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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body bgcolor=white lang=EN-US link="#0563C1" vlink="#954F72"><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#44546A'>Dear Pedro and colleagues, <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#44546A'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><div><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in'>"Agency" is missing. It is factually minimized under the form of constraints and uncertainty. Communication occurs because some kind of "emitter" agent operates as a "source" and sends "messages" via an appropriate "channel" to some "receiver". I have put quotations to the standard Shannonian terms. My central question: could there be any form of non-living agency? And then, What different forms of life could receive the "agent" label? How being alive biases the non-at-all-free communication game?<br><br><span style='color:#44546A'><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#44546A'>For example: if one constructs a citation matrix with the cited papers in the rows and the citing papers in the columns, citing can be considered as action and cited as structure. There is a mutual information between cited and citing, but the effect of citing on cited is different from the effect of cited on citing. Thus, one can evaluate agency.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#44546A'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#44546A'>See also: <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><a href="http://www.leydesdorff.net/jses95/jses95.pdf">The Production of Probabilistic Entropy in Structure/Action Contingency Relations, </a><i>Journal of Social and Evolutionary Systems</i> 18 (1995) 339-56.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><a href="http://www.leydesdorff.net/jtsb93/index.htm">"Structure"/"Action" Contingencies and the Model of Parallel Distributed Processing, </a><i>Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour</i> 23 (1993) 47-77.<span style='color:#44546A'><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in'><span style='color:#44546A'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#44546A'>A similar argument can be made for evidence (agency) in relation to theory (structure):<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#44546A'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><a href="http://www.leydesdorff.net/ssi92/index.htm">Knowledge Representations, Bayesian Inferences, and Empirical Science Studies, </a><i>Social Science Information</i> 31 (1992, nr. 2), 213-37.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>If so wished, I can provide pdf.<span style='color:#44546A'><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in'><br>These questions will be refined next days...<br>Best--Pedro <br><br><span style='color:#44546A'><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#44546A'>Best, <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#44546A'>Loet<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#44546A'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><div class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;color:#1F497D'><hr size=3 width="100%" align=center></span></div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;color:#1F497D'>Loet Leydesdorff </span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;color:#1F497D'><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;color:#1F497D'>Professor, University of Amsterdam<br>Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR)<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#44546A'><a href="mailto:loet@leydesdorff.net" title="mailto:loet@leydesdorff.net"><span style='font-size:10.0pt;color:blue'>loet@leydesdorff.net </span></a></span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;color:#1F497D'>; </span><span style='color:#44546A'><a href="http://www.leydesdorff.net/" title="http://www.leydesdorff.net/"><span style='font-size:10.0pt;color:blue'>http://www.leydesdorff.net/</span></a></span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;color:#1F497D'> <br></span><span style='font-size:9.0pt'>Associate Faculty, </span><span style='color:#44546A'><a href="http://www.sussex.ac.uk/spru/"><span style='font-size:9.0pt;color:blue'>SPRU, </span></a></span><span style='font-size:9.0pt'>University of Sussex; <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:9.0pt'>Guest Professor </span><span style='color:#44546A'><a href="http://www.zju.edu.cn/english/"><span style='font-size:9.0pt;color:blue'>Zhejiang Univ.</span></a></span><span style='font-size:9.0pt'>, Hangzhou; Visiting Professor, </span><span style='color:#44546A'><a href="http://www.istic.ac.cn/Eng/brief_en.html"><span style='font-size:9.0pt;color:blue'>ISTIC, </span></a></span><span style='font-size:9.0pt'>Beijing;<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:9.0pt'>Visiting Professor, </span><a name="_GoBack"></a><span style='color:#44546A'><a href="http://www.bbk.ac.uk/"><span style='font-size:9.0pt;color:blue'>Birkbeck</span></a></span><span style='font-size:9.0pt'>, University of London; <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#44546A'><a href="http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ych9gNYAAAAJ&hl=en"><span style='font-size:9.0pt;color:blue'>http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ych9gNYAAAAJ&hl=en</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p></div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#44546A'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#44546A'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div></body></html>