[Fis] The timings of meaning

Dear colleagues,

At the beginning of this year there was a message by Koichiro where the
problem of time surfaced quite ostensibly. There were some further comments
by Rafael, Stan and myself, but somehow the problem of time in its
intimate relationship with meaning scaped almost un-touched. Again, some
hints reappeared when arguing about "what is meaning?" --perhaps I dubbed
as 'protean' some intriguing characterizations exposed then.

In actuality, timing is at the essence of all nervous systems, even the
simplest ones. For neuroscientist A. Berthoz (2003), most of scientific
views (often in the neurosciences themselves) are biased towards the
logico-formal aspects that may characterize some high-level brain
functions, and the deployment of the actual behavior in time is disregarded
almost as a physiological or biological side aspect. "At the beginning was
the deed" he points out. How the brain has to handle --just to behave in
the world-- the fantastic complexity of the biomechanic organization of the
body, represents the original evolutionary function of nervous systems, and
the key of all their further improvements. And language is an action too...
with an incredible richness of associated vocal and auditory perplexities
(Juan Roederer and Michael Leyton made several points about that in our
discussion on music).

I consider that some of the recent messages on semioticism have been too
cavalier about the crucial part that natural sciences have to play in any
explanations about the phenomenon of meaning (with nuances, I would join
Pavel's comments). In chronobiology for instance there is the fascinating
contents about rhythmicity of behavior ---partially described by Ernest
Rossi in those two old 'real' fis conferences fis 94, fis 96. I also made
sort a claim about a robust parallel between the timings of language (and
of meaning for that matter) and the time granularities affecting our
'physiological' brain processes (receptors, channels, second messengers,
metabolic paths and depots, protein synthesis, cell cycles, physiological
rhythms, ultradian rhythms, ecological and reproductive rhythms, solar &
celestial... ). We take as 'natural', as transparent, that sophisticate
architecture of timings, both in the meaningfulmess of our languaging and
in the flow of our daily life.

This very message contains a curious architecture of related timings: it
has be located regarding an hour, a day, a month, a year, an era... it may
mean something when one has just read it (e.g., particularly 'meaningful'
if it contains some mild criticisms), and it will mean something else in a
few hours; and perhaps it is tomorrow when the reader disengages himself
from the more salient personally-related contents and focuses on possible
subtle originalities and expansions of the ideas presented; and then around
the other day the message is close to definitely sink into irrelevance: it
looks rather old and meaningless, as one is now very busy digesting the
meaningfulness of other incoming events.

Am afraid this is getting too long (and accelerating its own time 'erasure').

best regards

Pedro

PS. Next 5th of April, Monday, will be the beginning of the "Entropy and
Information" conference; more info will follow soon. For the new parties
just inscribed in the list --around half dozen from very different
backgrounds-- we are now running at 'free wheel' without much discipline in
the comments or the topics, though abiding by the limit of two postings per
week. By the way, if the mathematicians of this list find it interesting,
we could attempt during these two weeks an exploratory Preamble on a topic
suggested by Jerry some time ago: Information, Accounting and Numbers.
Received on Thu Mar 18 13:56:40 2004