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Dear Mark and FIS Colleagues,<br>
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Apart from the very interesting "elevated" comments, let me
refer to more mundane aspects of scientific communication.<br>
<br>
First, is really publishing the essential form of scientific
communication? Or is it complementary to other more basic form?
My bet is that oral exchange continues to be the central
vehicle. It is the "Brownian Motion" that keeps running and
infuses vitality to the entire edifice of science. The success
of some new techs (eg, emails, discussion lists) is that they
share some curious characteristics with oral discussion groups.
"Publishing", is very old too (Plato, Aristotle, Alexandrian
Library...), and saves time and space constraints, and provides
"textual" shared memories as well, but without the face-to-face
contact it does not mark efficiently changes of thought.
Learning Institutions carefully preserve the infrastructure of
lectures, seminars, conventions, conferences, congresses,
"casual" encounters... Otherwise the system languishes into
bureaucracy and stagnation. <br>
<br>
Second, publications have had an important interference derived
from scientific massification (even before the current info
era). Given that publication records were taken the world around
as indicators of scientific productivity (linking thus salaries,
reputations, careers, investments, etc.) they took central stage
and became functionally "independent" of communicating the
advancements of thought beyond spacetime constraints. The budged
of research and innovation has escalated in most countries to
more than 2% of GDP. Management of these colossal figures does
not get very close to the scientific ethos of "sharing of
knowledge", conversely it carefully controls the indicators and
procedures for their own sake. <br>
<br>
Third, another related factor impinging is the enormous scale of
the whole scientific enterprise itself. Around 6,000
disciplines, millions of practitioners the world over (20 or 30
million scientists and technologists?). With every passing
generation after the industrial revolution, the R&D system
has approximately doubled. Besides, the recent incorporation of
China and India and other countries to the most advanced
research areas, has more than doubled the share of the present
generation. The publishing management and the factual
miscommunication between so many fields create really dense
problems. <br>
<br>
Together with the invasion of the new info techs, the factors
mentioned (neglect of the oral, indicator effect, untamed
massification) create a lot of pressure to change the system
"from within" probably. Personally I befriend the Open Access
movement and the likes, but I do not welcome the big burden of
screen-time implied (less reading, less talk, less creativity).
A new version of the "barbarianism of specialization" (Ortega y
Gasset) is breeding.<br>
<br>
Thanks for listening!<br>
<br>
Best--Pedro<font size="+3"><br>
</font><br>
El 10/10/2016 a las 21:56, Mark Johnson escribió:<br>
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<blockquote cite="mid:57fbf26d.4251c20a.92d9c.4778@mx.google.com"
type="cite"> <br>
Dear Dai, Rafael, Loet and all,<br>
<br>
Thank you for your comments - the theological connection
interests me<br>
because it potentially presents a paradigm of a more vulnerable<br>
and open dialogue.<br>
<br>
Loet, clearly the redundancy is apophatic, although one has to
be<br>
cautious in saying this: the domain of the apophatic is bigger
than<br>
the domain of Shannon redundancy. At some point in the future we
may<br>
do better in developing measurement techniques for 'surprise' in<br>
communication (I wonder if Lou Kauffman's Recursive
Distinguishing is<br>
a way forwards...). Shannon's formulae have served us well
because<br>
we've constrained our digital world around them. "Surprise",
from a<br>
phenomenological perspective, is a much more slippery thing than
the<br>
measure of probability. There are, as Keynes and others
identified,<br>
fundamental ontological assumptions about induction which do not<br>
appear to be sound in probabilistic thinking. These questions
are not<br>
separable from questions about the nature of empirical reasoning<br>
itself (Keynes used Hume as his reference point), and by
extension,<br>
about the communication between scientists. I still don't know
what<br>
information is; I've simply found it more helpful and
constructive to<br>
think about constraint, and Shannon redundancy presents itself
as a<br>
fairly simple thing to play with.<br>
<br>
Back to scientific communication, I've been looking at David
Bohm<br>
whose thoughts on dialogue are closely related to his thinking
about<br>
physics, and to my own concern for constraint. He writes:<br>
<br>
"when one comes to do something (and not merely to talk about it
or<br>
think about it), one tends to believe that one already is
listening to<br>
the other person in a proper way. It seems then that the main
trouble<br>
is that the other person is the one who is prejudiced and not<br>
listening. After all, it is easy for each one of us to see that
other<br>
people are 'blocked' about certain questions, so that without
being<br>
aware of it, they are avoiding the confrontation of
contradictions in<br>
certain ideas that may be extremely dear to them. The very
nature of<br>
such a 'block' is, however, that it is a kind of insensitivity
of<br>
"anaesthesia" about one's own contradictions." (Bohm, "On
Dialogue",<br>
p.4)<br>
<br>
The blocks are complex, but "published work" and "reputation"
are<br>
important factors in establishing them. I was at a conference
last<br>
week where a highly established figure castigated a young PhD
student<br>
who was giving an excellent but challenging presentation: "have
you<br>
read ANY of my books?!". The student dealt with the attack
elegantly;<br>
everyone else thought it revealed rather more about the
constraints of<br>
ego of the questioner (confirming a few suspicions they might
have had<br>
beforehand!)<br>
<br>
Our practices of "Not communicating" in science are, I think,<br>
well-demonstrated by considering this encounter between Richard<br>
Dawkins, Rowan Williams and Anthony Kenny.<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bow4nnh1Wv0">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bow4nnh1Wv0</a><br>
<br>
I think it's worth pointing out the constraints (or "blocks") of
their<br>
respective<br>
positions, which (particularly in Dawkins case) are very clearly
on<br>
display. My reading of this is that they attempt to communicate
by<br>
coordinating terminology/explanations/etc. All the time they are
aware<br>
of the fact that they have fundamentally different constraints:
there<br>
is no overlap of constraint, and really no communication. The
medium<br>
of the discussion is part<br>
of the problem: it structures itself around the 'topics' for
debate,<br>
and then it becomes a matter of not making oneself vulnerable
within<br>
that frame (this is what Bohm advocated avoiding). Yet for<br>
communication (or dialogue) to take place between<br>
these people, mutual vulnerability (I suggest) would have to be
the<br>
starting point. The discussion is also framed by the history and<br>
reputation established through the each participant's published
work.<br>
<br>
One of the reasons why I mentioned the theological work (and why
I<br>
think this is important) is that it is much harder to talk about<br>
theology without making oneself vulnerable - or at least, an<br>
invulnerable theology comes across as dogmatism... of the kind
that in<br>
this instance, is most clearly exemplified by Dawkins!<br>
<br>
What's missing is usually our vulnerability.<br>
<br>
Best wishes,<br>
<br>
Mark<br>
<br>
--<br>
Dr. Mark William Johnson<br>
Institute of Learning and Teaching<br>
Faculty of Health and Life Sciences<br>
University of Liverpool<br>
<br>
Phone: 07786 064505<br>
Email: <a moz-do-not-send="true"
class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated"
href="mailto:johnsonmwj1@gmail.com">johnsonmwj1@gmail.com</a><br>
Blog: <a moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://dailyimprovisation.blogspot.com">http://dailyimprovisation.blogspot.com</a><br>
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<br>
<p><br>
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<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
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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 moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es">pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es</a>
<a moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/">http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/</a>
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