Re: Some questions about the nature of informational theories

Dear Jerry and colleagues,

Thanks for the thoughtful comments. Both Cristophe and Soeren had already
made very relevant points, highlighted by your own comments, (and also very
good points in the previous exchange between Rafael and Edwina, John H,
Koichiro, Ted...). The discussions are very elegant and indeed one could
write a book putting all this stuff together. Let me add just some parlance
about the weaving metaphor.

At 23.37 20/1/03 +0100, you wrote:
>I would only caution that the metaphor of weaving,
>"The info 'thread' needs to be woven into finer strands in order to
>provide those clear responses --and in spite of this conference
>advancements we keep the info thread largely into the state of 'bundle' yet."
>was explored vigorously. It is very picturesque and at times the metaphor
>is compelling. But, the practical utility of introducing the weaving
>metaphor has not been demonstrated. Also, is it possible that we already
>have the finest-grained structure for information in the Shannon
>abstraction and what we seek are coarser grained theories?

It is in my language, yes I tend to abuse of picturesque metaphors, and
quite often biased ones --I hope not too much in this case. (So I much like
Jim's scarce postings, as he is a visual artist and uses a very pictorial
language too--by the way, Jim, will you send the files on the buddisht
sentence?)... Anyhow, as I was saying in a further paragraph of the last
message: " let me turn to the cellular discussion in order to emphasize
that there are different 'infos': structural, generative, communicational.
The gist would not reside in anyone alone, but in the whole new dynamics of
'evanescent permanence' that together they are capable of implementing."

This evanescent permanence, the genuine hallmark of information as I have
speculated in some occasions, lends further support to the use of the
'thread' metaphor. None of those three broad classes of cellular info can
get the bioinformation dynamics by itself, but appropiately woven the three
strands in a common thread, the strange dynamics emerges (my implicit
emphasis is in the intriguing 'evanescence' part). Well, in a lively
exchange with John H months ago, I remember his comments on the
mythological riches of the thread metaphor: Ariadna, Penelope, Aphrodite...
But there is an essay by philosopher Ortega y Gasset where this very
metaphor gets all its philosophical splendor. It is about the
interpretation by classical Roman writers (Pausanias, Plini) of a tomb's
religious-decoration: apparently representing a domestic scene, where a man
weaves a thread and a donkey eats it, with a woman around. However, writer
Diodorus pointed to a different interpretation later on, meaning that it
was related to reminiscences of the Egyptian cult to OKNOS, the Rope-Maker.
To cut it briefly, Ortega argues, with his usual brilliant style, that the
whole power of nature is symbolized in this combination of the weaving and
the unweaving, creation and destruction both put together, meaning the
adaptive strength of that which is perpetually in the making (and in the
dismantling), by keeping itself continuously IN-FORMATION as one can easily
say reinterpreting the information spelling... The arcaic thought, free
from the bondage of literacy mold, and the related 'atomism,' had it
clearer about Nature generative processes than the classic writers,
concludes Ortega addressing himself to the philosophy and the science of
his time.

Oknos, the rope-maker, and the donkey, and an intriguing feminine figure
close by (I have the picture here) could be a nice metaphor for the
continuous coupling of protein synthesis-protein degradation, for synapsis
creation and destruction in our brains, for entrepreneurial starting up and
'creative destruction' in economic systems a la Schumpeter... Let me add
that I was much intrigued by Karl's approach to partitions when I realized
that it could provide new numerical counterparts to this dynamics of
continuous adaptive exploration of breaking structures into parts, and the
continuous synthesis of new parts, directly stemming out from a new number
theory of minimalist design. Does the living play, along its creation &
destruction of structures and signals, by means of such partitional counting?

I was willing to follow on further themes --time and language, and Rosen's
'realization' problem, so close to the above reflection on info in cells,
brains, firms-- but maybe is better stopping here. The new info theory
(science) needs new abstractions, but also new guiding metaphors.

best

Pedro

PS. Jerry, thanks for the acknowledgements.

   
Received on Thu Jan 23 09:46:14 2003