[Fis] (no subject)

Dear Jerry,

Thank you for these interesting quotations from Whitehead.

Apologies for the following misunderstanding:

>I am puzzled on how one would fit chemical philosophy into such a
>mathematical philosophy. Chemistry philosophy is grounded on ratio's
>of small whole numbers and neither nuclei or electrons can be
>distributed into "1/2 + 1/2". Loet's post suggests that we need to
>look carefully at how the marketing of information is tied to simple
>mathematical operation of addition.

The example of 50/50 was just chosen to explain how information theory is grounded in probability theory. The addition is generated because by definition the sum of the probabilities is equal to unity. Additionally, the Shannon formulas are so elegant because they are based on simple summations (to the maximum of the maximum entropy of a system under study).

In chemical systems the distributions are more complex than 50/50. However a distribution can always be expected to contain an information. This description of the system is different from the chemical one. It generates an information-theoretical model of the system. The system under study is specified in terms of its operation: what is communicated when the system communicates? What is redistributed? This remains epistemologically the specification of an expectation.

Observations can be generated by specifying "how" the system is expected to operate. One can then ask whether this operation can also be indicated. The specification of an indicator may lead to the measurement. Thus, this is not a philosophy of mathematics or a philosophy of chemistry, but the specification of a cybernetics program. The measurements improve and update our expectations. In principle, a third question can be to ask for the "why" of what one observes using the indicators thus specified. This leads to substantive theorizing in the subject domain under study.

Each subject domain can thus be developed into a special theory of communication. This accords with your nice quotations from Whitehead. The mathematical theory of communication provides us with the formal methodology. Of course, one can also use other statistics. The advantages of using the mathematical theory of communication, however, are manifold. For example, one can elegantly combine the multi-variate perspective (complexity) with the time series perspective in order to develop the instruments of measuring complex dynamics.

Thus, my contribution is not to be misunderstood as a philosophical one. The philosophical question would be whether one expects a general theory of communication to be possible. My answer would be negative because this would restore a kind of wholeness that I consider as religiously motivated.

With kind regards,

Loet

Loet Leydesdorff
Science & Technology Dynamics, University of Amsterdam
Amsterdam School of Communications Research (ASCoR)
Kloveniersburgwal 48, 1012 CX Amsterdam
Tel.: +31-20-525 6598; fax: +31-20-525 3681

http://www.leydesdorff.net/ ; [email protected]
http://www.upublish.com/books/leydesdorff.htm

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Received on Sun Dec 28 22:27:24 2003