From: "Aaron Sloman" To: NotationalEngineering@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Why not a new discipline of notational engineering? Date: Mon, 07 Mar 2005 03:28:35 -0800 Thanks for trying to get this off the ground. jefflong@aol.com wrote: > With all the arcane subjects that are studied seriously and in-depth, I > find it astonishing that there is not a field dedicated to the > scientific study of notational systems (NS). They are so fundamental > and yet so ignored! Today we use NS that didn't exist a thousand years > ago; in another thousand years there will probably be NS that empower > their users with capabilities we can hardly imagine. Why not try and > accelerate that? I agree that this is an important topic, as long as it is not restricted to *external* sign systems: things you can make and see in the environment, or to static signs, representations, without regard to the processes that engage with or create or use them. That's because long before external signs came into existence (on earth) biological evolution created entities that acquire, manipulate, use and (in some cases) store and derive or create information. The mechanisms and notations (forms of representation) were expressed first in physical and chemical states and mechanisms, then later in combinations of those and neural mechanisms and their activation states, then in more abstract symbolic structures in virtual machines that were *implemented* in the earlier mechanisms, and then in external notations such as gestures, dances, pheromone trails, pictures, songs and other 'vocal' behaviours, speech, pictures, diagrams, maps, mathematical formalisms, computer programs, .... > > Based on its mandate to study sign systems, you would expect semiotics > to be the discipline that studies this. But the bulk of the work I've > seen (with the notable exception of the work of its founder, Charles S. > Peirce) has been about the subjective interpretation of informal > symbols, usually as an aide for literary, artistic, and political > criticism. Mathematics is the field most heavily invested in NS, but > it seems interested only in NS that tokenize mathematical abstractions, > thus leaving the study of abstractions in other fields (e.g., movement > notation, musical notation, money, and other arenas) largely > unexplored. Am I missing something here? What we need, and what those (to the best of my knowledge) fail to provide, is a theory of the *processes* by which notations are created, manipulated and used (in the most general sense of 'notations' which includes anything that expresses information whether in an evanescent form or for an extended period for later use or multiple use). The study of such processes requires the study of *mechanisms* that produce or facilitate or are affected by such processes. Since the more sophisticated versions of such mechanisms are themselves users of many notations (formalisms, forms of representation), this investigation is inherently recursive. I have been trying to understand these things in my own clumsy way since writing my d.phil (phd) thesis in Oxford explaining and defending Kant's theory of mathematical knowledge as both non-empirical and non-analytic. Several papers groping towards (i hope) an understanding of these issues can be found at the Cognition and Affect web site: http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/cogaff/ http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/cogaff/talks/ Probably the easiest way to find them is to type to google sloman representation bham cogaff This is a draft unfinished paper that ought to be turned into a book, and may never be finished as the topic is very difficult and I have too many distractions. http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/cogaff/sloman-vis-affordances.pdf Trying to summarise these ideas in an email message would make it far too long and indigestible. I welcome critical comments and suggestions for extension and improvement. I hope this is relevant to the new forum. I fear most people who are capable of contributing will already be too busy with other things! Thanks for trying. Aaron www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~axs