Where Does Knowledge Come From?
Sometimes we just KNOW things.
Did you ever wonder where the information came from?
Maybe you've wondered what it's made of.
According to some researchers there's' something to it.
(http://www.utwente.nl/cw/theorieenoverzicht/)
"One of the first designs of the information theory is the model of communication by Shannon and Weaver. Claude Shannon, an engineer at Bell Telephone Laboratories, worked with Warren Weaver on the classic book ‘The mathematical theory of communication’. In this work Shannon and Weaver sought to identify the quickest and most efficient way to get a message from one point to another. Their goal was to discover how communication messages could be converted into electronic signals most efficiently, and how those signals could be transmitted with a minimum of error. In studying this, Shannon and Weaver developed a mechanical and mathematical model of communication, known as the “Shannon and Weaver model of communication”.
According to the theory, transmission of the message involved sending information through electronic signals. “Information” in the information theory sense of the word, should not be confused with ‘information’ as we commonly understand it. According to Shannon and Weaver, information is defined as “a measure of one’s freedom of choice when one selects a message”. In information theory, information and uncertainty are closely related. Information refers to the degree of uncertainty present in a situation. The larger the uncertainty removed by a message, the stronger the correlation between the input and output of a communication channel, the more detailed particular instructions are the more information is transmitted. Uncertainty also relates to the concept of predictability. When something is completely predictable, it is completely certain. Therefore, it contains very little, if any, information. A related term, entropy, is also important in information theory. Entropy refers to the degree of randomness, lack of organization, or disorder in a situation. Information theory measures the quantities of all kinds of information in terms of bits (binary digit). Redundancy is another concept which has emerged from the information theory to communication. Redundancy is the opposite of information. Something that is redundant adds little, if any, information to a message. Redundancy is important because it helps combat noise in a communicating system (e.g. in repeating the message). Noise is any factor in the process that works against the predictability of the outcome of the communication process. Information theory has contributed to the clarification of certain concepts such as noise, redundancy and entropy. These concepts are inherently part of the communication process.
Shannon and Weaver broadly defined communication as “all of the procedures by which one mind may affect another”. Their communication model consisted of an information source: the source’s message, a transmitter, a signal, and a receiver: the receiver’s message, and a destination. Eventually, the standard communication model featured the source or encoder, who encodes a message by translating an idea into a code in terms of bits. A code is a language or other set of symbols or signs that can be used to transmit a thought through one or more channels to elicit a response in a receiver or decoder. Shannon and Weaver also included the factor noise into the model. The study conducted by Shannon and Weaver was motivated by the desire to increase the efficiency and accuracy or fidelity of transmission and reception. Efficiency refers to the bits of information per second that can be sent and received. Accuracy is the extent to which signals of information can be understood. In this sense, accuracy refers more to clear reception than to the meaning of message. This engineering model asks quite different questions than do other approaches to human communication research."
What about hard science? What do we KNOW about the brain?
In an article written by: S. Ashraf Ahmed, PhD we'll ponder brain chemistry for a moment. "OUR failure to recall a memory of the past may be related to a Japanese demonstration of brain's newborn cell function, reported on last November 13. Incidentally two days earlier, Bangladesh lost one of her best scientists, Professor Harun Kader Mohammad Yusuf, an internationally recognized authority of human brain's biochemistry. It is therefore worth recalling his contributions before discussing the new findings. Harun bhai worked out the detailed bio-molecular composition of our brain, and effect of malnutrition on its development. Until his untimely death, he was Chairman of the Bangladesh National Nutritional Council. As a PhD student at the University of Surrey in UK, he studied several dozen brains of children who died of starvation and malnutrition. The three easily separable parts of the animal brain, forebrain, cerebellum and brain stem, have distinct patterns of development. Although plenty was known about smaller mammal brains, he was one of the pioneers in establishing the development pattern in the 3 regions from 13-week fetus to 26-month toddlers. These regions are made up of largely two types of cells. Nerve cells (or neurons) receive, process, store and send out information to various parts of the body in the form of electric signals. Among many functions, glial (glue-like) cells make a protective covering around neurons so that signals are not lost, and also prevent a short circuit. Neurons can be compared to a copper wire while glial cells as outer plastic layer in the familiar electric cables. Glial cells are made of several types of fat (lipid) molecules, such as myelin, cholesterol, ganglioside, phospholipid, and others. Professor Yusuf determined the relative amount of these molecules in various parts of the brain, whose disproportionate occurrence (due to malnutrition) make the information processing erroneous. He published his results in several prestigious British and American journals. Rats serve as a model for humans. At Dhaka University, he fed pregnant rats housed in specially designed cages, with a diet poor in protein. This diet remained same or modified for the mothers and newborns for 0-40 days after stopping feeding on mother's milk. By analyzing lipid composition of the brain, he concluded that malnutrition at any time during early age affect "..myelin development, and nutritional rehabilitation of animals malnourished in early life cannot fully correct this developmental gap". As a rare scientist, he published the results in highly acclaimed international journals, from work done in Bangladesh. His book, "Understanding the Brain and Its Development: A Chemical Approach", published by the World Scientific Publishing in 1992, was used as a text book at foreign Universities. His later fame with iodine malnutrition in Bangladesh will require a separate volume to write.Different parts of the brain have defined functions. For example, neurons of an inner part, known as hippocampus, store short term memory such as what happened in the last few days, while another region, called neocortex, stores long term memory such as that of childhood. The Japanese group blocked formation of new neurons at the hippocampus. They taught mice to be scared of electric shock. The animals with normal neuron formation helped the hippocampus cells to 'forget' the short term scary (shock) memory at hippocampus, yet when tested after 28 days, were scared to "freeze", because they retrieved the memory from long term storage area. On the other hand, the memory stayed in the hippocampus neurons (that normally gets lost over time) in those lacking new neurons. The new cells might transfer memory from short to long term storage area. In effect, the new results suggest that failure of new neuron formation will lead to problems because the brain's short-term memory is literally full. Their results were described in the journal, Cell. Some health professionals believe that physical, as well as brain exercise by learning new knowledge, help develop new neurons. Extending the Japanese findings, one can expect that with the help of these new neurons, we should not forget the precious gifts we received from our leaders in the scientific and social arena."
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_dennett_on_our_consciousness.html
Dan Dennett made an amazing speech on the topic of consciousness. Click the link above to watch him on TED.
I hope you've entertained some thoughts you've never had before.
If Your mind isn't blown yet, click the link below.
http://archive.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=120463
Shannon, C.E., & Weaver, W. (1949). The mathematical theory of communication. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Hawes, L.C. (1975). Pragmatics of analoguing: Theory and model construction in communication. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
http://www.utwente.nl/cw/theorieenoverzicht/Theory%20clusters/Communication%20and%20Information%20Technology/Information_Theory.doc
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