[Fis] Focusing on Narratives. Infordomics

[Pedro C. Marijuan]

Dear Xueshan and FIS Colleagues,

In your two posts you raise fundamental guidelines for social 
information science. I much praise your efforts to bring coherence and 
structure into this fundamental part of the whole information realm. A 
problem you ponder, which Joseph has entered, relates to the importance 
of meaning and semiotics (semiosis, semantics, etc.). Given that I 
maintain a long standing disagreement with almost everybody in this 
matter, both in the biological and in the social, I cannot help but 
saying a couple of things finally trying to connect with the leit motif 
of the current discussion.

My conclusion after considerable years of work in cellular signaling 
(contained in half dozen main papers during last years) would not only 
be that "INFORMATION IS RELATIVE..." but that it has to be appended with 
"... TO THE LIFE CYCLE". So putting them together: INFORMATION IS 
RELATIVE TO THE LIFE CYCLE. Unfortunately a whole generation of 
biosemioticians have only focused in the DNA stupendous combinatorics of 
bases later translated in the ribosome as proteins, connecting it with 
the Peircean schemes. And they have disregarded what are the pathways 
that communicate with the environment so that the specific energy 
contents needed may be recognized and imported. This kind of signaling 
pathways have been used later on to produce the astonishing complexity 
of multicellulars. Like in the classical dictum //"omnes viae/ Romam 
/ducunt" (all ways lead to Rome), //all of these signaling pathways, all 
the communication events with the environment, directly or indirectly 
conduce to the advancement of the life cycle. Meaning is thereafter 
built as the generative result of each one of these paths or of their 
coalitions. Overall, a very different bioinformational approach 
looms--unfortunately scarcely trodden yet... Anyhow, we are going 
excessively into the biological arena.

The point is whether, in social information science, could something 
similar be occurring?  Isn't all the superstructure of linguistic 
communication essentially animated by the necessities, pulsions, and 
expectations of a life in progress? Doesn't the life course, in the form 
of all of its neuronal instantaneities, appear as the main mover of our 
own consciousness contents? (a specific discussion session on 
consciousness would be needed here). At least, if we  go now to the 
current discussion, isn't the advancement of the individual's life the 
main focus of traditional narratives? If some of these questions are 
responded positively, social information science would benefit of 
establishing a "zeroth principle" around the life course, the Rome to 
which all human communication paths conduce ... which I leave open, as I 
do not like my present attempt  ("The multifarious forms of social 
information can only be understood as interwoven in the collective 
fabric of human lives").

This my second cent of the week, so I leave for a next occasion the 
comment on Plamen's touching and intriguing content (plus Francesco and 
Karl).

