- Email: [email protected]
The informational perspective: an overview of the issue
BioSystems 46 (1998) 9 – 11
The informational perspective: an overview of the issue Kevin G. Kirby * Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Northern Kentucky Uni6ersity, Highland Heights, KY 41099, USA
Abstract Papers arising out of the 1996 Conference on the Foundations of Information Science are introduced. A key motif is the continual violation and restoration of consistency, percolating and precipitating along vertical chains of informational objects. © 1998 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Information; Perspectivism; Paradox
1. Introduction Information is paradoxical. These 26 papers, as they attempt to construct, or deconstruct, unified approaches to information science, work in domains ranging from cosmology to sociology. Yet paradox always lurks just beneath the surface, and in many papers it emerges as one of the primary themes. Why is this? The paradoxes of information as content are as old as the famous Liar: ‘This sentence is false1’. Such paradoxes don’t disturb the ordinary fields
* E-mail: [email protected] 1 A treatment of the liar that dovetails with many of the perspectives herein is that of Barwise and Etchemendy (1987). There one will find careful and precise treatments of some of the issues treated in the very different ‘endophysical’ tradition by many papers in this issue. (Situation semantics, which serves as its backdrop, is mentioned explicitly in the paper by Goranson.)
of meaning in our life, because we casually view them as local anomalies. They are temporary violations of a kind of conservation principle, a below-threshold glitch swamped by a meaning bath, a plenum of context that restores consistency before the anomaly ripples far outward. However, from the perspective of this issue, we find disturbances, indeed ‘resonances’ across a vertical hierarchy from the vacuum to our social institutions. The poetic sweep is alluring, but behind the engaging metaphor there are specific technical issues which information science must confront. Several authors find important touchstones in Go¨del’s second incompleteness theorem, in the uncomputability and intractability results of theoretical computer science, in Kripke’s casting of Wittgenstein’s comments on rule following into an argument toward a sceptical paradox, and in work on Hartree–Fock style self-consistent approaches to fundamental physical field theories.
0303-2647/98/$19.00 © 1998 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved. PII S0303-2647(97)00075-0
10
K.G. Kirby / BioSystems 46 (1998) 9–11
We see the movement from an advocacy of multiple perspectives to a more fundamental claim of the inevitability of ‘multiperspectivism’. With new perspectives come new missions. The authors here collectively argue that informational constructions should play an explanatory role, not just a metaphorical role. Indeed, its explanatory role may be fundamental.
2. The papers The issue begins with a grand narrative taking us from the big bang onward. Eric Chaisson uses ‘free energy rate density’ to trace out times when matter controlled radiation and when life controlled matter, framed within a cosmology where life itself plays an integral role. G.N. Ord and J.A. Gualtieri study a fundamental equation of physics (Dirac’s, and, thereby, Schro¨dinger’s) and discuss how information vanishes as we pass to the limiting case of these continuous equations from a discrete stochastic formulation. Next, Michael Conrad reviews his fluctuon model and surveys some characterizations of life. He articulates the central theme of downward filtration and upward percolation along multiscale hierarchies, arguing that the manifest nonlinearities of quantum gravity are prerequisites for life. M.S. El Naschie, performs some description and deduction within a model of space as a union of cantor sets. Along the way, he notices some formal similarities to expressions and notions from other domains (statistics, quantum field theory, set theory, quaternion and octonion mathematics), and notes how his formulation is reminiscent of formulations in some recent proposals concerning the origin of gravity. The issue now moves from physically-based issues to directly confront the concept of information itself. Werner Ebeling and Cornelius Frommel use classical (non-semantic) structural information theory to analyze literary texts, pieces of music, and strands of nucleic acids. Using the notion mutual information, many-scale correlations are found in these artifacts. Koichiro Matsuno deals with the dualities of local and global, synchronous and asynchronous. Echoing the
