RE: [Fis] Consilience: Writing on the Clouds

Dear Pedro,

<Could the "cloud" metaphor of citation networks be useful as an overall
contemplation of science?>

Without clouding the issue and without wishing to detract from Loet's impressive work, a colleague once described the practice of scientific citation as 'a sophisticated network of name droppers' (a bit like visitors to the Borgesian Library). And I fear you may be giving too much away to the 'particulate heresy' in the notion of 'pieces of knowledge' which can be 'managed'.

But I do find it helpful to think of 'consilience' not as a representational entity but
as a direction - vertical (within a discipline), horizontal (across disciplines) immanent
(operating within a particular theory) or transcendent (having general validity).

The major discoveries in science have occurred less as a result of geniuses 'jumping together' than an individual 'jumping to a conclusion' (spotting a similarity that makes a difference) - then bunji jumping with it off a wall of accepted inductive practise while hanging perilously over the scientific and lay communities. Archimedes' bath, Newton's putative apple, Descartes' crawling flies, Bohm's televised pair of goldfish, Nash's sophomores in a bar etc exemplify episodes of vertical consilience. Whereas Crick and Watson's double helix was possibly more the result of that horizontal cross-disciplinary fertilisation of ideas which characterises contemporary discoveries.

One criticism of the Wilsonian consilience has been that (in the wake of the quasi-mystical pronouncements of European postmodernism) it would lead us back to the mechanistic rationality and certainties of the Enlightenment, his 'lawful material world'. This of course mirrors and supports the reductio-fundamentalism of contemporary politics and religion (our global colony of ants). Wilson tries to recoil against the tenses and tensions of our post-quantum world (Koichiro's 'present progressive' and 'present perfect) and would return us to the certainty of nouns and adjectives (those good ole boys, the
-ences, -ities and -isms of received wisdom).

<In this metaphor, analytical philosophy has been devoted to "within cloud"
<processes and laws (inner conceptual structure), while continental
<philosophy has approached (often ideologically) to the winds and currents
<and other general climatic conditions. In info science, around the term
<consilience, who knows whether we might put together a new vision
<highlighting the ascend/descend crucial movements.

Yes, IMO the Anglosaxon analytical philosophers (particularly Dretske et al) got lost in a cloud trying to graft Shannonist frequency onto the concept of 'natural information' (informationL) and by hanging on to 'belief' (and cognition as 'justified true belief'). Floridi's universe of alethic data, his constructivist 'infosphere', although highly original, is just another of our 'vertical theories' of information - one more 'it' to file with our 'bits'. When it comes to contemporary continental thinkers about the concept of information (except Rafael and Luciano) I have detected some wind but not much of a current. Hopefully this is just the lull before the storm which may unleash a new vision.

What if were to fire those two overpaid CEO's Belief and Consciousness (along with their office boy Self) and allow Experience to run the show for a while?

Here's hoping the real world FIS Conference gets off the ground next year.
Have you considered Biarritz?

John H

-----Original Message-----
From: fis-bounces@listas.unizar.es
[mailto:fis-bounces@listas.unizar.es]On Behalf Of "Pedro C. Marijuán"
Sent: Wednesday, 24 November 2004 23:49
To: fis-listas.unizar.es
Subject: [Fis] Consilience: Writing on the Clouds

Dear colleagues,

Could the "cloud" metaphor of citation networks be useful as an overall
contemplation of science? Let me try.

Along that metaphor, we earthbound scientists find ourselves "writing on
the clouds". It is not so easy getting access to that celestial
quasi-Platonic realm, rather it becomes a hard work which involves crafting
pieces of theoretical and experimental stuff into a consistent whole, maybe
in cooperation with other parties (or very luckily, just "copy-paste"!),
and then it has to pass the scrutiny of a publishing "jury", and if
accepted it will appear somewhere, in one publishing fragment or chunk of
those clouds, with the hope that future links of new arrivals to the cloud
will strengthen it... otherwise it will evaporate into oblivion, though
fortunately a written record grants some hope of long-lasting permanence.

In this "ascension" of our individual piece of knowledge up to one of these
clouds in the skies, quite many social-community aspects are involved
--aren't they?

Almost symmetrically, we might try to observe the "descend" of our piece of
knowledge into the realms of social action. Perhaps a far bigger assembly
of social-community processes get involved in this reverse motion. The
social use of the stocks of knowledge appears far more haphazard, complex
and branched than the relatively "simple" creation. For instance, Who makes
use today of the stock of scientiific (technologic) pieces of knowledge?
Depending on the concrete disciplinary cloud we watch (imagine some
environmental issue, or climatic change), we could write down an unending
list of other applied researchers, technologists, entrepeneurial,
institutional, administration and political bodies... Luckily, our piece of
knowledge will fertilize the action of a number of heterogeneous social
parties. The bureaucratic fashion of today about that very "translation"
---how research becomes development and innovation. Contemporary societies,
are loudly demanding that the clouds, both nationally and internationally,
produce a lot of descends ("rain")...

In this metaphor, analytical philosophy has been devoted to "within cloud"
processes and laws (inner conceptual structure), while continental
philosophy has approached (often ideologically) to the winds and currents
and other general climatic conditions. In info science, around the term
consilience, who knows whether we might put together a new vision
highlighting the ascend/descend crucial movements.

best

Pedro

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Received on Thu Nov 25 07:16:38 2004