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<DIV>bob,</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>thanks for an extraordinary answer. riddled with extraordinary
knowledge.</DIV>
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<DIV>I've just bought your book from Amazon and it should be in my kindle
momentarily. if you'd like a copy of mine--The God Problem: How a Godless
Cosmos Creates--i can email it to you. and to anyone else on the FIS list
who wants it. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>our books intersect. we both attempt to lay out new assumptions for
science.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>most important, I agree with you and Terrence Deacon that our analysis of
information should not be limited to the metaphors of language, code, and
genomics. a metaphor is a tool. each metaphor opens a different
trove of insights. so the more metaphors--the more tools--the
better.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>with warmth and oomph--howard</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT lang=0 size=2 face="Century Gothic" FAMILY="SANSSERIF"
PTSIZE="10">____________<BR>Howard Bloom<BR>Author of: <I>The Lucifer Principle:
A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History</I> ("mesmerizing"-<I>The
Washington Post</I>),<BR><I>Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The
Big Bang to the 21st Century</I> ("reassuring and sobering"-<I>The New
Yorker)</I>,<BR><I>The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of
Capitalism</I> ("A tremendously enjoyable book." James Fallows, National
Correspondent, <I>The Atlantic</I>),<BR><I>The God Problem: How A Godless Cosmos
Creates</I> ("Bloom's argument will rock your world." Barbara
Ehrenreich),<BR><I>How I Accidentally Started the Sixties</I> ("Wow! Whew!
Wild!<BR>Wonderful!" Timothy Leary), and<BR><I>The Mohammed Code</I> ("A
terrifying book…the best book I've read on Islam." David Swindle,<I> PJ
Media</I>).<BR>www.howardbloom.net<BR>Former Core Faculty Member, The Graduate
Institute; Former Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York
University.<BR>Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; Founder, Space
Development Steering Committee; Founder: The Group Selection Squad; Founding
Board Member: Epic of Evolution Society; Founding Board Member, The Darwin
Project; Founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of
Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American
Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and
Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology, Scientific Advisory
Board Member, Lifeboat Foundation; Editorial Board Member, Journal of Space
Philosophy; Board member and member of Board of Governors, National Space
Society.</FONT><FONT lang=0 color=#000000 size=2 face=Verdana FAMILY="SANSSERIF"
PTSIZE="10"><BR>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV>In a message dated 9/29/2015 10:44:26 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
ulan@umces.edu writes:</DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE style="PADDING-LEFT: 10px; MARGIN-LEFT: 10px"><FONT
style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" color=#000000 size=2
face=Arial>Howard:<BR><BR>I applaud your critique of our legacy attempts to
render life meaningful<BR>in terms of what you call "necrophilia" and Hans
Jonas has called an<BR>"ontology of death".<BR><BR>In my last book, "A Third
Window", I attempted to develop the metaphysics<BR>of a process ecology of
relationships as an alternative starting
point.<BR><http://people.clas.ufl.edu/ulan/publications/philosophy/3rdwindow/><BR><BR>I
especially resonated with your mention of the failure of conventional<BR>and
relativistic physics to explain the spiral arms of some galaxies. This<BR>I
believe is due to the constraints of the continuum assumption laid down<BR>by
Euler and Leibniz, which conflates cause with effect. One can get away<BR>with
this assumption so long as the interval between cause and effect
is<BR>virtually immediate. In a galaxy 100,000 light years in diameter,
however,<BR>this assumption begins to fray. It likely breaks down altogether
across<BR>intergalactic distances.<BR><BR>The continuum assumption leads to
symmetrical laws of nature, and as<BR>Noether taught us, symmetry and
conservation are joined at the hip. Is it<BR>any wonder, then, that
inconsistencies leading to the postulation of<BR>"dark" matter and energy
should arise if one uses only symmetrical laws?<BR><BR>What is known to few is
that Newton (who ironically gets a lot of the<BR>blame for the Eulerian
assumption) inveighed strongly against equating<BR>cause with effect.
