Re: [Fis] 'Locale' Knowledge

re Pedro's posting below: In my view, natural science (and some of social
science as well) is an attempt to find general rules (laws), and then to
see how these influence affairs at individual locales. Individual local
configurations add informational constraints to the general rules, which
also are informational constraints. (That is, the most general laws of
nature can be viewed as being unique -- historcal -- products of this
particular Big Bang.) So, following Pattee, we can distinguish dynamics
(the form of an equation) from the constraints upon them (the values of
constants in an equation). Dynamics can be viewed as the attempt to
promote energetic equilibrium in the Universe, while various constraints
can be viewed as arrangements to promote this project.

STAN

>The term 'local' applied to science may create problems and a suspicious
>proximity to the postmodern criticisms (that I do not share, or perhaps at
>a very long distance). But the same would happen in my opinion with the
>term 'global', and it is even worse because of the load of dogmatic
>self-deception that it so easily conveys. Maybe 'locales' used as an
>adjective could be more adequate to what I was trying to convey.
>
>Therefore, scientific knowledge would partake a retinue of 'locale'
>attributes or tags concerning, for instance, the author, the communication
>vehicle, the institution, the 'school', the culture, the epoch, the
>'discipline'... The particular pieces of knowledge we may individually
>produce would gain their credibility, respectability and currency by
>getting caught in an unending circulation among the other locales: other
>authors, schools, disciplines (eg, 'references', 'citations', personal and
>doctrinary influences, interdisciplinary extensions, 'imperialism' of
>disciplines, etc.).
>
>In actuality, we scientists, at least in most fields of natural science,
>are taking locality very seriously, and are continuously struggling to
>transcend it as much as possible. Precisely, the monumental effort we are
>collectively making to transcend it becomes an important aspect that
>distinguish our profession from other modes of human experience: artistic,
>religious ones, etc. (where circulation is deprived of almost all of the
>tough conditions of logical rigor, experiment, and repeatability we put in
>our scientific exchanges). But those very stringent conditions also
>'alienate' ourselves from those quite subtle realms of human experience.
>
>The absences and needs we feel along our personal participation in that
>unceasing collective circulation of knowledge mosaics might underlie some
>of the ideas recently discussed by Viktoras (cultural distortions and
>unified views), Luis (science and humanities breach), and Jerry's system
>taxonomy (that could contains several problems: at least, extending the
>peculiarities of our knowledge and information flows towards other
>inanimate realms, as I understand from 'knowing' molecules 'exchanging
>information', may be confusing for our efforts of clarifying the
>foundations of info phenomena) and the 'be' in Loet's approach.

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Received on Thu Jan 15 10:20:15 2004