Lee -
This is a very pure example of the semantic drift that drives me
crazy, in that "the lab bench meaning" was the *first* meaning: the
word DID NOT EXIST before it was coined (in its adjectival form, in
German, by composing badly-understood-by-its-coiner morphemes from
Greek, by the physicist Clausius) in 1865. Tait (an early knot
theorist and somewhat of a religious nut, as well as a thermodynamic
theorist) brought it into English three years later, but changed its
sign (more or less). By 1875 Maxwell had changed it back to what it
now is. During this period of time the concept expressed by "entropy"
became clearer, as did the whole field of thermodynamics, and
eventually a good mathematical formalism for it developed--"good" in
the sense that it "made sense" of results from "the lab bench" by
reducing downwards (if I have your phrase right? I dunno, maybe
upwards, or both ways?) so as to (1) define "entropy" of a macroscopic
system in terms of the statistical behavior of the ensemble of
microscopic entities participating in that system, and (2) facilitate
calculations (some exact, some asymptotic) of the "entropy" (and
similar thermodynamic quantities) which (3) often agreed with "lab
bench" observations.
I think that "semantic drift" of this type is a natural consequence of
the system in which it exists. While I'm often confounded by others'
appropriation of highly technical terms, I also find it a necessary part
of the larger experience of conceptual trickle down, if you will. I
find, for example, that the typical vernacular use of the term "entropy"
is good enough for who it's for. The generic idea that order decreases
and chaos increases somewhat spontaneously is a pretty good
understanding of the phenomena by laymen and when applied to the world
around us (rust, rot, dissolution, etc) captures the essence pretty well.
When Shannon came along to study signals and noise in communication
channels, he had the insight to see that *the same mathematical
formalism* could be applied. He did *not* have the insight (or dumb
luck) of Clausius, so he overloaded the already-existing Common
English word "information" with a new, technical, mathematical meaning.
I can't help but imagine that he thought he was digging below the
already built edifice and installing a sub-foundation which would
ultimately actually support the existing use of the term (information)?
Do others think otherwise? That his appropriation of the term
"information" was whimsical or without specific motivation?
*That* rather quickly allowed visionaries, hucksters, and cocktail
partiers to talk about "information theory" without understanding much
or any of its technicalities.
But "visionaries, hucksters, cocktail partiers and FRIAMites) will
always attempt to talk about "xxxxx" without understanding many if any
of "xxxxx"s technicalities... isn't that the nature of the beast (or the
venue?). Perhaps this is what has driven some from our ranks (or at
least to poise their fingers over the <delete> button on their mailer at
the first sign of masturbatory charlatanism)?
It also (I suspect; but here I am arguing ahead of what data I happen
to have around, so this may merely be my default Enraged Bloviator
talking) encouraged the same gangs of semantic vandals to appropriate
the word "entropy" to their various malign uses.
Very nice allusion... I can see the hordes sweeping down from the
steppes with a gleam in their eye as they spy such sparkling words
amongst the "civilized folk".
(For what it's worth, the OED doesn't have citations of non-specialist
uses of thermodynamic "entropy" until the mid 1930s--by Freud [as
translated by a pair of Stracheys, not by Jones] and a Christian
apologist; non-specialist uses of information-theoretic "entropy"
appear to hold off until the mid 1960s.) So, to whatever extent the
vernacular ("cocktail party") meaning(s) of entropy has or have a
common core with the technical ("lab bench") meaning(s), it is because
that core REMAINS FROM THE TECHNICAL MEANING after the semantic shift,
and not because (as I *think* you mean to imply in your sentence
containing the word "positivist") there is some ("common core")
concept which BOTH the technical AND the vernacular meanings are
INDEPENDENT ATTEMPTS to "reliably measure".
This is a very (nicely) tightly packed paragraph representing no small
amount of research that I can't hope to reproduce easily. Are you
saying what I said further up, that the vernacular meaning in fact
represents a low-fidelity version of the technical meaning? This
suggests more of a semantic defocus or pull-back than shift/drift, no?
In response to the last sentence, my experience with a wide range of
vernacular users of the term (and they are legion) is that the original
technical meaning had enough utility in it's "high order bits" to be
recognized and maintained in the face of appropriation by said semantic
vandals. They appropriated it *because* they appreciated it's most
obvious qualities, even if it's many subtle details were lost on them?
