Some questions about the nature of informational theories

Dear Colleagues:

Greetings to the New Year.
Best Wishes to all for a stimulating and productive year.

A very special Thank You to Pedro for his hard work and generous
contributions in making this web conference an intellectually
valuable exchange.

In this message, I seek to bring out several critical points that
deserve, from my point of view, further attention.

As with most good discussions, FIS contributors offer a wide spectrum
of personal, philosophical and scientific view points. How can these
individual strands be woven into the fabric of a theory of
information?

I choose to poise questions in four areas concerning a potential theory:
1. related basic concepts
2. roles of abstractions in transmission between systems
3. qualities of social transmissions
4. durability of informational concepts.

For precedence, it is of critical importance to look at the theories
of time, of force, of space, etc and ask: to what extent can these
individual theories be separated from natural language and how
successful are these terms translated among disciplines?

For example:
How is absolute Newtonian time related to biological time?

How is the physical concept of force related to social or political force?

How is a mathematical notion of "space" related to the concept of mental space?

After one has seriously addressed these preceding questions, then one
can ask: What is a reasonable expectation for the concept of
information?

What are the common features of all forms of information?
One common feature is the possibility of transmission from one system
to another.
Do any other common features encase the concept of information?
In particular, what is the role of encoding?
Is encoding an encasement of information?
If encoding is to be taken as an encasement of information,
then, what are the logical restrictions on the encoding?
Is encoding necessarily an abstraction?
If so, is intracellular communication an abstraction?
And, if intracellular communication IS AN ABSTRACTION,
what system is generating the abstraction?,
what is the nature of the transmission of the abstraction? and
what is the nature of the system that decodes the abstraction?

 From a chemical perspective, one can view chemical metabolism and
chemical genetics as chemical observables - experimental sciences.
Are the chemical sciences an abstraction in the same sense that
mathematics is an abstraction?

If we contrast Shannon information with chemical information, how do
we go about creating isomorphisms between the transmitting processes?
What is the nature of the tensions of contrasting an abstraction
(Shannon information) with a physical or chemical process?

Social information, by its very nature, requires the participation of
two or more individuals. In turn, individual members of a society
are socially and culturally unique - each with an individual
trajectory. Each individual trajectory is grounded in heritable
derivations from parents and socially heritable habits from the
encasing culture. This suggests, when placed in the context of human
will and human motivations, that social information places special
requirements on both the encoding system that generates the
transmission and the interpreter? Is it necessary to encase the
generative qualities of the individuals who contribute to the nature
of the abstraction transmitted? If so, how should these be
abstracted?
Can we imagine an encasement of human qualities such that the pure
logic of mathematical thought is sustained? And transmitted? And
preserved for years? decades? centuries?

This leads directly to the question of the durability of information.
Is information "the same" for all time and place?
Or, is information metastable?
More precisely:
Is the concept of information more stable than Newtonian laws?
Is the concept of information more stable than the genetic code?
Is the Shannon conceptualization of information the only possible
basis of higher forms of information?
If additional forms of information are possible, will they be more or
less stable than Shannon information?
What if additional forms of information can not be placed in the same
mathematical encasement as the Shannon mathematics of information?
A priori, will the new forms of information be metastable with
respect to Shannon's mathematics?
A priori, will the new forms of information be metastable with
respect to the genetic code?
If a new form of information was created that exceeded the
metastability of both Shannon information and genetic information,
what would be its philosophical source? Mathematics? Physics?
Chemistry? Biology? Philosophy? Religion?

Happy New year to All!

Jerry LR Chandler
 
 
 

 
Received on Thu Jan 2 23:10:21 2003