Best wishes
--Pedro


El 06/12/2018 a las 9:07, Xueshan Yan escribió:
>
> Dear Joseph,
>
> Very sorry for the late reply. I think all the questions you put 
> forward hit the points what I said and each one of them is crucial. 
> Let me give you my brief answers as follows.
>
> *1. The root -/domos/ of the word Infordomics*
>
> Yes, the basic meaning of Greek root '-/domos/' is /house/ or /place/, 
> but in older English dictionaries, it has another meaning: others, 
> miscellaneous.
>
> *2. Semiotics as Linguistics and as a major stand-alone*
>
> This question is not difficult to understand. Saussure once said that 
> "Linguistics is a sign subject." In other words, there are many 
> branches of semiotics (just as there are many branches of information 
> science). Linguistics is only one of the most important, mature, and 
> standard branch of semiotics. In addition, we also have many other 
> non-mainstream semiotics branch to deal with body language, music 
> language, dance language, painting language and so on. All these are 
> some human languages, and there are many other natural signs to study 
> yet. So we can only regard (human) linguistics what we usually called 
> as one of the branches of semiotics. Yes, you are right, in my 
> statement, the serious one should be: "Semiotics discusses the form of 
> information." Instead of: "Semiotics (Linguistics) discusses the form 
> of information."
>
> *3. Information, Meaning, Semiotics, and Semiotics*
>
> Just as Søren and I suggested in another place, we could consider 
> "Information, Meaning, and Sign" as a set of adjacent topics and 
> should gave a special concern. In order to maintain the unity of 
> rhetoric, my suggestion is: Information, Meaning, and Sign. (or 
> Informatics, Semantics, and Semiotics). I agree with your "Semiosis 
> both as meaning and as a dynamic process of reasoning and of 
> generating meaning.", as for whether to add it in this set or not, 
> both will be OK. Generally speaking, you, Søren, and I agree that 
> Information, Meaning, and Sign are three basic concepts in our study 
> of social/human information and communication.
>
> *4. Meaning does not mean that it is an unscientific concept*
>
> As we can see, the relationship between information and meaning has 
> been discussed in our FIS forums for 20 years. Semantics of human 
> natural language has been studied for about 80 years. Meaning research 
> in other humanities (including a large number of philosophical and 
> logical works) even has a more longer history, but none of these 
> studies has yet produced a universally accepted explanation. Can our 
> fundamental information science explorers contribute a little to this? 
> I'm looking forward to it.
>
> When we read the works of biology, genetics, and genomics, the common 
> statement is that the four base combinations of A, G, C, and T 
> constitute a base sequence, and a group of base sequences constitute a 
> gene. In neuroscience, in astrophysics, there is only "information" 
> but no "meaning". In computer science, in Shannon's information 
> theory, there is only "information" but no "meaning" too. Therefore, 
> when I discuss /Inforware/, I define it as the three-level combination 
> of "Information, Sign, and Substrate" rather than the four-level 
> combination of "Information, Meaning, Sign, and Substrate". Very 
> fortunately, Guoheng Jia, a Chinese situation semantist, has given a 
> preliminary judgment that "information" and "meaning" could be 
> equivalent. (I've invited him to come to our FIS to give a talk in due 
> course.)
>
> FIS has been discussing for 20 years, and the fundamental exploration 
> of information science has been going on for decades. What is the 
> contribution of the researchers to it? Very little! We would fell 
> relieved if we could take even some small steps and make some small 
> contributions to the basic issues. Starting from some promising place 
> and doing it down-to-earth, greed has no future.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Xueshan
>
> *From:*fis-bounces at listas.unizar.es <fis-bounces at listas.unizar.es> *On 
> Behalf Of *Joseph Brenner
> *Sent:* Tuesday, December 4, 2018 7:39 PM
> *To:* fis <fis at listas.unizar.es>
> *Subject:* Re: [Fis] Focusing on Narratives. Infordomics
>
> Dear Xueshan,
>
> Thank you for your proposal of a domain of Infordomics. I see it as a 
> way of furthering the useful insights that can be gained thorough 
> classification, guidelines and protocols of discussion. I note that 
> –domics and domain have the same Greek root /‘domos’ – /house or 
> place, hence, the _place_ for information.
>
> However, I think that your proposed inclusion of Semiotics as 
> Linguistics and as a major stand-alone subject is problematic. This is 
> in part due to the absence, in your list, of an explicit reference to 
> Meaning.
>
> Sören has proposed as a subject, in another context, “Information, 
> Meaning and Semiotics”. For discussion here, I would have preferred 
> Information, Meaning, Semiosis and Semiotics. I see Semiosis both as 
> meaning and as a dynamic process of reasoning and of generating 
> meaning. On the other hand, Semiotics is rather a classificatory 
> system applied to formal, structural aspects of language. Of course, 
> there is some overlap with meaning, but Semiotics as most commonly 
> used today suffers from its implied reference to and dependence on the 
> categories, logic and classifications of Peirce. It is necessary to 
> remind ourselves that the Peircean approach is only one among others, 
> and that more serious scientific and ontological commitments can be 
> made in some of the latter.
>
> The fact that Meaning in a sense in involved in all the fields you 
> define (psychology, communication, social information) does not mean 
> that it is an unscientific concept; it is that it, like information 
> itself, requires some additional dynamic dimensions for its description.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Joseph
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> *From:*Fis [mailto:fis-bounces at listas.unizar.es] *On Behalf Of 
> *Xueshan Yan
> *Sent:* mardi, 4 décembre 2018 11:08
> *To:* FIS Group
> *Subject:* Re: [Fis] Focusing on Narratives
>
> Dear Colleagues,
>
> Thanks Pedro for introducing the important topic of narrative, many 
> views of Loet, Joseph, Karl, of course Pedro, etc. are very profound.
>
> After accomplished my first book to investigate various information 
> and informational disciplines, my second book, /Infordomics/, will 
> concentrate on discussing information issues in the Humanities and 
> Social Sciences, narrative will be its main concern. I have collected 
> a dozen of books about these aspects. Infordomics is a new discipline 
> which I named. As far as the current information concerned, 
> technological information, biological information, and social 
> information are the three dominating types we have seen. Technological 
> information has been exclusively studied by technological informatics 
> (computer science, telecommunications science), biological information 
> has been exclusively studied by biology, and only social information 
> is a scattered topic in history, journalism, literature, art, 
> religion, anthropology, sociology, and others, we haven’t a special 
> discipline to deal with it so far. Therefore, I think that 
> achievements on information for us are most likely in this field.
>
> As far as the information issues we are concerning, Psychology 
> discusses the processing of information, communication (Communicology) 
> discusses the transmission of information, Semiotics (Linguistics) 
> discusses the form of information, and Infordomics will discuss the 
> remaining issues of information. At the beginning, I may concentrate 
> on its structure problems. Psychology, Communicology, Semiotics 
> (Linguistics), and Infordomics (other new disciplines on information 
> may emerge in the future certainly.) constitute a systematic study 
> about social/human information.
>
> However, our FIS (including our IS4SI) is at a hard time now, and we 
> need a firm and promising guideline and protocol.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Xueshan
>
>
>
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-- 
-------------------------------------------------
Pedro C. Marijuán
Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group

pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es
http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/
-------------------------------------------------



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