[Fis] Concluding & Season Greetings

Thu Dec 27 16:34:43 CET 2018

Closing is beginning

Let me add to these soothing Christmas carols a parable about Shadows in a
Cave

   1. Time-honoured narrative

Plato’s allegory of the cave, being a powerful katathymic imagination, is
an excellent stage to develop the narrative connected to imagination,
information and reality. Their own ignorance and prejudices keep the
inhabitants of the cave prisoners of that place, where they can see nothing
of the things of the outside world but the shadows these throw on the wall
of the cave, as they pass the sunlit entrance of the cave.

In this narrative, things are mentioned, are still with us. The allegory
spins about the wish to know things better, not us. The frame of the
narrative allows introducing important structural elements of the
epistemological treatise, namely: the terms shadow, perception, form,
recognising, reality, illusion. There is a twist to the story, as one of
the prisoners manages to break free and wanders outside of the cave. He
recognises the Sun, the world outside and the relation of the things, the
Sun and the shadow. Returning back, however, he is unable to see in the
semi-dark of the cave, and his co-prisoners believe that venturing outside
robs one of eyesight and causes madness, so they kill him. The historical
allegory then wanders off into discussing beauty, theology and generally,
the place of the subject in the world, which appears to depend on which
structures the subject looks into his concept of the world. One step more,
and we arrive at C.G. Jung and the archetypes of perception.

Interestingly, there is a hint towards combinatorics as they discuss the
extent of the variety of the forms. If one has a limited number of
dialectic alternatives, there can only exist a limited number of different
forms. There is a form of a primitive typology discernible there.

The subject matter of the whole allegory is the meaning of the term order.
It is irrelevant, or undecidable, which of the appearances is reality, and
for whom. Is there among the recognisable appearances any order, and is
this order different to that which reigns among the appearances which we
can not recognise? The ancient Greeks had plenty of new, unknown landscapes
and facts to discover, but they had no computers at their disposal. We have
run out of landscapes that are unknown and are in factual possession of
many more facts that we can build narratives on. Our advantages: we have
tools at our disposal, powerful registries of actual facts, which the
Greeks did not have. Computers allow re-playing history. This situation
opens up an opportunity for the gentle folk in the cave to restart their
investigations.

   1. New halls found

Let us build a variant of the tale of the cave. Let us imagine that the
prisoners do not kill the adventurer, who manages to accommodate his
eyesight again to the semi-darkness of the cave. What is more, this prophet
succeeds in unchaining the liberty-seeking prisoners and proposes to move
in to an unused deeper portion of the cave system. We migrate deeper into
the cave. We leave the things to be things. We no longer watch the shadows
they throw on the walls of the cave. We want at first to re-calibrate our
shadow classification procedures, using unit things throwing defined
shadows. Let us leave reality out of this Glasperlenspiel. Reality is that
what we create in a spacious, well-climatized, cheerful hall next to the
original cave. We illuminate in this hall of the cave system and watch the
shadows objects throw which we place in the middle of the hall.

We first have to explain the concepts of the Sun, illuminated objects and
their shadow. We shall not fail to point out that the perspective-giving
a-priori fact, the Sun, *is moving* in a cyclic fashion. Whatever the
object is that throws a shadow, this shadow’s place and appearance will
*change* as an axiomatic fact. We would never come up with a world view
that is static, with one perspective.

Then we generate such objects about which we know all, the objects being
our own invention. These objects we make as dolls, being made up of two
parts.

We place a self-made terracotta army of dolls in the hall and make use of
our powerful torches. The walls of the hall are standard 21st century AD
movie screens, and we have of course an almost unlimited number of
perspectives, from where we can throw light and cause shadows, watching the
dolls.

   1. Learn about yourselves, not about things

We may have left the facts of reality outside, but we still see shadows.
These shadows are made by us, our terracotta dolls give such shadows as
result from the positions we have placed our lamps in. We can do what
students like to do, and switch off all the lights and turn them all on
again. We shall observe, that the results achieved such do not allow
discussing shadows, but confront us with ourselves: are we about to figure
out the relation between light and shadow, or are we in a destructive,
anti-intellectual mood? We may not learn much about things while
illuminating a terracotta army of dolls, but we are learning about
ourselves. Which is the ultimate goal, as the Greeks had figured out.

Returning to work, we will see, that what is illuminated can be called to
be that what is the case, and the shadow can be interpreted as a
description of what is not the case. The first question to be answered is
then: by which degree of certainty is it possible to establish, watching
the shadows, which of the dolls had been illuminated? How do statements
about what is not the case restrict the possibilities of Sachverhalte to be
the case?

This was the easier part, so far. Now the terracotta dolls begin marching.
They are being re-ordered. They are, in fact, always in the process of
being re-ordered. There are many conflicts and collisions. The wide variety
of possible light arrangements and of possible readings of shadows do not
make the circus simpler.

