[Fis] RV: What are "information" and "science"?

[PEDRO CLEMENTE MARIJUAN FERNANDEZ]

Dear FIS colleagues,

The message (below) is quite interesting, as were several others e.g., the ongoing exchange between Moises and Loet. The clever work on the maps of science can help quite a bit to provide a more firm grounding to the whole informational enterprise ("domain") and to others disciplines of our choice --a renewed info science as the strategic nucleus of the domain.

As for Marcus' question, each one can answer from his/her standpoint on information. As I have often advocated in this list about info as "distinction on the adjacent", mostly looking for a pan-biological and pan-human sense, then the big enterprise of science indeed becomes "informational", and the particular disciplines of concern may be seen as "the artificial ordering of distinctions"... in the term artificial (or 'art-full') would enter the particular rules and conditions (entities, presences, absences, processes, experiences, logics, communities) that concern each discipline.

With an explicit caveat, that disciplines are not rational constructs but historical ones, and contain highly heterogeneous stuff, in general not amenable to single-logics explanation concerning their foundations, developments, paradigms, etc. Besides, they number in the thousands, for they are social-informational in the deepest sense, containing a division of work tailored to the cognitive limits of the individual. So, as more knowledge accumulates, disciplines split and new communities of problem-solvers are formed, or they are dissolved when the contents become obsolete (Max Planck made a much-cited sardonic comment about that). Along this line, recent particularities of big science and professional science of our times appear more sensibly, somehow.

In these disciplinary & social accumulation of knowledge matters, the point of view of info science has a relative advantage, but it needs to be accompanied by cohorts of other disciplines, depending on the troubling informational aspect we inquire... I would never bet for a new info-reductionism, or explanatory monism, science is an elegant Babel construction always condemned --or enjoying-- the plurality of disciplinary languages and views. So our continuous dialog!!

best--Pedro
________________________________
De: Fis [fis-bounces at listas.unizar.es] en nombre de Marcus Abundis [55mrcs at gmail.com]
Enviado el: miércoles, 20 de mayo de 2015 6:45
Para: fis at listas.unizar.es
Asunto: [Fis] What are "information" and "science"?

Greetings to all,

    As I read these comments I have a hard time finding an effective "anchor" upon which to add notes. I see "informational processes" as essentially being proto-scientific – how is any "science" not an informational process? First, I think this places me in the camp of Peirce's view. Second, I am unsure of how to regard the focus on "higher-order" interdisciplinary discussions when a much more essential view of lower-order roles (i.e., What are science and information?) has not been first established.

    From my "naive" view I find myself wondering how "informational process" is not the ONE overarching discipline from which all other disciplines are born (is this too "psychological" of a framework?). As such, I argue for one great discipline . . . and thus wouldn't try to frame my view in terms of "science," mostly because I am unclear on how the term "science" is being formally used here. Thoughts?

<http://about.me/marcus.abundis?promo=email_sig>

Marcus Abundis
about.me/marcus.abundis







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