or tying it unpropery. As Goethe put in 
Faust "At the beginning was the deed" Helas not the Verb!

In Vienna I agreed with Marcin's pragmatic approach to the "liquidity" 
of information. Maybe it is too long to argue, and sure he can do better 
than me. But getting to terms with the factic undefinability of the term 
may help quite a bit to the practice of information science research by 
people  with empirical and naturalistic orientation. One should not feel 
forced to define a fundamental concept (on a pair with "time" and 
"space"--basic forms of information indeed) plus a cohort of other 
"impossible" related terms (meaning, knowledge, intelligence) in order 
to practice good info science research. Acknowledging that, could be a 
first step to achieve a consensus on some basic principles of 
information science that would allow the disciplinary construction and 
all the multiple diversity within. It will take time and patience. So, 
our "market of conceptual exchange" should continue unabated. 
Particularly, continuing the debate on the 4 th Great Domain of Science 
can help us to have a big picture where our more immediate, particular 
goals might one day dovetail.

Best --Pedro

PS. The servers of University of Zaragoza are terribly sensitive to spam 
suspiciousness, even my own messages have been rejected occasionally. I 
can do little about that.

Steven Ericsson-Zenith wrote:
> Dear Pedro,
>
> My fears appear justified, the FIS server has begun bouncing my posts.
>
> I wish to say the following:
>
>
> I fear that I may risk the life of a child, in addition to encouraging 
> additional irrational calls for banishment, by adding simple 
> encouragement to this point of view.  I essentially agree with the 
> points that Marcus makes. The essence of which, I believe, is that 
> many endow the notion “information” with an existential status beyond 
> its due. A role that it is patently ill equipped for.
>
> He is right to highlight how the notion of information is being 
> shoe-horned into the gap caused by the epistemic crisis that now 
> appears across science. Serious consideration of the context, why this 
> crisis exists in the first place, is required. In large part it is, in 
> my view, because of the neglect of natural epistemology and 
> existentialism in science.
>
> I would also point out that this crisis is apparent in the words of 
> many modern physicists. Who have argued things like “falsification is 
> unnecessary” and “falsified theories are not fundamentally wrong” - in 
> addition to pursuing nonsensical physics in which they make egregious 
> mistakes. 
>
> The simplest examples of these mistakes being 1. the idea of “multiple 
> universes” (that appears to simply be a misuse of English) and even 
> “The Big Bang” as a creation theory (leaving room for all kinds of 
> nonsense, including naive conceptions of “God”).
>
> The problem in general is, I fear, the “shut up and calculate” 
> generation - who have focused upon complex purely mathematical forms 
> and forgotten the necessity to include humanity and all life in its 
> considerations, and - as a consequence - they have sacrificed the 
> simplicity and pragmatism of science.
>
> The fault lies in part, I know, with the Logicists, distracting us 
> from the bridge building required between pure mathematics and the 
> physical sciences, advocated first by Benjamin Peirce (1809-1880). The 
> focus upon binary valued systems, entirely discredited by Godel (to 
> whom we listened poorly), has not served us well.
>
> Regards,
> Steven
>
>
> --
>     Dr. Steven Ericsson-Zenith, Los Gatos, California. +1-650-308-8611
>     http://iase.info <http://iase.info/>
>
-- 
-------------------------------------------------
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/
-------------------------------------------------