[Fis] Life goes on

[Karl Javorszky]

Dear Pedro and All,



Very good that life is going on. Let us hope that the group, now shrunken
in numbers, is even more focused on the subject matter of the mental
construct of information.



I was just about to post an invitation to the list to take up an approach
to the subject of information in a biological context. The main statement
is:



*We live in a cyclic, periodic, rhythmic environment.*

(Implication: biologic systems, having adapted, function in cyclic,
periodic, rhythmic ways.)



Definitions:

Cycle : a strict succession of a finite number of elements that has no
first element;

Period : a name for a cycle that contains other cycles;

Rhythm : the interference based on, caused as a corollary of, periods and
cycles.



Examples :

Cycle : heartbeat; day-night

Period : breathing; lunar phases

Rhythm : what the polygraph registers; signal for mass migration, spawning,
etc.



What is locally a period, can of course be a cycle within a picture
generated by a wider perspective. Examples: heartbeat and breathing are
both cycles within the period of activity and sleeping; the change of
forces during the period of a year creates a rhythm of maximal and minimal
tides at specific nights (which the tortoises use).



It is state of the art to use such tools that are appropriate to the
investigations one conducts. The proposition is, then, to use cycles as the
basis of rational thought.



Once the fundamental reorganisation among the concepts within the
researcher’s brain has been achieved, the outwardly visible activity of
using microscopes and conducting experiments follows by itself. The
validity of the theory can be put to the test, once one does have a theory.
The lack of a theory creates difficulties of arriving at a robust concept
of information. The resistance to a global change of perspectives appears
to be rooted solidly in the construction of the fundaments of traditional
thinking. The first step is to create a theory: and a theory of a world
made up of loops is un-imaginable, if the basic concept in the brain of the
researcher is a line and not a loop.



The time has come for a badly needed cultural revolution in order to be
able to comprehend the simple, basic, self-evident principle of that what
glues the world together. Its elements were never unglued, only our mind
puts each element clean-shaven, solitary, without neighbours, in the centre
of imagination, as the basic unit. The Sumer, Euclid, Kant, Descartes
concept of units and axes is not applicable any more, as we move to
understand biology as a rational process. It is time to rewrite Bruno’s
Cause, Principle and Unit, having recognised the unit to be a cycle, the
principle to be that of order, which more or less leaves the aspect of
cause to become self-explanatory.



There are several culture shocks to be experienced until the general public
accepts the circadic view of the world. There are some quite valid taboos
against some of the concepts.



Research has uncovered simple algorithmic rules that shed light on
relations between what is the case, where and when and in which sequence,
as contrasted to that what is not the case. The last time the subject of
trying to shed the light of reason into that what we do not know,
Wittgenstein has determined that our rational language does not allow us to
formulate and comprehend something that is not rational. This is, in fact,
true. We cannot see the other side of a thing we look at, because that is
by definition the background, against which we perceive that what we see.
Yet, engineering ingenuity has brought us turning tables and high-speed
cameras since then. We still cannot see that what is turned away from us,
it being presently the background. But we can now do a replay in slow
motion, and we can choose, from which position we regard the object of our
interest. This allows a migratory concept of foreground and background.



The cultural taboo regards the implicit danger of defending too much
against megalomania. It is not easy to cortically manipulate an inner
model, the substance of which is that one decides oneself what is true and
what is false, and this in an objective fashion. One has been educated into
knowing axiomatically, that such things one decides oneself are not, and
cannot be, a subject of objective discourse. If I decide what is right and
what is false, the subject is not a scientific one. This inner reluctance
has to be overcome, and not all and each of our cocitoyens are of a
fiercely independence-loving mindset, while being the occupant of a
respected position in the scientific hierarchy.



We defend also against the seductions posed by anancastic rituals. Order is
a concept that is culturally very heavily loaded, and has manifold
variations in the local culture, which was the family our respected
researcher has grown up in. To overdo an ordering is very unpleasant for
children who are subjected to concepts of order imposed by the grown-ups.
While it has been acceptable to imagine urns with colored balls in them,
and describe into the last detail how many and what possible outcomes the
experiments of drawing balls from urns can result in, there is a reluctance
to investigate the degrees of disorder the same balls can be brought into,
outside of urns. No self-respecting dedicated follower of combinatorics has
had found time yet to address the question, how many and what possible
cycles emerge if one orders balls and then re-orders them again. The task
is equally absurd and anancastic, whether one draws balls from urns or one
sequences them outside of urns.



Individual taboos appear as a consequence of mental reorganisations as the
child enters the phase of latency, usually at the age 5 to 7 years. At this
development stage, the child has learnt the rules of order. That the
decision, which order prevails and to what degree of dominance, is embedded
in various emotional connotations of situations while one has learnt that
order is coming from outside, and that this decision is not something one
oneself can and will and is permitted to decide on, that this subject of
imposing order is not one’s task, does not help while learning to use a
practical tool of arithmetic that works by the ever-changing competition of
order concepts. “Such an order which I impose is not an order in the real
sense of the world” is not infrequently encountered in actual situations.
Among the decisions one makes around this age is to be no more a baby and
no more do thinking-enjoyments like a baby does, who would keep ordering
things long after they had been ordered enough, just for play and
entertainment. One has learnt the patterns and how to generate the other
patterns. Case closed. Today, we invite the same child, now a respected
researcher, to reopen the bag of patterns, and to learn the pattern of
transforming patterns into each other.



Let me put forward the wish for the coming FIS season that we open up and
tell frankly, how radical the change in the world views needs to be so that
we can integrate the elusive concept of information into our system of
rational concepts we can effortlessly share.


Respectfully yours

Karl
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