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body { font-family: Segoe UI; font-size: 12pt; }</style></head><body class="plain"><div>Dear Pedro, </div><div><br /></div><div id="xca2bddc4c2b4479"><blockquote type="cite" class="cite2"><div>To Loet, unfortunately real life does not allow such neat scheme
of expectations, observations, and modifications/decisions--except
in the abstract. Daily life is surrounded by multitude of
behavioral cycles and happenstances from the subject himself and
from the surrounding parties impinging on the subject. It is
difficult to isolate mainstreams there, and it is difficult to
know how to orient oneself for the troubled future. </div></blockquote><div id="xca2bddc4c2b4479">This is called the context of discovery. Real life is neither an explanans nor an explanandum. Who wishes to explain happenstances?</div><div id="xca2bddc4c2b4479"><br /></div><div id="xca2bddc4c2b4479">This is strange. </div><div id="xca2bddc4c2b4479"><br /></div><blockquote type="cite" class="cite2"><div>There are
now ambitious theoretical schemes of neural information processing
that could provide light on other points of the conscious, the
emotional, the sensorimotor, the excitation/inhibition coupling,
the optimization of neural entropy, etc. But they have to connect
with natural behavior, and also finally with narratives. </div><div><br /></div></blockquote></div><blockquote style="margin: 0 0 0 40px; border: none; padding: 0px;"><div><blockquote type="cite" class="cite2"><div>I assume that your behaviour is more "natural" than mine. Eventually, this may lead to narratives as bla-bla. Of course, everything has to be spelled out in an explanation.</div><div><br /></div><div>Best,</div><div>Loet</div><div><br /></div></blockquote></div></blockquote><div><blockquote type="cite" class="cite2"><div><br /><br /><br />
To Jerry's, after his four pages on perplex number system, I can
only say that great, terrific. It could have been an interesting
presentation for an ad hoc discussion session. I am tempted to
twist a few sentences of his text and to intercalate four pages or
so on signaling systems, or on the "sociotype", which is closer to
the current session. But that is not the scholarly way of
discussion.<br />
<br />
To finalize, there is a provocative sentence in Bonnet's closing
of his book: "The one who tells the stories rules the world."<br />
<br />
Best wishes<br />
--Pedro <br />
<br />
<br />
El 25/11/2018 a las 5:10, Loet Leydesdorff escribió:<br />
</div>
<blockquote type="cite" class="cite">
<div>Dear Pedro, Joseph, and colleagues, </div>
<div><br />
</div>
<div>Let me side with Joseph in this instance.</div>
<div id="x24986aaac8ed49c"><br />
<blockquote type="cite" class="cite2">
<div>memories? And, similarly, does
not "potential" refer to cognitive/anticipatory capabilities
that somehow detect higher fitness possibilities along some
behavioral paths than others, and then conduce to the long
term realization and flourishing of a life cycle? The
potential belongs, say, to the "processual" not to the
physical. In my view, the general challenge is to re-explain
narratives, the fundamental commodity of social
communication, in a more advanced conceptualization, beyond
the Jungian, the Shannonian, or the corrosive
fake-correctedness of our times... It can be done. The
neuroscientific approach would be badly needed to recreate
the terminology and the fundamental ideas.</div>
</blockquote>
<div id="x24986aaac8ed49c">Perhaps, I miss the meaning
of some of the wordings in this narrative :-), but it seems to
me that there is something terribly wrong here. "The potential
belongs ... to the "processual." We can consider this as "nom
de gueux."</div>
<div id="x24986aaac8ed49c"><br />
</div>
<div id="x24986aaac8ed49c">One always begins with the
specification of expectations. I assume that these are then
"processual"? Expectations (possible states) are tested
against observations and can then sometimes be rejected.</div>
<div id="x24986aaac8ed49c"><br />
</div>
<div id="x24986aaac8ed49c">For example: One can
hypothesize that there are gender differences on this list.
Then, one can cross-table those of us who on average publish
0, 1, or 2 postings with the gender differences (M/F). This
generates a 3 times 2 table. </div>
<div id="x24986aaac8ed49c"><br />
</div>
<div id="x24986aaac8ed49c">Using the margin totals one
can compute the expected values of each cell and test the
observed values against the expectations. The expectations are
"processual"? Indeed, they are possibilities which do not have
to be realized. That is an empirical question.</div>
<div id="x24986aaac8ed49c"><br />
</div>
<div id="x24986aaac8ed49c">Unfortunately,
Logic-in-Reality works as a logic with only two values (T/F).