theme of self-consistency, he deals with time and information and ‘the negotiation between a proclaimed global consistency on the one hand and the local activity of tracing and confirming that consistency on the other’. In a similar vein, Dieter Gernert brings in endophysical observers and studies their hermeneutic strategies, characterizing them in terms of knowledge representation and knowledge acquisition. Kevin Kirby introduces the ideas of torsion (breakdown of the simulation relation) and exaptation (recruitment of existing structures for new functions) in order to make some sketches of a new theory of natural information processing. Bela Banathy addresses a related issue, the problem that systems tend to be locked into a particular state space, by introducing three varieties of information. Abir Igamberdiev explores the themes of Go¨del numbering, paradox resolution, uncomputability, and reflection from the informational perspective. The next phase takes us to perspectives from neuroscience and psychology. Efim Liberman and his co-authors discuss multidimensional information as used in neuroscience. Peter Erdi and his colleagues review the technologies of artificial olfaction and find them wanting; he suggests a new architecture in line with informational biology. Ernest Rossi’s contention is that current chronobiology experimental data support new views on the limits of conscious information processing: the Feigenbaum scenario may underlie the abstract orchestration of human cognition and conscious information processing. Turning to one of the most debated psychological topics, consciousness, Sally Goerner and Allan Combs propose an ecological approach based on the integration of multiple organic, self-organizing informational processes culminating in a self-generating web. Since a salient feature of consciousness is the privacy of the individual’s informational states, Deborah Conrad provides a review of the analytical philosophical tradition’s take on private conscious experience, focussing especially on the later work of Wittgenstein and this work’s interpreters—common referents for many of the authors here. The issue then moves on to explore the multiple explanatory roles that information concepts are
K.G. Kirby / BioSystems 46 (1998) 9–11
increasingly playing in the human arena. Entering into the organization of human societies around information exchanges between individuals, Robert Artigiani reformulates McLuhan’s famous dictum in connection with the Shannonian basic tenets on communication: his conclusion is that, dealing with the nature of social information, ‘the person is the message’. Going towards economic issues, the question whether the central motifs of economic organization, informationally grounded (such as prices, markets, stock exchange), are actually recapitulating some of life’s informational inventions at the molecular biological level, is addressed by Pedro C. Marijua´n. That life’s informational inventions at this level should be recapitulated in computer information systems is argued by Roberto Kampfner, who applies some principles concerning the balance between specialization of function and adaptation to this field. Ted Goranson’s train of thought is that a proper management of information flows in the business domain has become one of the most urgent strategic items for interdisciplinary research; he urges new theoretical and mathematical tools. The issue of ontology now arises. Andreas Goppold addresses from an ontological perspective the problems to be confronted when dealing with the nature of information in a social context, including basic limitations of the present system of sciences. In the endophysical tradition, Yukio Gunji deals with the positive aspects of the indefiniteness of interfaces, using analogies from category–theoretic formulations of lattice theory to articulate his points. Soeren Brier develops a transdisciplinary framework based on non-Cartesian, non-reductionistic principles, with semiotics at the core.
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11
The issue wraps up by confronting a newly pervasive object in informational culture: the world-wide web (WWW). Following a historical perspective on information and society relationships, the complex interface between social systems and informational (technological) inventions culminates in ‘the emerging global community’, as expostulated by Tom Stonier: the WWW appears as an evolving global brain. However, the making and evolution of the contemporary ‘information society’ is driven by contradictory social and political forces, and as Peter Fleissner and Wolfgang Hofkirchner analyze, it is unclear yet which of the partial processes and social metaphors (Leitbilder) that can be detected in its construction will predominate. In a more specialized vein, the ‘webometry’ of Ralph Abraham interprets certain kinds of internet connectivity matrices as images to be analyzed by fractal methods, and claims that such analyses will answer important cybersociological questions. Bringing the issue to a close, the philosophical reflections of Otto Ro¨ssler and Koichiro Matsuno recap the themes and issues from a relativist stance.
Acknowledgements The author thanks Pedro Marijua´n for his contribution to the overview of many of the papers in this volume.
