Re: [Fis] meaning of meaning

Dear Pedro,

Let me prepare the following three paragraphs as a possible message sent
to my daughter who will go to college soon. Paragraph 1 has the same
M as 2. Paragraph 2 has about the same I as 2. The meaning is
"Study science, no art". Paragraph 3 is meaningless.
M is already in the title (a good title) or at least in the abstract
of a scientific paper. A meaning can be a unit vector. Many meanings
(short and clear statements) can span a space. Vector algebra can be used.

1. Study science, no art. Study science, no art. Study science, no art.
Study science, no art. Study science, no art. Study science, no art!
Study science, no art. Study science, no art. Study science, no art!
Study science, no art. Study science, no art. Study science, no art!

2. Science is great. Actually good scientists are creating arts, real
arts. Only crazy people like art. Now the fashionable post-impressionism arts
are emperor's new clothes. In science this never happens, except
Prigogine's entropy theory which I believe is a kind of post-impressionism.

3. Ask me for a suggestion what to learn? It depends. Science is great.
It is also bad. Art is great. Art is also bad. Ask your mother. Think about
it yourself. I will think about it after drinking a bottle of strong
whisky. Sometimes I like both. I hate to say it, bur I really do not know.

For paragraph 1 the message can be compressed easily. Therefore it has
less information (I), as information is defined as the amount of data compressed.
Hope this can illustrate M<I<D. A paragraph difficult to compress maybe
meaningless: a paragraph keyed in by a dog cannot be compressed.
I sent paragraph 3 to my daughter.

Shu-Kun

Pedro C. Mariju�n wrote:

> Dear FISers
>
> Quite many interesting directions are explored during these days.
> Although we cannot 'meaningfully' advance all of them, at least they
> will remain as dormant seeds for future periods of calm. In what follows
> I respond to a few points.
>
> Shu-Kun: Your suggestion about some numerical relationship between
> Message, Information and Meaning (M<I<D) is very difficult to ascertain
> in general (first of all, under what type of 'bounds' could one think
> about it?). There was a very intriguing point by Efim Liberman on the
> entropy constraints related to enzyme size where a germane consideration
> was raised, I think. Also, Landauer's principle on energy expenditure
> associated to 'information erasing' is another important direction to
> think about. In a private discussion with Xerman, we were thinking on
> inviting you and Angel Vegas to compare how a 'chunk' of living matter
> responds to a signaling event (and reorganizes itself) and how a piece
> of solid state alloy 'signaled' (perturbed) by a laser reorganizes
> non-destructively its own structural elements. It is a divertimento and
> we do not to imply any big conclusions at all --but to highlight some of
> the 'info' differences in the response to perturbation between the
> animate and the inanimate... Hopefully in next fis discussions oriented
> toward 'information and entropy' we shall deal in depth with these
> matters. (en passant, has anyone read Tom Siegfried on the new physics
> of information? "The Bit and the Pendulum" 2000. Could we revise and
> refocus our attempts on an axiomatics of Information Physics, again
> --don�t you think, Igor, Shu-Kun, John and other parties?).
>
> To Soeren: I appreciate your comments on Wiener, Shannon, and
> particularly on Bateson. In actuality I do not feel much close to them,
> as the road I try to advance is the 'molecular approach to meaning'.
> Like in the arguments on autopoieisis, I bring molecularly based points,
> but they are left unresponded or lightly commented at another level --I
> do not complain about your views at all, and I really appreciate the
> comments, the problem is the absence in this discussion of molecularly
> interested parties. Meaning is ALSO a molecular problem, and to my
> chagrin this part of the bioinformation and semiotic 'galaxy' has left
> almost unexplored. You will understand better what I mean if we go to
> the 50's, before the molecular explanation of HEREDITY advanced by
> Watson and Crick (reductionist? functionalist? cynermetic?). Of course,
> 'reducing' heredity only to that view would be myopic, but even more
> myopic would be to dismiss the molecular approach to it... In any case,
> I accept the challenge of stating the fundamentals of signaling and
> meaning at the molecular level (at least, summarizing what I can gather
> at the time being).
>
> to Rafael, Jim, Viktoras and other parties: living a 'meaningful' life
> is a crucial piece in some sociological and philosophical approaches
> --what 'cultures' attempt more or less. Do the arts contribute to the
> 'missing' meaning that our pan-socialized ways of life fail to convey?
> Do the arts detect the relevant 'absences' in our lives and fabricate ad
> hoc information --channeled toward the 'desserts' and the enigmatic inside?
>
> best
>
> Pedro
>
>
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>

-- 
Dr. Shu-Kun Lin
Molecular Diversity Preservation International (MDPI)
Matthaeusstrasse 11, CH-4057 Basel, Switzerland
Tel. +41 61 683 7734 (office)
Tel. +41 79 322 3379 (handy)
Fax +41 61 302 8918
E-mail: lin@mdpi.org
http://www.mdpi.org/lin/
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