RE: [Fis] Consilience: Writing on the Clouds

Dear John and colleagues,

Thanks for the many insights. Actually I was using the "cloud" a little
beyond the original reference networking source (by the way, there may be a
lot of abuses in the citing procedures of today, but it belongs to the very
communal fabric of science---historically starting in the treatises of our
founding father, Aristotle). I cannot help but reminding someone who
"jumped" into a ray of light, and wonder whether it would be possible for
us to perform a similar jump into one of the science clouds, so to watch
how "pieces" of knowledge arrive and descend (by "piece" I do not
particularly imply the particulate views, but cannot find a better English
term--suggestions??). Well, the limitations of the sci. practitioner
groups, and also the physical support of that imaginary cloud become quite
evident ---imagine a cloud materialized in Assurbanipal tablets-library, or
in Ptolemy Alexandrian papyurus-library, or in medieval codices, or
printing press books, or Twenty Century archival system, and the
fascinating Internet now... Paradigms, styles of thought, group (&
enterprise) cultures, etc., provide pragmatic procedures for putting
frontiers, borders, to those communities engaged in feeding the cloud, and
also to those who mainly use or apply the stored knowledge. They provide a
"closure" sense that might be necessary --or not. What about Borges'
character "Funes el memorioso" capable of reminding and handling the trace
of any lived event (or knowledge item for that matter)?. Would a scientific
Funes have any need of paradigms, disciplinary divisions, etc.? Looking
from the cloud itself the ascends/descends performed by the tiny groups of
scientists and technologists and institutions downwards in the distant
earth is easy, but it may be an interesting exercise.

best ---Pedro

PS. to Michel: the Biarritz suggestion for FIS 2005 looks an irresistible
temptation (and what about La Bretagne?)... Would there be any chance at all?

>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

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Received on Fri Nov 26 12:00:58 2004