Re: [Fis] meaning of meaning

Dear Loet,

Loet Leydesdorff wrote:

> I don't expect the email messages to communicate in terms of
> electrons. If one wishes to understand the email messages, one has
> first to specify a hypothesis about what they might communicate. For
> example, one can conjecture that our subset of email messages
> communicate ideas about information theory.
>
> The next question is then: How would one be able to measure whether
> these email messages communicate indeed about information theory and,
> for example, not about high-energy physics. I assume that one then
> would begin to investigate the distributions of textual markers like
> co-occurrences of words, headings of threats, etc. These distributions
> can be investigated using information theory. :-)

Your contention was, I quote:

"... consciousness processes thoughts; a living system communicates in
terms of molecules. Thus, another science is generated. The
specification of how the system communicates provides us with testable
hypotheses. "

This actually says nothing about the content of either the processed
thoughts or the messages - so your reply does not make much sense to
me. What is the nature of any hypothesis you might make about processed
thought from the observation that living systems communicate "in terms
of molecules"?

> > This is obviously a flawed point of view. It is one that would
> dismiss the vision of Einstein, Darwin and Copernicus. I think the
> truth of the matter is rather that there is a necessary synergy
> between empiricism and intuitive speculation in the sciences.
>
> Necessary? I don't follow. Furthermore, I am not impressed with your
> argument of appealing to authorities. Did Copernicus publish also
> about information theory?

I make no appeal to authority. I simply observe that if we followed your
contention that we should dismiss speculation and grand theories - by
implication adhere to empiricism alone - we should have been required to
dismiss these authors.

Regards,
Steven
Received on Tue Feb 10 01:51:22 2004