response to Jerry

dear Jerry & co-discussants;

Many thanks for your stimulating comments. Here it is a brief (?) response
to them:

>Should information be limited to operations on space - time objects or
>should material objects be admitted into the discussion? Tom S. at NCI
>has focused on the materiality of DNA information as manifested in
>sequences of material objects - the individual bases.
>If physical objects are admitted into the discussion, how are the
>material attributes to be enumerated and counted as 'information'?

That's the point. As far as I know, apart from Javorszky there has been no
other explorations on how one may count the number of logical distinctions
one could make upon a set of N elements, when one is free to arbitrarily
accumulate "signs" upon the elements of N. Once some upper limit of states
is reached, further accumulation of signs (properties) upon such elements
creates mere redundancy, without any new logical state. The mathematical
tool proposed to explore the successive decompositions of N in
"qualitative" properties is PARTITIONAL CALCULUS (a tool already used by
classical cryptographers), it is to say, the additive decomposition of N
into all its possible summands.

>I do not understand how the term "compositional" is being used here.
>In the sense of matheamtical functions ( f • g • h ) over a sequence of
>sets?
>What would be the nature of the objects being composed?
>

Jos� Pastor (computer scientist & cryptographer, also fis-discussant) and I
are proposing the term of "compositional info" to denote the use of a set
of N elements accumulating a certain number of signs in order to transmit
messages (info) between subjects. Given that any positional order of
messages has to be disregarded here, we believe that the dycotomy
"positional" (Shannon, or even von Neumann scheme) versus "compositional"
(Javorszkian scheme) may be illustrative.

>
>I do not understand the proposed relations between compositions and the
>min / max.
>Could you be more explicit in the nature of the counting operations and
>the functions?

Do you mind if we wait to our presentation (Jos� and me) in the bio
discussion? otherwise it becomes too long an answer.

>How would one distinguish between the term "strange way of existence"
>and non-stationary systems which have a "kernel" of stability but
>otherwise fluctuate in dimensionality? Other evolutionary examples of
>such systems could be given...

Personally, I find more parsimonious "info entities" or info "societies" (a
la Whitehead...)

>I believe that our current state of knowledge is sufficient to organize
>systems in terms of the "degrees of organization" - which may be related
>to Pedro's 'vertical' information.
>The problem becomes how to define the interrelationships between
>structures of different degrees of organization - such as an atom, a
>cell, a human being and a social system. Is the difference between
>these objects merely information or is it also scale and materiality and
>relationships with external systems?
>

von Bertalanffy, founding father of systems theory, was citing Dyonisius
Aeropagita as the author of the first vertical systemic scheme (more
celestially oriented than mundane...) Actually it was Dyonisius Exiguus,
around 520 AD. It is a very curious and interesting story, including the
generalized confussion between both authors, because it seems that this
funny vertical scheme, fueled by the religious prestige of the former but
crafted by the latter, represented one of the startpoints of the
non-aristotelian physics, culminating later on in the "impetus" doctrine
and the Galilean revolution... Let me please use this anecdote to argue
that, almost in every historical period, we have had "sufficient knowledge"
as you say "to organize systems" hierarchically, with a sense of
completion. Fortunately, from time to time, sufficient paradoxes and
"chinks" in the sci.armour have been found, disorganizing and reorganizing
the sci. conceptual establishment. Is the info topic a little part of one
of these strategic reorganizations? Somehow, that's what we are
exploring... One of the underlying most serious conflicts I see is between
info and the physical concept of "state". I would love hearing about that
from our physicists.

bests

Pedro

-----------------------------------------------------------
Pedro C. Mariju�n --FAX 34 976 761 861 --TEL 34 976 761 927
Dto. Ingenieria Electronica y Comunicaciones
CPS, Universidad de Zaragoza
Zaragoza 50015, SPAIN
Received on Fri Jan 23 14:09:46 1998