[Fis] coming session (& timings of meaning)

Dear FIS colleagues,

First of all, cordial greetings to more than one dozen new colleagues who
have joined the fis list during this week, so to participate in the coming
session on ENTROPY & INFORMATION, to start next 5 April, chaired by Michel
Petitjean (Editor-in-Chief of the Journal 'Entropy'). Apart from Michel's
introductory text we will accept other longish contributions to the theme:
during next week we will inform on how those files will be handled. (In
general, participants are expected to post a maximum of two regular
messages per week, and attachments are not recommended). After the session,
a special issue in the Journal Entropy is envisaged.

---------------------------------

We are currently in the aftermath of a previous session on 'Autopoiesis and
Meaning' ---interested parties can have a glance at the fis web site:
http://fis.iguw.tuwien.ac.at/fisspecials/index.html
http://fis.iguw.tuwien.ac.at/mailings/

Curiously, the discussion on meaning has been related several times with
music (e.g., see weeks ago Luis Serra, and more recently Stan and me).
Along the non-exclusively linguistic approach to meaning I have argued,
perhaps the most crucial rhythmicities impinging on our personal
elaborations of meaning ---particularly on how we navigate amidst our
perceptual memories from 'salience' to 'relevance'--- seem to relate to
protein synthesis. Meaning is not only a 'protean' concept: it is also
'proteic'. In the long term, and in a non-trivial way, the 'music of the
spheres' like all other motor-perceptual occurrences is felt and
internalized as a result of orchestrated waves of protein synthesis taking
part in neuronal bodies and in the synapses themselves... the intense waves
(rounds) of creation/destruction in the synapses may be related to the
general theme of 'information erasure' as Stan pointed out, and to
'entropy' considerations. Perhaps it is another minor aspect to explore in
the next session.

About the argument by Ted on groups, it looks connected with the above.
Group theory, and particularly Michael Leyton's approach, builds up very
elegantly regarding organizational dynamics at high perceptual levels (once
neuronal topological specializations are available), and probably for the
formal analysis of ontogenetic patterned development (in multicellulars) I
think. But it looks almost a blind alley intracellularly, to make sense on
the myriad of networking molecular occurrences of the cell, which are based
on an endless casuistic of molecular recognition events. And in which the
bizarre structure of the genetic code and the unassailable problem of
'protein folding' act as an uncrossable border for formalistic approaches.
At the next level, 'grupoids' as argued by Ian Stewart, look a valuable
addition to protein networking dynamics... and yes, at levels further out,
it seems that one can fruitfully apply group theory & symmetry extension
tools. But all of this 'bioinformational stuff' deserves a far more focused
discussion. Hopefully, the new colleagues arrived to the session on Entropy
and Information will also be interested in having a future discussion
session on biological information.

Let me conclude this miscellany with comments extracted from Alain Berthoz
(2000, Harvard Un. Press) 'The Brain's sense of Movement', mentioned in my
last messages. His reflections on our perceptual problems in the pervasive
urban milieu: 'we delight in movement perception-prediction... in their
giant Lego constructions, modern architects have forgotten our pleasure of
movement, the Golden forms of nature...', and in page 256:

"But, oh, right angle, you are neither in a wave on the ocean nor in the
wind, nor in the knowing coincidence of a sigh and a smile; you are neither
in the petal nor in the leaf. You express the triumph of the most ordinary,
lazy, petty geometric mindset over the sense the of finesse, which might
save me from despair."

Remembering Raymond Queneau: do we also need some "science poètique"?

best regards

Pedro

PS: particular thanks to Michel, and to Shu-Kun and Gyuri, for their
cooperation regarding the next session.
   
Received on Fri Mar 26 14:43:09 2004