Historian of science, Ed Dellian, gives the full story<BR>on his website.
<http://www.neutonus-reformatus.de/frameset.html> I offer<BR>some
consequences in my talk at "Seizing an Alternative", which took place<BR>back
in
June.<BR><https://www.ctr4process.org/whitehead2015/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/PhilPrax.pdf><BR><BR>Having
thus waxed ebullient over your insights, I nonetheless tend to<BR>agree with
Terry that discussion on communication or information should<BR>not be
confined to language or genomics. In fact, I would contend that<BR>information
should not be limited to association with communication. As<BR>Stan Salthe
contends, it is more generally tied to any form of constraint.<BR>John
Collier, for example, identifies such information as inheres in<BR>structures
as "enformation", and this form is readily quantifiable using<BR>the
information calculus of
Shannon.<BR><http://people.clas.ufl.edu/ulan/files/FISPAP.pdf> Such
reckoning permits<BR>us to develop an alternative phenomenology to the "dead
objects moving<BR>according to universal laws" attempts to apprehend
life.<BR><http://people.clas.ufl.edu/ulan/publications/ecosystems/gand/><BR><BR>Prodded
by Jonas, we need to give intensive effort to articulating an<BR>"ontology of
life".<BR><BR>Peace,<BR>Bob U.<BR><BR>><BR>> re: it is likely to be
problematic to use language as the paradigm model<BR>> for all
communication--Terrence Deacon<BR>><BR>> Terry makes interesting
points, but I think on this one, he may be<BR>> wrong.<BR>> Guenther
Witzany is on to something. our previous approaches
to<BR>> information have been what Barbara Ehrenreich, in her
introduction to the<BR>> upcoming<BR>> paperback of my book The God
Problem: How a Godless Cosmos Creates, calls<BR>> "a kind of
unacknowledged necrophilia."<BR>><BR>> we've been using dead things to
understand living things. aristotle put<BR>> us on that path
when he told us that if we could break things down to<BR>> their<BR>>
"elements" and understand what he called the "laws" of those elements,<BR>>
we'd<BR>> understand everything. Newton took us farther down that
path when he said<BR>> we could understand everything using the metaphor of
the "contrivance,"<BR>> the<BR>> machine--the metaphor of
"mechanics" and of "mechanism."<BR>><BR>> Aristotle and Newton were
wrong. Their ideas have had centuries to pan<BR>> out, and
they've led to astonishing insights, but they've left us blind<BR>>
to<BR>> the relational aspect of things. utterly blind.<BR>><BR>> the
most amazing metaphor of relationality available to us is not math,<BR>>
it's not mechanism, and it's not reduction to "elements," it's
language.<BR>> by<BR>> using the metaphor of a form of language called
"code," watson and crick<BR>> were able to understand what a strand
of dna does and how. without<BR>> language<BR>> as
metaphor, we'd still be in the dark about the genome.<BR>><BR>>
i'm convinced that by learning the relational secrets of the body of
work<BR>> of a Shakespeare or a Goethe we could crack some of the secrets
we've been<BR>> utterly unable to comprehend, from what makes the social
clots we call a<BR>> galaxy's spiral arms (a phenomenon that astronomer
Greg Matloff, a Fellow<BR>> of<BR>> the British interplanetary
Society, says defies the laws of Newtonian<BR>> and<BR>>
Einsteinian physics) to what makes the difference between life and
death.<BR>><BR>> in other words, it's time we confess in science just
how little we know<BR>> about language, that we explore language's
mysteries, and that we use our<BR>> discoveries as a crowbar to pry open
the secrets of this highly<BR>> contextual,<BR>> deeply relational,
profoundly communicational cosmos.<BR>><BR>> with thanks for tolerating
my opinions.<BR>><BR>> howard<BR>><BR>> ____________<BR>>
Howard
Bloom<BR><BR><BR></FONT></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV></FONT></DIV></FONT></BODY></HTML>