Re: Biology, technology and information

Thank you Ray for your clarification concerning the history of ideas
with regard to the mutual influences between the biosciences and
engineering/technology. This is, I think, a key question in an
interdisciplinary dialogue, where everyone is having particular
phenomena in mind while at the sime time using the same words which
are sometimes analogue, somtimes equivoc and sometimes synonym!
(Peter's "Capurro's trilemma"). If a biologist uses the word
information in order to grasp a transformation that takes place as a
living organism interacts with the 'Umwelt' then he is, I think, in a
similar (!) situation as a linguist who says, that information is not
just meaning, but that it is a given transformation of a cognitive
structure (or, hermeneutical speaking, of a pre-understanding).
Information is, in the first case, a difference that makes a
difference (Bateson) and in the second case is a difference that
finds a difference (Luhmann). In both cases information is (following
Weizsaecker and others) not a quality of something but a quality of
something with regard to a (cognitive) structure. This is a triadic
situation as underlined by Soeren (and semiotics). This is also what
Kant says when he talks about qualities belonging to things and
qualities that refer to a knower who adscribes them to (the
qualities) of things. Information is, thus, an (our, or, more
generally, a structure's) adscription of something (having its given
qualities). It is, as E. Oeser puts it, a second order quality.
This is the reason, I think, why we can talk about information (in
general) while at the same time having different phenomena in mind
(and in our hands!). Think, for instance, about the concept of
'information management'. Management is a concept that has to do with
using means to certain ends (and is thus concerned with organisms
that can understand the difference between means and ends...) but it
is also concerned, for instance, with taking care of something... But
all this discourse would be hardly of any (metaphorical) use for a
biologist, although it is very important to, say, an economist.
kind regards
rafael
Received on Sun Mar 8 19:33:09 1998