If "we have a responsibility to try to find" anything, I think it is
to try to find *why* some people insist on (1) glomming onto bits of
jargon with very well-defined in-domain meanings,
If you are speaking of the cocktail party appropriators, it seems that
it is surely (no data beyond personal experience as one and among them)
a combination of an eager attempt to understand something beyond one's
ken, to share that with others out of fascination and perhaps no small
amount of ego-stroking.
If you are speaking of why Claude Shannon would choose to use either
"information" or "entropy", I suppose the answer is probably more
specific and more interesting... I suspect there are yet more hints in
the literature. I *do* think that both are in fact apt usage...
perhaps only because I am very familiar with both uses of the term
"entropy" myself and find comforting that Shannon and others put so much
effort into building a sub-foundation (as I apprehend the relation
between "information" and "information") for a term that was previously
widely used but not very well underpinned?
There is also a phenomena of "trying something on for size" in both
uses. If one "acts as if" a certain reserved term from someone else's
lexicon is appropriate in a certain context, using it over and over
again may actually lead one to recognize how it actually fits, or
perhaps wear off some of it's inconvenient edges until it does fit.
This *does* seem (on the face of it) like a very irresponsible and lazy
way to go about such business, but it does seem to fit what I think you
are describing?
(2) ignoring much or all of those meanings while re-applying the
jargon (often without ANY definition to speak of) in a new domain,
In my work related to scientific collaboration, I did find it surprising
how often specialists in one field would adopt a specialty term from
another without seemingly to either A) learn it's technical meaning and
remain true to it or B) provide a good solid modifier (e.g.
(information) entropy ) and distinguishing definitions. I want to
generously agree with Nick's intuition that this is part of the
mechanism where Science hoists itself around with the petards of
metaphor. I also liked the colorful use of the image of the genies from
one bottle of science escaping to infect(?) another, though I couldn't
find the source of Nick's attribution to Kuhn?
while (3) refusing to let go of some (or all) of the Impressive
Consequences derived in the original domain by derivations
hmm... I certainly see this in the projection of a term or idea from a
technical domain to the domains usually bandied about on FRIAM or other
type of cocktail party. The entire movement (mostly in the 80's?)
known collectively as "new age" (rhymes with "sewage") seemed
particularly guilty (defined entirely by?) of this, invoking ideas such
as the Laser and Spectral this-n-that and Resonance and Dissonance and
Interference Patterns without more than a tiny bit of understanding of
the original meanings of the terms/concepts.
In the cross-fertilization between stovepiped scientific domains
(bottles containing many genies), I don't know that this is as big of a
problem, but perhaps it is... the sub-brand of sloppy-science known
commonly as "wishful thinking"?
that (4) depend on the jettisoned definitions (and the rest of the
technical apparatus of the original domain).
Yes, to dismantle a complex concept and fetishize some of it's flashier
components. The contemporary SteamPunk fashion movement seems like a
fair example of this in pop culture. Merely gluing a gear onto the
surface of something does not imbue it with the technological power it
is intended to imply.
I suggest that our pop-culture fetishizing of science is something
similar to the cargo cults of melanesia. Science, Engineering,
Technology has dropped a great many wonders into the common person's
lap, requiring virtually no understanding whatsoever of the inner
workings (or even broad principles) to take advantage of said wonders
and in response we appropriate the trappings and decorate our everyday
items with them. In this case, we decorate our everyday language with
very specific terms with very specific utility and meaning much in the
way we might disassemble a clockwork mechanism and believe that by
gluing one or more of it's impressive gears onto the surface of our
favorite box or carton that we are now "an inventor"!
Grrrh.
indeed!
===
Nick alluded to there maybe being some utility to this type of
appropriation, at least across domains if not from specialized domains
to more general ones. I am left to wonder if this isn't an artifact of
the *evolutionary* nature of ideas. To invoke a genetic analogy... it
is perhaps more efficient in the scheme of things for a phenotype
(scientific discipline?) to appropriate memes (terms, concepts) from
other genotypes (the scientific literature of another domain) and then
(ab)use them (let semantic drift explore the adjacent likely space of
their meaning) until they fit (well enough) to have significant
utility. I firmly believe that this is what happened with
nonlinear/complexity science over the past 30 years or so... it
brought disparate scientific disciplines together based on potentially
universally useful memes (mathematical and algorithmic concepts, etc.).
Fortunately, *real scientists* (tm) were involved and in many cases
applied great rigor to what we have been complaining about above... to
the casual reader, for example, of SFI white papers, it could be easy to
assume otherwise, but the point of technical papers is NOT to read them
casually, or at least NOT to jump to any significant conclusions upon a
casual reading.
mumble,
- Steve
- Steve
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
