Contents:
Volume 5 No. 4, 1998
Pedro C. Marijuán:
The FIS (Foundations of Information Science) Initiative: A Presentation
Gordon G. Scarrott:
The Formulation of a Science of Information: An Engineering Perspective
on the Natural Properties of Information
Pedro C. Marijuán
and Morris Villarroel: On Information Theory Stumbling-Blocks: Some Biological
Considerations about the Concepts of “Sequence”, “Stability” and “Hierarchy”
Ray Paton: The
Ecologies of Hereditary Information
Michael Conrad:
Physical-Biological Roots of Information Processing
Columns
Ranulph Glanville,
Sima Sengupta and Gail Forey:
A (Cybernetic)
Musing: Language and Science in the Language of Science full
text
Louis H. Kauffman:
Virtual Logic — The Smullyan Machine full
text
Reviews
Søren
Brier: Do Infons have Organizing Power and Emerge as Meaning?
Luis Mateus Rocha:
Where is the Progress?
John P. Van
Gigch: From Complexity To Creativity. Explorations in Evolutionary, Autopoietic,
and Cognitive Dynamics
The artist of
this issue is Mikael Hansen
C&HK
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Foreword:
Foundations of Information Science
ByPedro
C. Marijuán
The kind invitation by
Soeren Brier to prepare a special issue devoted to FIS themes in this Journal
provides a good occasion to recapitulate the brief history of the Foundations
of Information Science initiative and to summarize its basic goals.
FIS surfaced as a formal
project in June 1991, in Chicago, during a conversation between Michael
Conrad and this author at a Lebanese restaurant. One year later, a small
supporting network began to take form, thanks to the growing cooperation
with colleagues from very different disciplines attracted by this venture:
Koichiro Matsuno, Tom Stonier, Gordon C. Scarrott, Ramón Margalef,
Ray Paton, Peter Érdi, Johan De Vree, George Kampis, Efim Liberman,
Fernando Carvalho, etc. Different drafts and preparatory documents circulated
during that time. In autumn 1993, a courageous professor from the University
Carlos III of Madrid, Fivos Panetsos, undertook the adventure of convoking
and financing the first FIS Conference: From Computers and Quantum Physics
to Cells, Nervous Systems, and Societies. It took place in Madrid, July
11-15th 1994, gathering 30 or so participants (see Proceedings in BioSystems,
38, 1996). Rather than a proper foundational attempt, it was an exploration
of how a dialog around the common theme of information could be sustained
among practitioners from very distant disciplines. Its results went well
beyond initial expectations. The practical experience made it clear that
a dialog on foundations of information science was not only a plausible
task but also an exciting and scholarly one.
The second FIS Conference:
The Quest for a Unified Theory of Information was organized by Wolfang
Hofkirchner and Peter Fleissner at the Technical University of Vienna,
June 11-15th 1996. It notably enlarged both the number of participants
(now close to one hundred) and the scope of themes and of different disciplines
(quite a few of the established branches of knowledge were represented).
Not without considerable discussion, ups and downs, and cohesive efforts
— for this time there were far more topics to be interrelated and contradictions
to be addressed — the second FIS conference also succeeded in meeting the
challenge. Like the first one, it represented an occasion of fulfillment
and scientific achievement. The affluence of new topics was felt in numerous
areas, perhaps the ones belonging to physics having the lion’s share. (In
comparison, the Madrid conference was slightly more focused on biological
and neuronal aspects.) Both the physical and biological areas were accompanied
by semiotic and philosophical approaches, economic and business-oriented
ones, information society and information revolution topics, considerations
of the emergence of a "global brain", and so on (see FIS 96 Proceedings,
World Futures, 49 & 50, 1997; and also the FIS Special Issue in BioSystems,
46, 1998).
After the appreciable
success of these two FIS conferences, the door appears open to advance
the field in manifold directions, both theoretical and applied (or pragmatic).
