<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><style id="signatureStyle" type="text/css"><!--#x15c6b769a16b40e #x337b22579712426abf55c20f258d0a74 p.MsoNormal, #x15c6b769a16b40e #x337b22579712426abf55c20f258d0a74 div.MsoNormal
{margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;}
#x15c6b769a16b40e #x337b22579712426abf55c20f258d0a74 a:link
{color: blue; text-decoration: underline;}
#x15c6b769a16b40e #x337b22579712426abf55c20f258d0a74 a:visited
{color: rgb(149, 79, 114); text-decoration: underline;}
--></style><style id="css_styles" type="text/css"><!--blockquote.cite { margin-left: 5px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right:0px; border-left: 1px solid #cccccc }
blockquote.cite2 {margin-left: 5px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right:0px; border-left: 1px solid #cccccc; margin-top: 3px; padding-top: 0px; }
a img { border: 0px; }
ol, ul { list-style-position: inside }
body { font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 11pt; }#xdf826dbd69c64ce #x7fee5c23bfa247d #x337b22579712426abf55c20f258d0a74 p.MsoNormal,#xdf826dbd69c64ce #x7fee5c23bfa247d #x337b22579712426abf55c20f258d0a74 div.MsoNormal{
margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;
font-size:11pt;
font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;
}
#xdf826dbd69c64ce #x7fee5c23bfa247d #x337b22579712426abf55c20f258d0a74 a:link{
color:blue;
text-decoration:underline;
}
#xdf826dbd69c64ce #x7fee5c23bfa247d #x337b22579712426abf55c20f258d0a74 a:visited{
color:#954F72;
text-decoration:underline;
}--></style><style id="css_styles" type="text/css"><!--#xdf826dbd69c64ce blockquote.cite{
margin-left:5px;
margin-right:0px;
padding-left:10px;
padding-right:0px;
border-left:1px solid #CCC ;
}
#xdf826dbd69c64ce blockquote.cite2{
margin-left:5px;
margin-right:0px;
padding-left:10px;
padding-right:0px;
border-left:1px solid #CCC;
margin-top:3px;
padding-top:0px;
}
#xdf826dbd69c64ce a img{
border:0px;
}
#xdf826dbd69c64ce ol,#xdf826dbd69c64ce ul{
list-style-position:inside;
}
#xdf826dbd69c64ce{
font-family:Tahoma;
font-size:11pt;
}--></style></head><body><div><div style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Dear Loet,<br><br>I mean to be analytical too. The Pythonesque nature of my questioning leads naturally to recursion: What is the meaning of meaning? There's a logic in the recursion - Peirce, Spencer-Brown, Leibnitz, Lou Kauffman... and you have probed this. <br><br>Were you or I to be part of a recursive symmetry, how would we know? Where would the scientia be? How would we express our knowledge? In a journal? Why not in a symphony? (the musicologists miss the point about music: Schoenberg commented once on the musical graphs of Heinrich Schenker: "where are my favourite tunes? Ah! There.. In those tiny notes!")<br><br>I agree that operationalisation is important. But it can (and does) happen in ways other than those expressed in the content of discourse. If this topic of "information" is of any value, it is because it should open our senses to that. <br><br>Best wishes,<br><br>Mark</div></div><div dir="ltr"><hr><span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: bold;">From: </span><span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"><a href="mailto:loet@leydesdorff.net">Loet Leydesdorff</a></span><br><span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: bold;">Sent: </span><span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">15/10/2017 07:17</span><br><span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: bold;">To: </span><span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"><a href="mailto:johnsonmwj1@gmail.com">Mark Johnson</a>; <a href="mailto:deacon@berkeley.edu">Terrence W. DEACON</a>; <a href="mailto:sji@pharmacy.rutgers.edu">Sungchul Ji</a></span><br><span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: bold;">Cc: </span><span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"><a href="mailto:fis@listas.unizar.es">foundationofinformationscience</a></span><br><span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: bold;">Subject: </span><span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Re[2]: [Fis] Data - Reflection - Information</span><br><br></div><div>Dear Mark:</div><div><br></div><div id="xdf826dbd69c64ce"><blockquote class="cite2" cite="59e269e3.133f1c0a.9594c.3c2c@mx.google.com" type="cite"><div><div style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Do we want to defend a definition of meaning which is tied to scientific practice as we know it? Would that be too narrow? Ours may not be the only way of doing science... </div></div></blockquote><font face="Calibri, sans-serif"><div id="xdf826dbd69c64ce"><font face="Calibri, sans-serif">I meant my remarks analytically. You provide them with a normative turn as defensive against alternative ways of doing science.</font></div><br></font><blockquote class="cite2" cite="59e269e3.133f1c0a.9594c.3c2c@mx.google.com" type="cite"><div><div style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">A non-discursive science might be possible - a science based around shared musical experience, or meditation, for example. Or even Hesse's "Glasperlenspiel"... Higher level coordination need not necessarily occur in language. Our communication technologies may one day give us new post-linguistic ways of coordinating ourselves. </div></div></blockquote><font face="Calibri, sans-serif"><div id="xdf826dbd69c64ce"><font face="Calibri, sans-serif">Why should one wish to consider this as science? One can make music together without doing science. Musicology, however, is discursive reasoning about these practices.