Re: cells are smart

Dear Koichiro,

sorry for puting Werner's words in your mouth (or mail!), but as we
are all inter-related, what we think and say is in some way what
others have thought and said (or not-thought, not-said).
One way of getting rid of Newtonian (metaphysical) time was
Heideggers conception of the human way of being as being in (or _as_)
time in a radically different way as all other things (we know of)
are, i.e. as being _ex-tended_ between the difference (!) of past,
present and future, grasping this difference _as such_. This was a
way of (in Popper's terms) falsifying the classical (metaphysical)
ideal, that all things are _in_ time in the same way. But, indeed,
this does not mean, that living beings are in the same way _in_ time
as, say, chairs or stars... Thus, your question concerning the
relation of _information_ to _time_ becomes a question of how beings
are in time and how their different _being in time_ is interrelated
to each other. In other words, we have to do with an extremely
complex situation...
sayonara
rafael

Date: Tue, 17 Feb 1998 10:18:06 +0100 (MET)
Reply-to: fis@listas.unizar.es
From: koichiro matsuno/7129 <kmatsuno@vos.nagaokaut.ac.jp>
To: Multiple recipients of list <fis@listas.unizar.es>
Subject: cells are smart

Dear Rafael and All:

   Rafael Capurro's analysis on conversion and transformation
is eye-catching. Although the statement

>I think the real problem is, how one of those forms of information
>can be converted into the other.

is Werner's not mine, Rafael's reminder on the linguistic aspect
of information should be well taken. If one raises the question of
"Which does information refer to, the experienced or experience?",
we would be at a loss for the choice. The safer choice may be for
both. This has been what both Carl Friedrich von Weizsacker and
G. Bateson seemed to imply. If we concentrate only on the
experienced, what experience is all about would quite easily slip
away. In contrast, if we limit ourselves only to experience per se,
many of us who are not trained as philosophers would lose the jobs.
Our linguistic institution must have some secret to cope with both
the experienced and experience. In this regard, Ray Paton's
distinction between different things at different times and
different times for different things is quite suggestive. This
perspective seems to invite us to think about a possible
relationship between information and time uder a bit new light.
If we feel sick and tired with Newtonian time and its relativistic
cousins, what should be an alternative? Cells are very smart as
Ray said, even if they do not know who Mr Newton is.

   Regards,
   Koichiro

     Koichiro Matsuno
Received on Sat Feb 21 21:01:01 1998