[Fis] Focusing on Narratives. Infordomics

Tue Dec 11 10:12:33 CET 2018

Dear Pedro,

A wonderful post.

Let me try to summarize your point briefly as follows: In the process of
cell signal transduction (cell information communication), we should not
only pay attention to the routine communication process of base sequence or
gene, but also to the role of the environment on them. The environments that
impose influence on base sequence or gene and the pathways when they work
will add complexity to the cells. This is an important bioinformational
approach.

If I am not mistaken, these views are somewhat esoteric for non-biologists,
even for ordinary biologists who do not study cell signal transduction. But
based on my limited knowledge of biology, I fully agree with you. Because
some biologists have proposed that organisms have two kinds of information
flow: genetic information flow and environmental information flow. They
think we should have a "Environmental (Information Communication) Central
Dogma" which is parallel to the "Genetic (Information Communication) Central
Dogma" proposed by Francis Crick.

As for your second question: Does this situation exist in the process of
social information communication? My view is: Definitely. But this issue
will certainly not become the subject of communication studies in today's
and even in the next 20 years’. It should belong to the deep problem of
"variation" of "information" in the process of social communication. But the
current communication studies has not even put forward a basic principle,
who else will pay attention to this complicated and advanced communication
problem?

By the way, your "Information is relative to the life cycle", is it a
definition of information? or a special description of the information
attribute? In the field of ontological study of social information
communication, a more common term of Discourse/Text can be waited for when
we leave the Narrative discussion behind.

Best wishes,

Xueshan

From: fis-bounces at listas.unizar.es <fis-bounces at listas.unizar.es> On Behalf
Of Pedro C. Marijuan
Sent: Saturday, December 8, 2018 12:38 AM
To: fis at listas.unizar.es
Subject: Re: [Fis] Focusing on Narratives. Infordomics

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:  <mailto:fis-bounces at listas.unizar.es> fis-bounces at listas.unizar.es
<mailto: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  <mailto:fis at listas.unizar.es> <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>
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 <mailto:pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es> 
http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/
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