Re: [Fis] consilience of limited observers

Dear Malcolm and colleagues,

Sorry for going backwards in the discussion (I have moved in to a new
institute in this univ., see my new address at the bottom). After two
weeks, I have this response pending:

At 18:09 18/10/2004, Malcolm wrote:
>So, you don't think that the use of common tools, such as logic,
>statistics, etc., or even common concepts (such as Aleks's example of
>intereactive information) are enough to forge a genuine inter-disciplinary
>consilience? In what way would a *genuine* informational approach be different?
>

Those common tools do not help to connect --but very superficially-- the
different disciplines involved in the analysis of any moderately complex
phenomenon. We do not have 'logical cues' intradisciplinary situated
informing the practitioner that his/her favorite discipline becomes
irrelevant to understand the phenomenon, and that a new perspective has to
enter. Like medieval rhetors we have to "weigh" the heterogeneous
conceptual paths and compose an ad hoc disciplinary mix. I dare to call
"informational" to this artistic blending or switching between separate
knowledges because this type of compositional work is archetypal in other
info "model systems" too (fis old story), such as in cellular signaling
systems' pathways, and in nervous systems' separate sensory modalities.
Switching to a new discipline and/or creating a new interdisciplinary field
is like our own attentional switching: we continuously change the focus and
put a new modality or a new sensory patch into the job of scanning little
bits of the world.

>There is a distinction made in philosophy of science between the internal
>dynamics of science, which excludes socio-psychological factors, and
>external dynamics, which looks only at the social dynamics of scientific
>communities. This seems to be similar to the distinction that Pedro is
>making. If so, his claim is that interdisciplinary consilience cannot be
>captured within the internalist's way of viewing science (that is, in
>terms of the bare relationship between theories and their evidence). I
>have some questions about this.
>
>I think that anyone who studies science has to make some kind of
>idealization or abstraction--science is too complex to understand in
>total. Some simplifications have to be made when studying any complex
>phenomenon. Clearly that does not imply that the particular idealizations
>made by the internalists or the externalists are the right ones, or the
>best ones, to make for the purpose of understanding some particular aspect
>of science, such as interdisciplinary consilience. So, I am very open to
>Pedro's line of thought. On the other hand, there has to some kind of
>simplification made. How should this be done?

I do not have a good response yet. My personal contention is that the
simplest 'info society', the living cell, has not received a sound info
analysis yet. Why the bionformaticians community, basically committed to
reductionist views, is making all that fuss on "systems biology" (and not
only them: eg, some biosemioticians too)? An intriguing piece of new
knowledge is needed.

Concretely about the internal/external views of science, it might be that
what we need is the "externalist" of the internal, and the "internalist" of
the external. I mean, we can only build a social accumulation of knowledge
(of associative learning) by relying on the most crude and elementary, and
abstract elements within the action/perception cycle (eg, counting). And
viceversa, we universalize and objectivize upon that knowledge by socially
networking the limited, individual pieces produced... (references,
professional commmunities, etc.)

>This is a partial answer to my question: A general understanding of how
>macroscopic order arises out of simple interactive micro-systems may point
>the way towards a better understanding of science.
>
>An example that I know more about arises in physics, where it is difficult
>to explain why matter organizes itself into liquid, gas and solid phases
>when interacting molecules "know" nothing about the macroscopic order of
>which they are a part. This phenomenon is hard to explain because
>critical phenomena (occurring during phase transitions) depend on
>correlations that act at all distances at the same time. That is, the
>usual idealization that density fluctuations are limited to micro-scales
>does not work. Rather, the fluctuations occur at all length scales (hence
>the self-similarity of critical phenomena). The mathematical techniques
>applied to this problem (scaling, intermediate asymptotics, and
>renormalization methods borrowed from quantum field theory) are still not
>very well understood from a mathematical point of view.
>
>However, I still don't see exactly how this connects with
>interdisciplinary consilience in Pedro's sense. This may be because I'm
>not sure exactly what interdisciplinary consilience amounts to on this view.

I tend to disagree on that micro/macro view. Perhaps it happens with some
cleanliness in phyiscial systems, that one can extensively track the
physical information movements around (those ups and downs in Stan's
scheme) notwithstanding phase transitions; but not in the biological realm.
There one finds strange entities with info "black hole" properties: living
cells advancing in their respective life cycles can disregard very robust
info items on a facultative basis, and produce new items. And they do so
monumentally independent of their whereabouts (up to some limits, of
course). How the inner and the outer 'command flows' may systematically
ignore each other, annihilate, reinforce, etc., (quite differently from the
obedient average of the physical) is a great question: systems biology (and
classical integrative physiology too), in need of a massive disciplinary
switching becasue that black holing game is played massively..

>But why should it be considered seriously, exactly? I don't (yet) see why
>the internalist view of science has this limitation. For it abstracts
>away of the distinction between individual scientists and a group of
>scientists, so it could easily include emergent features that arise from
>the interactions between individuals. If not, why not?

"Consilience" is great because it conveys a bygone aspect of the sciences:
their conciliation, their permanent session in "concilium" ... (lost into
the hierarchy and reduction dusts, and merely left into the territory of
pragmatics); and also because it evokes the global wisdom or 'consilience
of closure' that we may legitimately demand to our social system of
creation of knowledge: that it should contribute to the advancement of life.

(that's all I can ramble around the questions!)

best greetings

Pedro

PS. to Rafael --Borges is indeed a treasure-- I remember his "Funes el
memorioso" too: isn't it a parable of the limitations of the observer? And
to Jerry: can you connect your molecular algebra (syntax) to the protein
folding problem? (I will try to read carefully all this recent stuff).

=============================================
Pedro C. Marijuán
Institute of Engineering Research of Aragon (I3A)
Maria de Luna, 3. CPS, Univ. of Zaragoza
50018 Zaragoza, Spain
TEL. (34) 976 762761 and 762707, FAX (34) 976 762043
email: marijuan@unizar.es
=============================================

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Received on Thu Oct 28 17:59:56 2004