References Barwise, J., Etchemendy, J., 1987. The Liar: An Essay on Truth and Circularity. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
.
The informational perspective: an overview of the issue Kevin G. Kirby * Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Northern Kentucky Uni6ersity, Highland Heights, KY 41099, USA
Abstract Papers arising out of the 1996 Conference on the Foundations of Information Science are introduced. A key motif is the continual violation and restoration of consistency, percolating and precipitating along vertical chains of informational objects. © 1998 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Information; Perspectivism; Paradox
1. Introduction Information is paradoxical. These 26 papers, as they attempt to construct, or deconstruct, unified approaches to information science, work in domains ranging from cosmology to sociology. Yet paradox always lurks just beneath the surface, and in many papers it emerges as one of the primary themes. Why is this? The paradoxes of information as content are as old as the famous Liar: ‘This sentence is false1’. Such paradoxes don’t disturb the ordinary fields
* E-mail: [email protected] 1 A treatment of the liar that dovetails with many of the perspectives herein is that of Barwise and Etchemendy (1987). There one will find careful and precise treatments of some of the issues treated in the very different ‘endophysical’ tradition by many papers in this issue. (Situation semantics, which serves as its backdrop, is mentioned explicitly in the paper by Goranson.)
of meaning in our life, because we casually view them as local anomalies. They are temporary violations of a kind of conservation principle, a below-threshold glitch swamped by a meaning bath, a plenum of context that restores consistency before the anomaly ripples far outward. However, from the perspective of this issue, we find disturbances, indeed ‘resonances’ across a vertical hierarchy from the vacuum to our social institutions. The poetic sweep is alluring, but behind the engaging metaphor there are specific technical issues which information science must confront. Several authors find important touchstones in Go¨del’s second incompleteness theorem, in the uncomputability and intractability results of theoretical computer science, in Kripke’s casting of Wittgenstein’s comments on rule following into an argument toward a sceptical paradox, and in work on Hartree–Fock style self-consistent approaches to fundamental physical field theories.
0303-2647/98/$19.00 © 1998 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved. PII S0303-2647(97)00075-0
10
K.G. Kirby / BioSystems 46 (1998) 9–11
We see the movement from an advocacy of multiple perspectives to a more fundamental claim of the inevitability of ‘multiperspectivism’. With new perspectives come new missions. The authors here collectively argue that informational constructions should play an explanatory role, not just a metaphorical role. Indeed, its explanatory role may be fundamental.
2. The papers The issue begins with a grand narrative taking us from the big bang onward. Eric Chaisson uses ‘free energy rate density’ to trace out times when matter controlled radiation and when life controlled matter, framed within a cosmology where life itself plays an integral role. G.N. Ord and J.A. Gualtieri study a fundamental equation of physics (Dirac’s, and, thereby, Schro¨dinger’s) and discuss how information vanishes as we pass to the limiting case of these continuous equations from a discrete stochastic formulation. Next, Michael Conrad reviews his fluctuon model and surveys some characterizations of life. He articulates the central theme of downward filtration and upward percolation along multiscale hierarchies, arguing that the manifest nonlinearities of quantum gravity are prerequisites for life. M.S. El Naschie, performs some description and deduction within a model of space as a union of cantor sets. Along the way, he notices some formal similarities to expressions and notions from other domains (statistics, quantum field theory, set theory, quaternion and octonion mathematics), and notes how his formulation is reminiscent of formulations in some recent proposals concerning the origin of gravity. The issue now moves from physically-based issues to directly confront the concept of information itself. Werner Ebeling and Cornelius Frommel use classical (non-semantic) structural information theory to analyze literary texts, pieces of music, and strands of nucleic acids. Using the notion mutual information, many-scale correlations are found in these artifacts. Koichiro Matsuno deals with the dualities of local and global, synchronous and asynchronous. Echoing the
