January 16, 2004
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巴赫和Piranesi
读索绪尔，理解二项对立：共时与历时，语言与言语，连锁与选择（也称组合与聚合），（符号）能指与所指，加上价值与关系。
对任何符号体系，确定基元，分析其对立、联系和转换，是建立文化的模式和其系统的结构主义方式。
比如建筑学中，门，内室，走道，后墙等构成连锁关系，不同式样的门，走道构成选择关系。音乐亦是如此，还记得友友试图探索表现的巴赫和Piranesi的联系吗？
January 15, 2004
From implicit to explicit
Listening to Ouverture-Allegro from Bach's Partita No. 4 in D Major.
Reflecting upon today's conversation.
It's getting dark outside.
Mary:
"....from implicit to explicit."
"...all about more connections, deeper meaning for life, right?"
What is "right" ? A feeling of "connected'? Can we escape from 'structure"? Maybe not, since existence itself is within time which is constantly changing. But there are all kinds of different system/network/structure at different level. "deeper meaning"? At which level? "from implicit to explicit" means transform structure from one level to another. Right?
January 14, 2004
语言，棋和价值
索绪尔（Saussure）关于语言的比喻很多，代数，交响乐章，川流不息的长河，还有“一件袍子，历尽岁月，缝满了补丁，补丁所用的布是从衣服本身剪下来的。”等等。最妙的一个是：下棋。
许国璋先生在《论语言和语言学》中如下介绍了索绪尔的观念：
做模子的材料可以比做是语言的外部研究，棋法可以比做是内部研究。
全局棋的走法可比历时态（diachronie)，静止的棋阵可比共时态（synchronie）；所谓历时态，就是一个共时态进入又一个新的共时态。
语言里每一个单位（例如：词）看起来是实体，其实不是。如国际象棋缺少一个“车“，只要再找一块小方木代替即可。是否是“车”的样子不要紧，只要按“车”和其他棋子的关系去走，就是“车”，就具有“车”的价值。只有具有价值的车，才是实体，孤立的单位不是实体。
“有资格称做"实体"的东西来自价值，价值来自关系，关系构成系统。”
这是结构主义的精华吗？
January 13, 2004
Dyson and Fang
Why our universe is hospitable to life? Freeman Dyson talked on this subject on March 9, 2000 in Berkeley. You only knew this during the dinner with Fang in New York Chinatown last Friday. You talked about Six Degrees, Biocosm, Slashdot, SFI and Dyson's Disturbing the Universe. He smiled and sent you this link two days later.
From Freeman Dyson's speech in Berkeley:
"The best popular account of the science that explains how the universe can be friendly to life is a book, "Creation of the Universe", by the Chinese astronomers Fang Li Zhi and Li Shu Xian. The book was translated into English and published by World Scientific Publishing Company of Singapore in 1989. Fang Li Zhi is the famous dissident astronomer now living in exile in the United States. I particularly recommend Chapter 6, with the title "How Order was born of Chaos". This tells the same story that I am telling you today, but with more detail and more depth. "
Distributed Political Activism
Just came back from the Commonwealth Club, where words such as "agents for social change", "absence of power", "critical service that really can change the equation", "tipping point" etc. floating in the air for entire morning. Here is the eworld again.
Mary Hodder has followed the issue of Napsterization of political activism, including Move On for a while, in her napterization.org. Today she blogged not only the Move On "Bush in 30 Seconds" contest, but also a theoretical paper entitled Shifting the Lens, written by Hermann Maiba in U of IL/Chicago.
