<div dir="ltr">Cari Tutti,<div>condivido al 100% quel che afferma Marcin che si ritrova scritto in circa 20 miei libri. Quando parlo di significazione, informazione e comunicazione mi riferisco all'intera esistenza e a tutta la conoscenza in-centrate su quattro (ma potrebbero essere 44) tipi di informazione: termodinamica o naturale (entropia e neg-entropia); bio-ecologica (informazione genetica che si trasmette genealogicamente); semiotico-ermeneutica (informazione semantica); matematica (bit di entropia uguale alla e differente dalla seconda legge della termodinamica secondo Boltzmann). Si vuole prendere atto di questo punto cruciale o no? Altrimenti cadiamo nella melassa entropica della confusione.</div><div>Grazie.</div><div>Francesco Rizzo.</div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">2015-09-29 8:02 GMT+02:00 mjs@aiu <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:mjs@aiu.ac.jp" target="_blank">mjs@aiu.ac.jp</a>></span>:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
Dear Howard:<br>
I am afraid one of your examples is not really accurate
historically:<br>
"<font size="2" color="#000000" face="Verdana">the
most amazing metaphor of relationality available to us is not
math, it's not mechanism, and it's not reduction to "elements,"
it's language. by using the metaphor of a form of language called
"code," watson and crick were able to understand what a strand of
dna does and how. without language as metaphor, we'd still be in
the dark about the genome."<br>
The idea how to pack huge amount of information in something as
small as chromosome came not from language, but from
Schroedinger's concept of aperiodic crystal in his book "What is
Life?". Crick switched from his candidacy in physics to biology
after reading this book. He knew very well what he was looking for
together with Watson. And crystals, periodic or not, do not have
much common with language.<br>
Regards,<br>
Marcin <br>
</font><br>
<div>On 9/29/2015 2:39 PM, <a href="mailto:HowlBloom@aol.com" target="_blank">HowlBloom@aol.com</a>
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<font size="2" color="#000000" face="Verdana">
<div> </div>
<div>re: it is likely to be problematic to use language as the
paradigm model for all communication--Terrence Deacon</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Terry makes interesting points, but I think on this one,
he may be wrong. Guenther Witzany is on to something. our
previous approaches to information have been what Barbara
Ehrenreich, in her introduction to the upcoming paperback of
my book The God Problem: How a Godless Cosmos Creates, calls
"a kind of unacknowledged necrophilia."</div>
<div> </div>
<div>we've been using dead things to understand living things.
aristotle put us on that path when he told us that if we could
break things down to their "elements" and understand what he
called the "laws" of those elements, we'd understand
everything. Newton took us farther down that path when he
said we could understand everything using the metaphor of the
"contrivance," the machine--the metaphor of "mechanics" and of
"mechanism." </div>
<div> </div>
<div>Aristotle and Newton were wrong. Their ideas have had
centuries to pan out, and they've led to astonishing insights,
but they've left us blind to the relational aspect of things.
utterly blind.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>the most amazing metaphor of relationality available to us
is not math, it's not mechanism, and it's not reduction to
"elements," it's language. by using the metaphor of a form
of language called "code," watson and crick were able to
understand what a strand of dna does and how. without
language as metaphor, we'd still be in the dark about the
genome.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>i'm convinced that by learning the relational secrets of
the body of work of a Shakespeare or a Goethe we could crack
some of the secrets we've been utterly unable to comprehend,
from what makes the social clots we call a galaxy's spiral
arms (a phenomenon that astronomer Greg Matloff, <span style="FONT-SIZE:10pt;FONT-FAMILY:"Verdana","sans-serif"">a
Fellow of the British interplanetary Society,</span> says
defies the laws of Newtonian and Einsteinian physics) to what
makes the difference between life and death.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>in other words, it's time we confess in science just how
little we know about language, that we explore language's
mysteries, and that we use our discoveries as a crowbar to pry
open the secrets of this highly contextual, deeply relational,
profoundly communicational cosmos.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>with thanks for tolerating my opinions.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>howard</div>
<div> </div>
<div><font lang="0" size="2" face="Century Gothic">____________<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>
<a href="http://www.howardbloom.net" target="_blank">www.howardbloom.net</a><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" size="2" color="#000000" face="Verdana"><br>
<div> </div>
<div>
<div>In a message dated 9/28/2015 11:47:26 A.M. Eastern
Daylight Time, <a href="mailto:pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es" target="_blank">pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es</a> writes:</div>
<blockquote style="PADDING-LEFT:10px;MARGIN-LEFT:10px"><font style="BACKGROUND-COLOR:transparent" size="2" color="#000000" face="Arial"><small><font size="+2"><small>From
Terry...</small></font></small><br>
<br>
-------- Original Message --------
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th align="right" nowrap valign="baseline">Subject: </th>
<td>Re: [Fis] Information is a linguistic
description of structures</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th align="right" nowrap valign="baseline">Date: </th>
<td>Sun, 27 Sep 2015 22:13:14 -0700</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th align="right" nowrap valign="baseline">From: </th>
<td>Terrence W. Deacon <a title="mailto:deacon@berkeley.edu" href="mailto:deacon@berkeley.edu" target="_blank"></a><a href="mailto:deacon@berkeley.edu" target="_blank"><deacon@berkeley.edu></a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th align="right" nowrap valign="baseline">To: </th>
<td>Pedro C. Marijuan <a title="mailto:pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es" href="mailto:pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es" target="_blank"><pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es></a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th align="right" nowrap valign="baseline">CC: </th>