The addition of a hall to the cave allows interested prisoners to play with
their own torches and discover, what kinds of shadows are thrown when
standard form objects are used as shadow-generators. The results allow the
prisoners to unchain their fixations and recognise their own preferences,
prejudices and inhibitions while dealing with the shadows things throw.
Undoing the subjective component allows approaching forms of ideas, by
making them communicable.

We learn about ourselves as we observe ourselves, how we deal with a
kaleidoscope. There are at least 3 levels of possible varieties: how the
dolls stand, which lights are turned on, which shadows are recognised. The
systematic, methodical approach would be to conduct a series of thought
experiments, which show, how one of the factors influences what we
perceive, while holding the two other factors stable. Are we up to the task
to tabulate, what shadows *n* dolls throw if illuminated by *k *reflectors?
We could arrive at results like “truth is dependent on the perspective”,
and this result might be hard to integrate into one’s long-serving,
familiar worldview.

   1. Are we looking chaos or order into numbers

There are lots of spectacular effects, transformations and metamorphoses
among the shadows we have generated. They may catch and keep the attention
of the spectators. We have to find that niche of special, ideal, optimal
circumstances in which that what we are trying to picture: the transmission
of information in theoretical genetics, actually exists. This surrounding
environment is necessarily unspectacular and is an ossified playing-ground
for boring implications, causes and effects, non-existent alternatives and
tautologies. That, what functions best, is the least spectacular (as it is
optimised, having shed in the process all unnecessary ornaments /form
follows function: Adolf Loos/). The small niche of ideal circumstances is
hidden among the spectacular collisions, contradictions, limits,
constraints and explosive transformations and de-materialisations that are
also pictured by the numbers. We can definitely create such a show, using
dolls, torches and shadows, which is unpredictable and chaotic and
unstable. All those, who follow the dialectic school of thought of
Heraclit, Hegel, etc. where two opposing forces fight like James Bond and
Dr. No, will find much pleasure in the non-consolidability of some
conflicts. Those, who look for the mechanism that governs the fine
clockwork of genetics and neurology, will have to look carefully, as such
contraptions that function well, do not make noises and are generally
inobtrusive.

   1. Small results are good results

What we are looking for, is however easy to find. We are content if we see
cohorts of terracotta dolls march in goose-step, synchronously, from places
to places, in dependence of their position in a linear rank and file order.
We know that these cohorts move in groups of 3, and each of the 3 can have
one of 4 variations. We actually have found them in the great melee. It is
now the art of the lights engineer to show them influencing the properties
of the melee.

Understanding ourselves, our prejudices and aversions, helps in creating an
unbiased, clinically sterile working desk, a clean mental image of order
and disorder. Within the general disorder, there are small niches, in which
simple logical, arithmetical implications can unfold and prove their
existence. If we listen to the whispering voice of reason, which states
that the process evidently and obviously does take place in everyday life,
therefore the process can not be logically impossible, we find the chained
sequence of implications that is the principle at work in genetics.

Let us continue to work towards understanding ourselves, by discussing how
one can understand and interpret the term information, in the New Year also!

Best wishes to all:

Karl

Am Do., 27. Dez. 2018 um 10:20 Uhr schrieb Joseph Brenner <
joe.brenner at bluewin.ch>:

> Dear Loet and All,
>
>
>
> Thank you and best Season’s Greetings also. Please see my emendations in
> red.
>
>
>
> Cheers,
>
>
>
> Joseph
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> *From:* Fis [mailto:fis-bounces at listas.unizar.es] *On Behalf Of *Loet
> Leydesdorff
> *Sent:* mercredi, 26 décembre 2018 07:34
> *To:* Pedro C. Marijuan; fis
> *Subject:* Re: [Fis] Concluding & Season Greetings
>
>
>
> *"Humans stand apart from other species in the amount **and kind *
> *of information they acquire by paying attention to what others do, and
> crucially to what they say... Information is our environment, our niche,
> and we constantly transform that niche to acquire even more **and
> different kinds of **information from our surroundings..."*
> Isn't it deeply related to principles of social information science, and
> also to the narratives theme of this session?
>
> Dear Pedro and colleagues,
>
>
>
> The issue is in my opinion, not the generation of more information
> (probabilistic entropy; quantitative), but the specification of the
> selection mechanisms; qualitative. These are system-specific, perhaps,
> species-specific.
>
>
>
> I wish you a happy new year and thanks for keeping the list going.
>
>
>
> Best,
>
> Loet
>
>
>
>
> Like in previous years, after the Xmas pause, we will receive the 2019
> with our traditional "New Year Lecture".
> As usual it will be announced during the last week or during first days of
> the new year.
> It will revolve around a topic we have scarcely discussed: the
> neuroscience of consciousness.
> After that Lecture, Xueshan and Plamen will tentatively organize
> respective discussion sessions.
>
> And to everybody: enjoy the Xmas time! Feliz Navidad from Zaragoza.
> See below the Nativity Scene in the square of El Pilar Basilica.
> Best--Pedro
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> -------------------------------------------------
>
> Pedro C. Marijuán
>
> Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group
>
>
>
> pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es
>
> http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/
>
> -------------------------------------------------
>
>
>
>
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