RE: [Fis] Molecular-Experimental sciences (II)

RE: [Fis] Molecular-Experimental sciences (II)

From: Stanley N. Salthe <[email protected]>
Date: Sun 27 Nov 2005 - 23:26:35 CET

Replying to Loet -- I wish the case were this simple! Yes, vagueness
suggests the possibility of variety (informational entropy), but in itself
it IS not variety, and cannot be measured in this way. In itself there
cannot be different degrees of vagueness, even though there can be
different degrees of being definite. Koichiro and I beleive that
development can be described as a process of exchanging vagueness of
embodiment for increasingly definite embodiment, and it would seem that
degree of definiteness might be measured in some way -- perhaps as the
number of definite statements one can make about a system. But no matter
how well developed some system is, if it still has some vagueness, then we
cannot limit at all what might happen to its remaining degrees of freedom,
or even how many degrees of freedom are remaining! For example, I am not
as vague as I was when I was a blastodisc, but I have retained vagueness to
the degree that I can, e.g, move about. In this context, is it possible to
suppose that one could calculate the number of ways I might move an arm?
This property is too vague, I think, to be calculable as an entropy, even
though, obviously, this possibility of motion is indeed entropic. If my arm
were a machine, then its conformational entropy would be calculable. This
problem of calculability is why vagueness is such an intriguing problem.
(Incidentally, for those who may not be aware of it, vagueness has been a
subject in logic for some time, BUT only as a condition to be overcome, not
as a possible opportunity to construct a less mechanistic discourse.)

STAN

>> SS: I agree with ths statement, and have been plugging the
>> idea that one way to go, following a suggestion of Peirce's
>> is to work on constructiong a 'logic of vagueness'. It is
>> clear that while our models of the world are as fully
>> explicit as possible (thereby modeling the world as
>> mechanistic), the world itself is to one degree or other vague.
>>
>> STAN
>
>Is this not precisely the reason why we use an entropy calculus based on the
>notion of uncertainty? The advantage of entropy is also that it allows for a
>dynamic extension (entropy statistics -> entropy calculus), while a logic is
>inherently static.
>
>With kind regards,
>
>
>Loet
>________________________________
>
>Loet Leydesdorff
>
>Amsterdam School of Communications Research (ASCoR)
>Kloveniersburgwal 48, 1012 CX Amsterdam
>Tel.: +31-20-525 6598; fax: +31-20-525 3681
>[email protected]; http://www.leydesdorff.net

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Received on Sun Nov 27 21:52:21 2005


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