</font></div><br></font><blockquote class="cite2" cite="59e269e3.133f1c0a.9594c.3c2c@mx.google.com" type="cite"><div><div style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Codification is important in our science as we know it. But it should also be said that our science is blind to many things. Its reductionism prevents effective interdisciplinary inquiry, it struggles to reconcile practices, bodies, and egos, and its recent obsession with journal publication has produced the conditions of Babel which has fed the pathology in our institutions. There's less meaning in the academy than there was 50 years ago.</div></div></blockquote><font face="Calibri, sans-serif"><div id="xdf826dbd69c64ce"><font face="Calibri, sans-serif">This is a question with a Monty Python flavor: what is the meaning of science? what is the meaning of life?</font></div><div id="xdf826dbd69c64ce"><font face="Calibri, sans-serif"><br></font></div></font><blockquote class="cite2" cite="59e269e3.133f1c0a.9594c.3c2c@mx.google.com" type="cite"><div><div style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">The implication is that our distinguishing between information and meaning in science may be an epiphenomenon of something deeper.</div></div></blockquote><font face="Calibri, sans-serif"><div id="xdf826dbd69c64ce"><font face="Calibri, sans-serif">One can always ask for "something deeper". The answers, however, tend to become religious. I am interested in operationalization and design.</font></div><div id="xdf826dbd69c64ce"><font face="Calibri, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div id="xdf826dbd69c64ce"><font face="Calibri, sans-serif">Best,</font></div><div id="xdf826dbd69c64ce"><font face="Calibri, sans-serif">Loet</font></div><br></font><blockquote class="cite2" cite="59e269e3.133f1c0a.9594c.3c2c@mx.google.com" type="cite"><div><div style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"><br><br>Best wishes,<br><br>Mark<br><br></div></div><div dir="ltr"><hr><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-weight: bold;">From: </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><a href="mailto:loet@leydesdorff.net">Loet Leydesdorff</a></span><br><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-weight: bold;">Sent: </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">14/10/2017 16:06</span><br><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-weight: bold;">To: </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><a href="mailto:deacon@berkeley.edu">Terrence W. DEACON</a>; <a href="mailto:sji@pharmacy.rutgers.edu">Sungchul Ji</a></span><br><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-weight: bold;">Cc: </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><a href="mailto:fis@listas.unizar.es">foundationofinformationscience</a></span><br><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-weight: bold;">Subject: </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Re: [Fis] Data - Reflection - Information</span><br><br></div><div>Dear Terry and colleagues, </div><div><br></div>
<div id="xfa3f3f12861b497"><blockquote class="cite2" cite="CAOJbPRKGD-CM+2o4JfhXkTFA3Ac3J5Zd4uXKbh0VvtZL1TLBzg@mail.gmail.com" type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><div>"Language is rather the special case, the most unusual communicative adaptation to ever have evolved, and one that grows out of and depends on informationa/semiotic capacities shared with other species and with biology in general."</div></div></blockquote>Let me try to argue in favor of "meaning", "language", and "discursive knowledge", precisely because they provide the "differentia specifica" of mankind. "Meaning" can be provided by non-humans such as animals or networks, but distinguishing between the information content and the meaning of a message requires a discourse. The discourse enables us to codify the meaning of the information at the supra-individual level. Discursive knowledge is based on further codification of this intersubjective meaning. All categories used, for example, in this discussion are codified in scholarly discourses. The discourse(s) provide(s) the top of the hierarchy that controls given the cybernetic principle that construction is bottom up and control top-down.</div><div id="xfa3f3f12861b497"><br></div><div id="xfa3f3f12861b497">Husserl uses "intentionality" and "intersubjective intentionality" instead of "meaning". Perhaps, this has advantages; but I am not so sure that the difference is more than semantic. In Cartesian Meditations (1929) he argues that this intersubjective intentionality provides us with the basis of an empirical philosophy of science. The sciences do not begin with observations, but with the specification of expectations in discourses. A predator also observes his prey, but in scholarly discourses, systematic observations serve the update of codified (that is, theoretical) expectations.</div><div id="xfa3f3f12861b497"><br></div><div id="xfa3f3f12861b497">Best,</div><div id="xfa3f3f12861b497">Loet</div><div id="xfa3f3f12861b497"><br></div><div id="xfa3f3f12861b497"><br></div>
</blockquote></div>
</body></html>