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Dear FISers and all,<br>
<br>
I include below another response to Immanuel post (from Guenther). I
think he has penned an excellent response--my only addition is to
expostulate a doubt. Should our analysis of the human (or cellular!)
communication with the environment be related to linguistic practices?
In short, my argument is that biological self-production becomes "la
raison d'etre" of communication, both concerning its evolutionary
origins and the continuous opening towards the environment along the
different stages of the individual's life cycle<big><big><small><small>.
It is cogent that the same messenger plays quite different roles in
different specialized cells --we have to disentangle in each case how
the impinging "info" affects the ongoing life cycle (the impact upon
the transcriptome, proteome, metabolome, etc.) There is no shortcut to
the endless work necessary--wet lab & in silico. So I think that
Encode and other big projects are quite useful in the continuous
exploration of biological complexity and provide us valuable conceptual
stuff--but looking for hypothetical big formalisms (I quite agree) is
out sight. Molecular recognition which is the at the fundamentals of
biological organization can only provide modest guidelines about the
main informational architectures of life... beyond that, there is too
much complexity, endless complexity to contemplate, particularly when
we try to study multicellular organization. Anyhow, this topic of the
essential informational openness of the individual's life cycle appears
to me as the Gordian knot to be cut for the advancement of our field:
otherwise we will never connect meaningfully with the endless info
flows that interconnect our societies, generated from the life cycles
of individuals and addressed to the life cycles of other individuals.
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. <br>
<br>
Well, sorry that I could not express myself better.<br>
<br>
all the best--Pedro </small></small><br>
</big></big><br>
Günther Witzany wrote:
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Dear all!
<div><br>
</div>
<div>What is the opposite of a linguistic description? a
non-linguistic description? Please tell me one possible explanation of
a non-linguistic description. So Im not convinced of the sense of the
term "information". </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Concerning the "difference" of physical and semantic
information: What would you prefer in the case of plant communication.
Does the chemical Auxin represent a physical or a semantic
information? Auxin is used in hormonal, morphogenic, and transmitter
pathways. As an extracellular signal at the plant synapse, auxin serves
to react to light and gravity. It also serves as an extracellular
messenger substance to send electrical signals and functions as a
synchronization signal for cell division. At the intercellular,
whole plant level, it supports cell division in the cambium, and at the
tissue level, it promotes the maturation of vascular tissue during
embryonic development, organ growth as well as tropic responses and
apical dominance. In intracellular signaling, auxin serves in
organogenesis, cell development, and differentiation. Especially in the
organogenesis of roots, for example, auxin enables cells to determine
their position and their identity. These multiple functions of auxin
demonstrate that identifying the momentary usage (its semantics) is
extremely difficult because the context (investigation object of
pragmatics) of use can be very complex and highly diverse, although the
chemical property remains the same.</div>
<div>Yes, mathematics is an artificial language. Last century the
Pythagorean approach, mathematics represents material reality, (if we
use mathematics we reconstruct creators thoughts) was reactivated:
Exact science must represent observations as well as theories in
mathematical equations. Then it would be sure to represent reality,
because brain synapse logics then could express its own material
reality. But this was proven as error. Prior to all artificial
languages we learned how to interconnect linguistic utterances with
practical behavior in socialisation; therefore the ultimate
meta-language is everyday language with its visible superficial grammar
and its invisible deep grammar that transports the intended meaning.
How should computers extract deep grammar structures out of measurable
superficial syntax structures? In the case of ENCODE project (to find
the human genome primary data structures) this was the aim which got
financial support of 3 billion dollars with the result of detecting the
superficial grammar only, nothing else.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Best Wishes</div>
<div>Guenther</div>
<div>
<div>Am 24.09.2015 um 07:47 schrieb Emanuel Diamant:</div>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Dear
FIS colleagues,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">As a
newcomer to FIS, I feel myself very uncomfortable when I have to
interrupt the ongoing discourse with something that looks for me quite
natural but is lacking in our current public dialog. What I have in
mind is that in every discussion or argument exchange, first of all,
the grounding axioms and mutually agreed assumptions should be
established and declared as the basis for further debating and
reasoning. Maybe in our case, these things are implied by default, but
I am not a part of the dominant coalition. For this reason, I would
dare to formulate some grounding axioms that may be useful for those
who are not FIS insiders:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">1. <b>Information
is a linguistic description of structures observable in a given data set</b><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">2.
Two types of data structures could be distinguished in a data set:
primary and secondary data structures.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">3.
Primary data structures are data clusters or clumps arranged or
occurring due to the similarity in physical properties of adjacent data
elements. For this reason, the primary data structures could be called
physical data structures.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">4.
Secondary data structures are specific arrangements of primary data
structures. The grouping of primary data structures into secondary data
structures is a prerogative of an external observer and it is guided by
his subjective reasons, rules and habits. The secondary data structures
exist only in the observer’s head, in his mind. Therefore, they could
be called meaningful or semantic data structures. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">5. As
it was said earlier, <b>Description of structures observable in a data
set should be called “Information”. </b>In this regard, two types of
information must be distinguished – <b>Physical Information and
Semantic Information</b>. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">6.
Both are language-based descriptions; however, physical information can
be described with a variety of languages (recall that mathematics is
also a language), while semantic information can be described only by
means of natural human language.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">This
is a concise set of axioms that should preface all our further
discussions. You can accept them. You can discard them and replace them
with better ones. But you can not proceed without basing your
discussion on a suitable and appropriate set of axioms.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">That
is what I have to say at this moment.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">My
best regards to all of you,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Emanuel.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
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<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
-------------------------------------------------
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)
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es">pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/">http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/</a>
-------------------------------------------------
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