[Inquiry] Doubt, Uncertainty, Dispersion, Entropy

[Jon Awbrey]

Post : Doubt, Uncertainty, Dispersion, Entropy : 1
http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2014/07/01/doubt-uncertainty-dispersion-entropy-1/
Posted : July 1, 2014 at 10:00 pm
Author : Jon Awbrey

Re:Stephen Rose • The Second Law of Thermodynamics
☞http://web.archive.org/web/20140702010000/http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/13416

Peircers,

I decided to copy snippets of this thread to my blog, partly in anticipation of the math formatting
I will most likely need to use eventually and partly because my brain has apparently shut down on
the 1870 Logic of Relatives thread for the duration of the summer.

I added a few links to “my long-time work on inquiry driven systems” and related subjects for anyone
who is short on light summer reading:

Prospects for Inquiry Driven Systems
☞http://intersci.ss.uci.edu/wiki/index.php/Prospects_for_Inquiry_Driven_Systems

Introduction to Inquiry Driven Systems
☞http://intersci.ss.uci.edu/wiki/index.php/Introduction_to_Inquiry_Driven_Systems

Inquiry Driven Systems : Inquiry Into Inquiry
☞http://intersci.ss.uci.edu/wiki/index.php/Inquiry_Driven_Systems

Differential Logic and Dynamic Systems
☞http://intersci.ss.uci.edu/wiki/index.php/Differential_Logic_and_Dynamic_Systems_2.0

Regards,

Jon

Previously ...

Just a note to anchor a series of recurring thoughts that come to mind incidental to the thread on
entropy, et cetera, but I won't have much to say on the bio-chemico-physico-thermo-dynamic side of
things, so I'll spin this off under a separate heading. My interest in this topic arises mainly
from my long-time work on inquiry driven systems, where understanding the intertwined measures of
uncertainty and information is critical to comprehending the dynamics of inquiry.

In a famous passage ( http://www.cspeirce.com/menu/library/bycsp/fixation/fx-main.htm#CP5.374 ),
Peirce says that inquiry begins with the “irritation of doubt” and ends when the irritation is
soothed. Here we find the same compound of affective and cognitive ingredients that we find in
Aristotle's original recipe for the sign relation.

When we view inquiry as a process taking place in a system the first thing we have to ask is what
are the properties or variables that we need to consider in describing the state of the system at
any given time. Taking a Peircean perspective on a system capable of undergoing anything like an
inquiry process, we are led to ask what are the conditions for the possibility of a system having
“states of uncertainty” and “states of information” as state variables.

[Jon Awbrey]

Post : Doubt, Uncertainty, Dispersion, Entropy : 2
http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2014/07/05/doubt-uncertainty-dispersion-entropy-2/
Posted : July 5, 2014 at 11:30 am
Author : Jon Awbrey

Peircers,

Yet another bit of e-synchronicity ...
(or maybe a-synchronicity ???)

Re:John Baez • Entropy and Information in Biological Systems
At:http://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2014/07/04/entropy-and-information-in-biological-systems-part-2/

Re: ''To develop the concept of evolutionary games as “learning” processes in which information is
gained over time.''

My customary recommendation on this point is to look more deeply into the work of C.S. Peirce on the
themes of evolution, inquiry, and their interaction. Peirce stands out as one of the few pioneers
in the study of scientific method who managed to avoid the dead-ends of naive deductivisim and naive
inductivisim. He developed Aristotle’s concept of abductive reasoning in a way that anticipated
later insights into the dynamics of paradigm shifts. A question worth exploring in this connection
is whether abductive hypothesis formation is the analogue within scientific method of random mutation.