This may lead to a poor design when one needs more grey
shades.</div>
<div id="x24986aaac8ed49c"><br />
</div>
<div id="x24986aaac8ed49c">Best,</div>
<div id="x24986aaac8ed49c">Loet.</div>
<div id="x24986aaac8ed49c"><br />
</div>
<div id="x24986aaac8ed49c">
<div><br />
</div>
<div id="signature_old">
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<div id="x337b22579712426abf55c20f258d0a74">
<div>
<div>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------</div>
</div>
<div>Loet
Leydesdorff </div><div> </div>
<div>Professor
emeritus,
University of Amsterdam<br />
Amsterdam School of Communication Research
(ASCoR)</div><div> </div>
<div>loet@leydesdorff.net
<mailto:loet@leydesdorff.net>; http://www.leydesdorff.net/ <br />
Associate
Faculty, SPRU, <http://www.sussex.ac.uk/spru/>University of
Sussex; </div><div> </div>
<div>Guest Professor Zhejiang Univ. <http://www.zju.edu.cn/english/>, Hangzhou; Visiting
Professor, ISTIC, <http://www.istic.ac.cn/Eng/brief_en.html>Beijing;</div><div> </div>
<div>Visiting Fellow, Birkbeck <http://www.bbk.ac.uk/>,
University of London; </div><div> </div>
http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ych9gNYAAAAJ&hl=en</div>
<div id="x337b22579712426abf55c20f258d0a74"><br />
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<br />
</div>
<br />
<blockquote type="cite" class="cite2">
<div><br />
<br />
Best regards<br />
--Pedro <br />
<br />
El 21/11/2018 a las 9:31, Joseph Brenner escribió:<br />
</div>
<blockquote type="cite" class="cite">
<div>
<div>Dear Colleagues,</div><div> </div>
<div> </div><div> </div>
<div>Pedro’s
approach, solidly anchored in biology, allows for
progress in understanding. Two comments on his
‘logic’: 1) I would not call the ‘concoction’ within
which we live imaginary. It is rather a set of real,
dynamic mental processes, with actual and potential,
effectively causal components. 2) ‘Complex life’
instantiates potential (and kinetic) energy not only
in a ‘book keeping role’. Complex life is
constituted by actual and potential energy evolving
in cycles and stages. Some myths (Epimetheus and
Prometheus) correctly express this duality and its
evolution.</div><div> </div>
<div> </div><div> </div>
<div>Unfortunately,
there is another myth that I believe correctly
models part of Jerry’s proposals. It is that of
Procrustes, an innkeeper who stretched or cut the
legs of his guests to make them fit the only
available beds, until taken care of by Heracles. You
write: A lot more
needs to be said about the intimate nature of
relations among scientific narratives before one can
bind the logic of the perplex number system to the
grammars associated with mathematically structured
anticipatory systems.</div><div> </div>
<div> </div><div> </div>
<div>This
sentence needs to be parsed, given the concatenation
of terms: in my opinion, the purpose of
understanding the relations among scientific
narratives is to understand real anticipatory
systems, whether or not mathematically structured.
