Keywords: Health, Career, Philosophy, Care Philosophy, Care Domains

Citing this page:

Jones, P. (2006) Searching for the Middle: Information to Care

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Information to Care

Information is a unifying concept within the h2cm (this) website. This preoccupation may confuse health colleagues; on the one hand h2cm claims to possess caring credentials, while referring to scientific visualization and diagrammatic reasoning. In Genesis, Serres (1995) draws on earlier work in information theory, since then information has become ubiquitous. Following the classical work of Shannon and Weaver (1949), information theory divided the concept of information into bit-counting and semantic content. This separation of technical and social information is extremely powerful for scientists, technicians and commerce. So ubiquitous is information, that the concept presages major changes in theoretical physics beginning with new definitions of information for the 21st century (Zeilinger, 1999). The struggle between the soft and hard sciences may be a sign of immaturity. von Baeyer (2003) also folds time, stressing that our understanding of information and use of the concept may be at a similar point to that of energy in the 18th century.

Communication and the more complex aspects of information theory inform Serres earliest works. Here Serres (1995b, pp.116-119) employs Hermes, messenger of Zeus and angels from the Greek word for messenger. The latter term has the advantage of referring to a wider variety of messages and messengers. This allows expression of contemporary informational concepts, such as sender, receiver, message, channel and noise. While Serres’ background is technical he subsequently argues that literature can contribute to science. Science in turn has long been recognised as a feat of the imagination, with recourse to history Serres shows that past thinkers can contribute to the science of the present.

The common observation has it that time is nature’s way of ensuring everything does not happen at once. Von Baeyer adds noise: nature’s way of ensuring we cannot learn everything at once. In order for us to differentiate what is significant in our experience from the background melee of reality we need contrast. For Serres this is noise.

Serres’ attention to noise is timely as popular science books explore chaos (Gleik, 1988), complexity (Lewin, 2001), simplicity (Gribbin, 2004), ubiquity (Buchanan, 2001)and synchronicity (Strogatz, 2004). Noise plays a key role in all, but few of us hear its subtleties.

Perhaps this is Serres’ point; people can hear, but do they really listen? Against the noise of day-to-day life, we see and hear the dichotomies, for example, left - right (physical and political), but where is the middle (ear)? Where is the message? The issues that demand our attention are not heard, the political process has become an anechoic chamber, absorbing the critical messages, and even the echoes are lost. Serres highlights that we are further distanced as the social contract is found wanting for need of a Natural contract. The message is a dab of paint, where to place it on the canvas so it has maximum effect? For Serres where can we place it so that it has most contrast set against the noise? Is this the same thing? Or can messages eventually guide themselves home (when the time is right) when the so-called tipping point is reached? If the message is unfit it will not survive the journey, it will not arrive to propagate, mutate and affect (social and political) evolution?

The figure of Hermes dashes to and fro through this digital onion, nonsense or information for fool or sage, making mischief depending on the successful marriage of content and semantics. In Troubadour of Knowledge Serres describes multiplicities of rationalities. Medicine would reduce rationalities to one, not venturing far from home, and is frequently taken aback by the multiplicity of rationalities presented by patients, carers and policy objectives.

Serres’ uses the French blanc (Assad, 1999, p.131) to represent “all and nothing” (the sun – light and dark?); the blank page the ultimate curriculum, open and undefined the blank page that begged Brian’s original questions. But surely, Hodges’ response partitions, classifies and categorises and provides structure and a sense of order. Serres employs another figure, and takes us to the theatre to see Harlequin the Emperor of the Moon. Having travelled to the moon Harlequin declares that the moon is “everywhere everything is the same as on earth”. The response disappoints his audience even while his dress shouts intrigue, complexity and difference. The audience want answers. As if the answer may be hidden Harlequin removes his coat, but still cannot provide a solution. Even if undressed down to his tattooed skin, he is as Assad (1999) explains “monstrous in his endless, unpredictable multiplicities”.

All or nothing partitions the Emperor of the Moon’s costume and the Harlequinesque half-moon. The terminator demarcates the lunar day and night, the most primitive binary ordering. The digital nature of our modern world is much lauded, yet our analogue world is quickly reduced to digital. It always has been divided into day and night, the original contrast; do not adjust your set. Harlequin’s title is significant in health. Mental health is such a fine line, always on the cusp, walking the terminator that is stress and vulnerability. Of course, even when described as full - half the moon is (permanently) hidden.

When Hodges’ posed his questions is he dressing the blank page in Harlinquinesque contours even before the answers are given? Or do the h2cm’s axes merely act as a clothes horse? Is it possible to have a value neutral space? A blank page - like a blank wall - invites clamour, both words and images? Noise is always there, even if only as the 21st century background hum, our invited guest, occupying silence. While h2cm helps to define the horizon it signals multiplicity, our writing and imaging is compositional, no longer sole contributor but one of several.

Intro : h2cm : Serres : Fused : You Are Here : Art-Science : Lang2Care : Global Reach & Close

References:

Assad, M.L. (1999) Reading with Michel Serres: An Encounter with Time, SUNY.

Buchanan, M. (2001) Ubiquity: The New Science That Is Changing the World, Phoenix.

Edwards, A.W.F. (2004) Cogwheels of the Mind: The Story of Venn Diagrams, John Hopkins Univ. Press.

Gleick, J. (1988) Chaos: Making a New Science. London: Heinemann.

Gribbin, J. (2004) Deep Simplicity: Chaos, Complexity and the Emergence of Life, Allen Lane.

Serres, M. (1995) Genesis, trans. James, G., Nielson, J., University of Michigan Press; p.6.

Shannon, C.E., Weaver, W. (1949) The mathematical theory of communication. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Strogatz, S. (2004) Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order, Penguin Press Science.

von Baeyer, H.C. (2003) Information: The New Language of Science, London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

Zeilinger, A. (1999) A Foundational Principle for Quantum Mechanics, Foundations of Physics; 29,631.