<td>Günther Witzany <a title="mailto:witzany@sbg.at" href="mailto:witzany@sbg.at" target="_blank"><witzany@sbg.at></a>,
<a title="mailto:farah@howardbloom.net" href="mailto:farah@howardbloom.net" target="_blank"><farah@howardbloom.net></a>,
fis <a title="mailto:fis@listas.unizar.es" href="mailto:fis@listas.unizar.es" target="_blank"><fis@listas.unizar.es></a>,
Emanuel Diamant <a title="mailto:emanl.245@gmail.com" href="mailto:emanl.245@gmail.com" target="_blank"><emanl.245@gmail.com></a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th align="right" nowrap valign="baseline">References: </th>
<td><a title="mailto:000201d0f68c$77d02b50$677081f0$@gmail.com" href="mailto:000201d0f68c$77d02b50$677081f0$@gmail.com" target="_blank"><000201d0f68c$77d02b50$677081f0$@gmail.com></a>
<a title="mailto:0D34F6EF-19E6-4C9C-A9D3-ABA4F5F2E7C7@sbg.at" href="mailto:0D34F6EF-19E6-4C9C-A9D3-ABA4F5F2E7C7@sbg.at" target="_blank"><0D34F6EF-19E6-4C9C-A9D3-ABA4F5F2E7C7@sbg.at></a>
<a title="mailto:56053208.2000406@aragon.es" href="mailto:56053208.2000406@aragon.es" target="_blank"><56053208.2000406@aragon.es></a></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<br>
<br>
<div dir="ltr">As exemplified in Guenther's auxin
example, and Pedro's worries about the procrustean
use of language metaphors in the discussion of
inter- and intra-cellular communication, it is
likely to be problematic to use language as the
paradigm model for all communication, much less as
the foundation upon which to build a general theory
of information. From an evolutionary point of view,
language is a highly derived human idiosyncratic
form of communication that evolved only
very recently in vertebrate phylogeny, in only one
species, and is supported by a vast semiotic
cognitive and social infrastructure. Communication
in a more general sense is vastly older and far more
generic. For this reason, it is wise to avoid
talking in terms of the semantics of a cough, the
meaning of a piece of music, or the syntax of a
skunk's odor. The use of Carnap's approach to
language semantics and various other uses of
linguistic categories in information theoretic
analyses needs to be understood as a special case,
not the generic form. I would recommend that
presentations and comments to them be framed with
appropriate caveats, indicating whether they address
such special cases of human information or are
intended to be generic. </div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Sep 25, 2015 at
4:37 AM, Pedro C. Marijuan <span dir="ltr"><<a title="mailto:pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es" href="mailto:pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es" target="_blank"></a><a href="mailto:pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es" target="_blank">pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT:1ex;MARGIN:0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex;BORDER-LEFT:rgb(204,204,204) 1px solid">
<div bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000">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:
<blockquote cite="http://mid0D34F6EF-19E6-4C9C-A9D3-ABA4F5F2E7C7@sbg.at" type="cite">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>
<div>
<div>Am 24.09.2015 um 07:47 schrieb
Emanuel Diamant:</div>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div link="#0563C1" vlink="#954F72" lang="EN-US">
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>Dear FIS colleagues,</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span></span> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>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:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span></span> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>1. <b>Information is a linguistic
description of structures
observable in a given data
set</b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>2. Two types of data structures could be
distinguished in a data set:
primary and secondary data
structures.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>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.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>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. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>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>. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>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.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span></span> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>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.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span></span> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>That is what I have to say at this
moment.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>My best regards to all of you,</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>Emanuel.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
</div>
<br>
<br>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<span><font color="#888888"><br>
<br>
<pre 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. <a title="tel:+34 976 71 3526" href="tel:%2B34%20976%2071%203526" value="+34976713526" target="_blank">+34 976 71 3526</a> (& 6818)
<a title="mailto:pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es" href="mailto:pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es" target="_blank">pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es</a>
<a title="http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/" href="http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/" target="_blank">http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/</a>
-------------------------------------------------
</pre>
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</blockquote>
</div>
<br>
<br clear="all">
<div><br>
</div>
-- <br>
<div>Professor Terrence W.
Deacon<br>
University of California, Berkeley</div>
</div>
<br>
<pre 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. <a href="tel:%2B34%20976%2071%203526" value="+34976713526" target="_blank">+34 976 71 3526</a> (& 6818)
<a title="mailto:pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es" href="mailto:pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es" target="_blank">pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es</a>
<a title="http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/" href="http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/" target="_blank">http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/</a>
-------------------------------------------------
</pre>
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