Information and Creation Integrating the “Two Cultures”

This book is devoted to one of the central problems of contemporary thinking, for which c.P. Snow in 1959 coined the phrase of the «Two Cultures». In this concept, human endeavour is directed on one side to the (forward-looking) sci­ ences (mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, etc.) and on the other side to the (backward-looking) humanities (including psychology, linguistics, sociology, etc.). In this dichotomy Snow saw no possibility of unification. On the other hand the urge towards self-consistency and harmony in the mental and spiritual lives of both man and society as a whole is clearly one of the major forces of creativity, both scientific and artistic. This force aims at the unification of the «Two Cultures» in order to build an integrated self-consistent system for our intellectual life. Some attempts in this direction have been made before, and will be described in this book. It is our aim to contribute to the achievement of an integrated mental life on the basis of information theory. In order to construct our model, we examine the laws of information theory, leading us to the deduction of the main laws inherent in both «cultures». Thus, we consider the evolution of both non-living and living matter, human behaviour, the phenomenon of language, the sphere of aesthetics, etc. We hope that our work will be useful both for researchers (who are trying to derive different integral theories) and for various other «consumers» of scientific knowledge (meaning broad circles of intellectuals).

1: Information and adaptation.- 1.1 Mutual information.- 1.2 Valuable information.- 1.3 Principle of the information maximum.- 1.4 Expansion: Principle of the entropy maximum.- 1.5 Adaptation as organization.- 2: Evolution and creation.- 2.1 Life.- 2.2 Reflexion as a factor of evolution.- 2.3 Memory.- 2.4 Response of the system to a new stimulus.- 2.5 Conditions of the informational interaction. Threshold.- 2.6 Emotions.- 2.7 Perception and pattern recognition.- 2.8 Consciousness.- 2.9 Thinking.- 2.10 Creation.- 2.11 Intuition and logic.- 3: Mechanisms of language.- 3.1 Language: How many mechanisms are involved?.- 3.2 From pre-linguistic mechanisms — to language.- 3.3 On language as one of the roots of literature.- 3.4 The sound structure of language: Choice of the information channel.- 3.5 Phonetic structures: Possible ideal types.- 3.6 Possible evolution of sound structures.- 3.7 At the final step of evolution.- 3.8 Physical realization of speech communication.- 4: Construction of the aesthetic sphere.- 4.1 Natural objects: Absolute and conventional criteria.- 4.2 Artificial objects: By-product and special perfecting impacts.- 4.3 Concrete images and art.- 4.4 Objects’ features, signs, and art.- 4.5 Emotional impact of art: Social aspect.- 4.6 The «Hamburg score» of art.- 5: Devices of art.- 5.1 How to attract attention?.- 5.2 How to keep attention? Nuance.- 5.3 How to switch attention? Contrast.- 5.4 Laws of harmony: Golden section.- 5.5 Temporal structures in poetical works: Theoretical considerations.- 5.6 Temporal structures: Experimental results.- Towards a human integral culture (concluding remarks).