Category Archives: Inquiry

Memories are coming back to me more through the association of ideas than ordered by time or place.  I can sense, almost touch a tangle of thoughts interlaced with each other — the “information first” approach to ontology, the “arrows … Continue reading →

I was at the time working as a “scanner” in the High Energy Physics Lab at Michigan State, sitting in a darkened room measuring tracks of particle interactions projected on a lighted scanning table from reels and reels of bubble … Continue reading →

I remember it was back in ’76 when I began to notice a subtle shift of focus in the computer science journals I was reading, from discussing X to discussing Information About X, a transformation I noted mentally as whenever … Continue reading →

Information Recapped Reflection on the inverse relation between uncertainty and information led us to define the information capacity of a communication channel as the average uncertainty reduction on receiving a sign, taking the acronym auroras as a reminder of the … Continue reading →

Information Channeled Suppose we find ourselves in the classification‑augmented or sign‑enhanced situation of uncertainty shown in Figure 5.  What difference does it make to our state of information regarding the objective outcome if we heed one or the other of the … Continue reading →

Uncertainty Moderated In many ways the provision of information, a process which serves to reduce uncertainty, operates as an inverse process in relation to the type of uncertainty augmentation which takes place in compound decisions.  By way of illustrating the … Continue reading →

Uncertainty Multiplied In our minds’ eyes last time we imagined ourselves coming to a fork in the road and seeing four paths diverge from that point.  Suppose a survey of the scene ahead now shows each path reaching a point … Continue reading →

Uncertainty Measured As a matter of fact, at least in the discrete types of cases we are currently considering, it would be possible to use the degree of a node, the number of paths fanning out from it, as a measure … Continue reading →

Sense and Obliviscence In taking up a study of signs from a pragmatic point of view we naturally follow the advice of the pragmatic maxim on a way to make the relationship between our concepts and their objects as clear … Continue reading →