As a matter of fact, the collaboration with other scientific societies,
such as ISIS (Symmetrion Institute) and ISSS (Systems Science), has already
produced two FIS symposia within the Symmetry Conferences in Washington
1995 (see Symmetry: Culture and Science, 7, 3, 1996) and in Haifa 1998,
and the planned FIS symposium and track at Asilomar ISSS 1999. A workshop
on Information: Instrument for the Survival of Society, promoted by Gordon
G. Scarrott, was held at the Institute of Electrical Engineers in London,
November 1996. A collegial email discussion list was started in December
1997, and a FIS Virtual Conference was held throughout 1998, with sections
on physical, bioinformational, neuroscientific and social science themes
(see records at http://fis.iguw.tuwien.ac.at/)
The central goal behind
these FIS activities is the rediscussion of the information concept in
a new framework. The unending controversies over the concept of information
in quite many different scientific fields have not at all receded in recent
decades (it is symptomatic that, almost from the very beginning, the famous
Shannonian information theory was so misconstructed in relation to order,
entropy, uncertainty, etc.). With the passage of time it is becoming more
and more clear that no solitary discipline, no specialized point of view,
is capable of solving the conundrum of the information concept. As was
emphasized during the FIS conferences, we badly need a new interdisciplinary
dialog, a "common house" for the cross-fertilization of many diverse insights
related to the concept.
The long term outcome
of these discussions, most FISers agree, is difficult to foresee. Perhaps,
as happened to the very concept of physics, the outcome would not just
be the clarification of a single concept, but its subsumption into a conceptual
network articulating a new scientific perspective: information science.
In this sense, the conceptual threads that have been developed by FIS authors
during these conferences have been as varied as the authors themselves:
a jazz club is a far better analogy than a symphony orchestra. From cosmology,
quantum gravity and the fluctuon model to the role of paradoxical concepts
in science; from the relationship between information and entropy, to the
management of information flows in the business environment; from theories
on neuronal processing and consciousness, to the informational role of
values, ethics and morals in the sustainability of societies; from cybersemiotics
and third-order ontology to the cost of social and technological complexity;
from the "information society" to the Internet dynamics as a "global brain",
etc.
This exploratory richness
is an important capital—no doubt about that. The modest integrative achievements
of these two FIS conferences (and related workshops and symposia), in addition
to the numerous findings accumulated in other recent interdisciplinary
ventures — complexity sciences, artificial life, molecular computing, computational
neuroscience, biomolecular energetics, etc. — constitute a grand body of
information-related knowledge "almost ready for the synthesis". But, as
mentioned, the problems and paradoxes inherent in the formalization of
informational phenomena remain largely obscure as yet, and some contributions
in this issue will provide good arguments for this. Although the emergence
and rapid maturing of an information science in the middle of the information
revolution would hardly be a surprise, the historical examples of other
paradoxical concepts (phlogiston, caloric, aether) show that framing new
disciplinary cores tends to be a long-term task, a transgenerational enterprise.
Small advancements in
these topics easily lead to grandiose claims. Perhaps what has differentiated
the FIS venture from other previous interdisciplinary excursions is its
commitment to a positive skepticism; together with the maintenance of a
pluralistic method based on an ongoing dialog between the different scientific
(and philosophical) perspectives that participate on an equal footing in
the foundational attempt. The quest for a unified approach to information
capable of overcoming the paradoxes of this concept appears inherently,
"inexorably" we dare say, as a multiperspecte attempt.
Opening the FIS-representative
papers in this Special Issue, the reader will find the (posthumously edited)
presentation that Gordon G. Scarrot elaborated for the Institute of Electrical
Engineers, London 1996. We believe it is a brilliant representation of
the information-engineering point of view about the need for an information
science, and we would like to thank his familiy and the IEE for their permission
and kind collaboration to present this paper. The contribution that follows,
by this author and Morris Villarroel, elaborates on several aspects of
information phenomena that can lead to a revision of classic information
theory; it dovetails some of Scarrott’s suggestions. Ray Paton presents
an intriguing informational view on the "fluid" nature of genomes in their
measurement relationships with the surrounding ecological setting. Then
Michael Conrad develops one of the central FIS topics: the vertical dimension
of information phenomena, i.e., how the unmanifest properties of vacuum
percolate upwards and "mold" the information dynamics of life.
We much appreciate this
opportunity to extend the dialog about FIS-related themes to the Cybernetics
and Semiotics-oriented public of this Journal.
Pedro C. Marijuán
Zaragoza, December 1998
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