Dear Soren,
I plead for considering the sciences not as a belief systems (like you had
to learn it during your education as a biologist) or only a social practices
(as you have learned it later in life), but as rationalized systems of
expectations (in the plural!). A rationalized system of expectations is not
a an attribute to human beings, but to a discourse among them, in casu a
scientific discourse. This discourse, of course, has to be carried by human
being (and their machinery), but the notion of structural coupling with this
lower-order layer becomes then very central.
The human practices provide the variation or knowledge claims, but the
discourse operates as the selecting structure for the validation. The
discourse is guided by the code as an expected control mechanism. Unlike
Luhmann, I would not define the code as "true/false", but as the expectation
of finding truth using a heuristics. This all remains embedded
phenotypically, but the cognitive dimensions operates as an analytically
independent dynamics that reduces the uncertainty at some places more than
at others.
I hope that this is clarifying.
With kind regards,
Loet
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Søren Brier [mailto:sbr.lpf@cbs.dk]
> Sent: Friday, December 03, 2004 10:31 AM
> To: 'Loet Leydesdorff'; fis@listas.unizar.es
> Subject: SV: [Fis] Consilience: Writing on the Clouds
>
> Dear Loet
>
> I find it very difficult to interpret your argument.
> My point is exactly that reflecting on the prerequisites for
> science makes on more modest about what it is for a kind of
> knowledge we can obtain this way. I understand that you say
> "one can no longer move behind that perspective towards an
> analysis of the "intangibles" which are partly embedded and
> partly not", which is first a confirmation and second a
> postulate of the existence of something "intangibles" that
> you are sure have an objective existence and it is necessary
> to analyze to get foundational knowledge "behind" the social
> reality. But from which point of departure do you do this?
> And how does this observation type related to the social
> messy reality? That is my problem. What is the status of the
> Big Bang theory, evolution theory and ecological models, in
> which I was thought to believe as a biologist, when they are
> not reflected on the basis of their point of departure in
> human semiotic cognition, communication and co-operation?
> Could you please clarify?
>
>
> Venlig hilsen / Best wishes
> Søren Brier
>
> Copenhagen Business School , Management, Politics and
> Philosophy, Bl�g�rdsgade 23B, DK-K�benhavn 2200 N.
> Office-phone +45 3815 2208 Cell 28564282
> Old home page with full text documents
> http://www.flec.kvl.dk/personalprofile.asp?id=sbr&p=engelsk
> Ed. in Chief of Cybernetics & Human Knowing : home page:
> http://www.imprint-academic.com/C&HK
>
>
> -----Oprindelig meddelelse-----
> Fra: fis-bounces@listas.unizar.es
> [mailto:fis-bounces@listas.unizar.es] P� vegne af Loet Leydesdorff
> Sendt: 3. december 2004 08:05
> Til: fis@listas.unizar.es
> Emne: FW: [Fis] Consilience: Writing on the Clouds
>
> > We have to start in the middle of the human social life world where
> knowledge is created and later cultivated to science. All the
> critical social studies of science shows us that it is very
> difficult to get behind that social prerequisite for science
> and get to a truth of a world beyond; be it the social
> reality, the real nature, the pure consciousness or the core
> of life and body hood.
>
> Dear Soeren and colleagues,
>
> The problem in the above is "we have to". If one starts from
> your perspective of "embeddedness", one can no longer move
> behind that perspective towards an analysis of the
> "intangibles" which are partly embedded and partly not.
> Actually, one can specify the conditions of bifurcation in
> this co-evolution: when the diffusion rate becomes larger
> than twice the size of the production race one expects a
> saddle point and thus a bifurcation (Turing). Perhaps, this
> has happened with the Internet.
> It most surely happened after the invention of the printing
> press: when one can print the Bible, the society changes.
>
> >From a historical perspective, however, the system has to remain
> >"nearly
> decomposable" since it would otherwise no longer be able to
> manifest itself historically. Thus, one obtains a metastable
> unbalance between stabilization and globalization. We live in
> this transition. But there is no a priori reason to take an a
> priori side.
>
> With kind regards,
>
>
> Loet
> _____
>
> Loet Leydesdorff
> Amsterdam School of Communications Research (ASCoR)
> Kloveniersburgwal 48,
> 1012 CX Amsterdam
> Tel.: +31-20- 525 6598; fax: +31-20- 525 3681
> loet@leydesdorff.net
; http://www.leydesdorff.net/
>
>
>
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Received on Fri Dec 3 11:18:56 2004
