[Fis] FW: Information is a linguistic description of structures--Loet

[Pedro C. Marijuan]

*From:* Loet Leydesdorff [mailto:loet at leydesdorff.net]
*Sent:* Saturday, September 26, 2015 12:42 PM
*To:* 'Pedro C. Marijuan'; 'Günther Witzany'; 'fis'
*Cc:* 'farah at howardbloom.net'; 'Emanuel Diamant'
*Subject:* RE: [Fis] Information is a linguistic description of structures

 

Dear Pedro,

 

Info sources, channels for info flows, and info receptors are not mere 
Shannonian overtones, they symbolically refer to the very info skeleton 
of our societies; or looking dynamically it is the engine of social 
history and of social complexity.

 

It seems to me that you move too fast from the biological level to the 
sociological one. At the biological level, one can observe "languaging" 
as a semantic domain (Maturana), but not understand the language itself. 
Languaging is a necessary, but not sufficient condition; indeed, it 
provides the skeleton of our societies.

 

Once a cultural dynamics is generated on top of the biological one (by 
exchanging and sharing meaning using languages and symbols), this 
next-order level can be expected to take over control and reshape the 
underlying ones. For example, we can intervene in nature 
technologically; in my country (Holland), for example, nature is 
artificial and controlled by water management.

 

The cultural dynamics can no longer be reduced to an epi-phenomenon or 
mere consequence of the biological one. The dynamics of variation and 
selection are changed, since we are able to proliferate ideas as 
variation (possible meanings) much faster than we as carrying agents can 
turn into action and behavior (among which "languaging").

 

Best,

Loet

 

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Loet Leydesdorff

/Professor Emeritus,/ University of Amsterdam
Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR)

loet at leydesdorff.net <mailto:loet at leydesdorff.net>; 
http://www.leydesdorff.net/
Honorary Professor, SPRU, <http://www.sussex.ac.uk/spru/>University of 
Sussex;

Guest Professor Zhejiang Univ. <http://www.zju.edu.cn/english/>, 
Hangzhou; Visiting Professor, ISTIC, 
<http://www.istic.ac.cn/Eng/brief_en.html>Beijing;

Visiting Professor, Birkbeck <http://www.bbk.ac.uk/>, University of London;

http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ych9gNYAAAAJ&hl=en 
<http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ych9gNYAAAAJ&hl=en>

 

 


-- 
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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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