Perplex numbers are artificial numerological
constructions with a corresponding logic that may or
may not apply to other artificial constructions,
such as abstract anticipatory systems, without
dynamics. Narratives about real science could be
applied in principle to such questions, but the
implication must be avoided that such application
would tell us anything about reality. </div><div> </div>
<div> </div><div> </div>
<div>I
cannot accept any manipulation of numbers as being
more than a posteriori. This applies also
to Karl’s approach. Also, the concept of an ‘in-formed’
number is an oxymoron, although I understand the
attempt to ascribe ‘value-by-association’, so to
speak. Numbers cannot accept ‘form’, or its meaning;
they exist, eternally, outside the world of form and
change. </div><div> </div>
<div> </div><div> </div>
<div>I
thus stress the importance of Pedro’s statement:
processes do not go smoothly upwards from the quantum level. As
one proceeds to higher levels of reality, there are
discontinuities and different laws apply. One only
notes the presence of some isomorphisms, such as the
failure of some macroscopic process equations to
commute or distribute. Finally, I, at least, will
resist any attempts to let in, through the back
door, anti-scientific concepts of quantum processes
in mind and cognition.</div><div> </div>
<div> </div><div> </div>
<div>Best
wishes,</div><div> </div>
<div> </div><div> </div>
<div>Joseph</div><div> </div>
<div>
<div>
<div>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------</div> </div>
<div>From:
Fis [mailto:fis-bounces@listas.unizar.es]
On Behalf Of Pedro C. Marijuan<br />
Sent: mardi, 20 novembre 2018 21:15<br />
To: fis<br />
Cc: Jerry LR Chandler<br />
Subject: Re: [Fis] Anticipatory
Systems--"Potential"</div><div> </div>
</div>
<div> </div><div> </div>
<div>
<div>Dear
Jerry and FIS colleagues,<br />
<br />
I wonder how big or how clever your Chemostat
apparatus should be. There are thousands of
metabolic intermediates in an organism, and there
are another thousands of diversified signals. And we
have in the order of 30 billion cells (trillions in
the US system). Plus around 100 trillion of
bacterial cells in the microbiome. "We" are the
emergence all of that molecular diversity. It does
not mean that life exactly "controls" all the
details of the mega-information of this whole
system... How that control is organized, the
principles of biological information, so to speak,
become another great question, but probably very
different from the idea of mass control in a
chemostat. In any case,
the way you have argued it, seemingly smoothly going
upwards from the quantum level, is beyond of what I
consider feasible. Scientific overstretching
of a reasonable paradigm perhaps.<br />
<br />
Socially, indeed, we do not try to communicate around
by following a colossal strategy of reducing
happenstances to their quantum description; neither to
the kind of meta-languages you mention. In general,
social communication revolves around narratives. They
are not free-wheeling constructions (at least
referring to the "great stories" of all epochs) but
optimized tools to guide individuals in the
advancement of their lives, in the achievement of
their "potential". Looking at the historical evolution
of those great stories, they are teaching us about
which were the cardinal aspects of common life to be
specifically grasped by the child, by the adolescent,
by the maiden, the artisan, the warrior, the priest...
And in this social communication endeavors, life
cycles do not appear as homogeneous linearly "timed".
Human lives are continuously looking ahead,
anticipating ("Prometheus" style) but simultaneously
looking at the past and pondering on it ("Epimetheus"
style). Although "presentists", we live within an
imaginary concoction built of mosaic pasts and
futures, "multi-timed" so to speak. The way to
harmonize past, present, and future (vital
information) is one of the leit motifs of those great
stories.<br />
<br />
And about cycles, so many of them can be found. At the
scale of the organism: cellular & tissular
cycles, metabolic cycles, behavioral cycles, ultradian
cycles, circadian cycles, seasonal cycles, yearly
cycles, secular cycles, and many others related to
social mores. Some of them can be arranged in a sort
of hierarchy or inclusivity, but there is a
fundamental diversity. That most of this orchestration
of cycles does not require a conscious effort does not
mean that we should ignore them concerning the roots
of social communication. The cycles and stages (and
"passages") within a life cycle have an ominous
presence. As i was saying, the "potential" of each
young life in ascend requires the reception of wisdom
(via social communication narratives) to integrate the
own individual path within the social matrix of the
time.<br />
<br />
Thinking twice about the "potential" of life, it might
be something important to consider regarding any form
or manifestation of life. Perhaps better than the
Principle of Conatus from Spinoza I was referring days
ago (the effort to self-maintain and flourish).
Complex life has "potential" to advance along some
multi-time, multi-cycle developmental path in the most
complex of all environments: the social matrix. Is
there some deep similarity of this potential with the
role that "potential" energy plays in our book-keeping
of energy conservation?<br />
<br />
Thanking the comments,<br />
Best--Pedro<br />
<br />
</div><div> </div>
</div>
</div>
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<div><br />
</div><div> </div>
<pre>--
-------------------------------------------------
Pedro C. Marijuán
Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group
pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es
http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/
------------------------------------------------- </pre>
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<pre>--
-------------------------------------------------
Pedro C. Marijuán
Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group
pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es
http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/
------------------------------------------------- </pre>
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