theme of self-consistency, he deals with time and information and ‘the negotiation between a proclaimed global consistency on the one hand and the local activity of tracing and confirming that consistency on the other’. In a similar vein, Dieter Gernert brings in endophysical observers and studies their hermeneutic strategies, characterizing them in terms of knowledge representation and knowledge acquisition. Kevin Kirby introduces the ideas of torsion (breakdown of the simulation relation) and exaptation (recruitment of existing structures for new functions) in order to make some sketches of a new theory of natural information processing. Bela Banathy addresses a related issue, the problem that systems tend to be locked into a particular state space, by introducing three varieties of information. Abir Igamberdiev explores the themes of Go¨del numbering, paradox resolution, uncomputability, and reflection from the informational perspective. The next phase takes us to perspectives from neuroscience and psychology. Efim Liberman and his co-authors discuss multidimensional information as used in neuroscience. Peter Erdi and his colleagues review the technologies of artificial olfaction and find them wanting; he suggests a new architecture in line with informational biology. Ernest Rossi’s contention is that current chronobiology experimental data support new views on the limits of conscious information processing: the Feigenbaum scenario may underlie the abstract orchestration of human cognition and conscious information processing. Turning to one of the most debated psychological topics, consciousness, Sally Goerner and Allan Combs propose an ecological approach based on the integration of multiple organic, self-organizing informational processes culminating in a self-generating web. Since a salient feature of consciousness is the privacy of the individual’s informational states, Deborah Conrad provides a review of the analytical philosophical tradition’s take on private conscious experience, focussing especially on the later work of Wittgenstein and this work’s interpreters—common referents for many of the authors here. The issue then moves on to explore the multiple explanatory roles that information concepts are
K.G. Kirby / BioSystems 46 (1998) 9–11
increasingly playing in the human arena. Entering into the organization of human societies around information exchanges between individuals, Robert Artigiani reformulates McLuhan’s famous dictum in connection with the Shannonian basic tenets on communication: his conclusion is that, dealing with the nature of social information, ‘the person is the message’. Going towards economic issues, the question whether the central motifs of economic organization, informationally grounded (such as prices, markets, stock exchange), are actually recapitulating some of life’s informational inventions at the molecular biological level, is addressed by Pedro C. Marijua´n. That life’s informational inventions at this level should be recapitulated in computer information systems is argued by Roberto Kampfner, who applies some principles concerning the balance between specialization of function and adaptation to this field. Ted Goranson’s train of thought is that a proper management of information flows in the business domain has become one of the most urgent strategic items for interdisciplinary research; he urges new theoretical and mathematical tools. The issue of ontology now arises. Andreas Goppold addresses from an ontological perspective the problems to be confronted when dealing with the nature of information in a social context, including basic limitations of the present system of sciences. In the endophysical tradition, Yukio Gunji deals with the positive aspects of the indefiniteness of interfaces, using analogies from category–theoretic formulations of lattice theory to articulate his points. Soeren Brier develops a transdisciplinary framework based on non-Cartesian, non-reductionistic principles, with semiotics at the core.
.
11
The issue wraps up by confronting a newly pervasive object in informational culture: the world-wide web (WWW). Following a historical perspective on information and society relationships, the complex interface between social systems and informational (technological) inventions culminates in ‘the emerging global community’, as expostulated by Tom Stonier: the WWW appears as an evolving global brain. However, the making and evolution of the contemporary ‘information society’ is driven by contradictory social and political forces, and as Peter Fleissner and Wolfgang Hofkirchner analyze, it is unclear yet which of the partial processes and social metaphors (Leitbilder) that can be detected in its construction will predominate. In a more specialized vein, the ‘webometry’ of Ralph Abraham interprets certain kinds of internet connectivity matrices as images to be analyzed by fractal methods, and claims that such analyses will answer important cybersociological questions. Bringing the issue to a close, the philosophical reflections of Otto Ro¨ssler and Koichiro Matsuno recap the themes and issues from a relativist stance.
Acknowledgements The author thanks Pedro Marijua´n for his contribution to the overview of many of the papers in this volume.
References Barwise, J., Etchemendy, J., 1987. The Liar: An Essay on Truth and Circularity. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
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