Forschungsaufenthalt in Sapporo, Januar

GASTWISSENSCHAFTLICHER AUFENTHALT AN DER HOKKAIDO UNIVERSITÄT, SAPPORO, JANUAR - MÄRZ 2005

Vom 21. Januar bis 29. März 2005 ließ ich mich an meiner damaligen Wirkungsstätte, dem ZKM Karlsruhe, wegen eines Forschungsaufenhalts in Japan karenzieren. Ich verbrachte eine wunderbare Zeit in Sapporo, Kobe und einigen anderen Orten in Japan. Ich danke hierfür der Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) und dem Deutschen Akademischen Austausch Dienst (DAAD) für die finanzielle und logistische Unterstützung, sowie meinen Gastgebern Professor Ichiro Tsuda (Sapporo) und Professor Yukio-Pegio Gunji (Kobe).

Es ist ein Geschenk, mit den aussergewöhnlichen Forscherpersönlichkeiten Ichiro Tsuda und Yukio-Pegio Gunji diskutieren und gemeinsam an Lösungen hartnäckiger Probleme der Komplexitätsforschung arbeiten zu können. Ich lernte beide etwa Mitte der 1990er Jahre während meines Doktorats in Tübingen bei Seminarvorträgen an Otto Rösslers Institut kennen. Im Jahre 2000 veranstaltete ich am ZKM, meiner Wirkungsstätte von 1999 bis 2005, ein Festsymposium anlässlich Rösslers 60sten Geburtstages unter dem Titel "Sciences of the Interface". Dort begann meine Freundschaft auch mit den beiden Japanern, die herausragende Beiträge zu der Konferenz lieferten. Nach einigen Kurzbesuchen in Japan u.a. bei Ichiro Tsuda und Yukio-Pegio Gunji entschloss ich mich zu einem etwas längeren Aufenthalt, um mit mehr Konzentration am Thema "Hermeneutik in den Kognitionswissenschaften" arbeiten zu können. Ichiro Tsuda zählt zu den ersten Forschern, die ein klares Konzept einer Theorie zum Konnex von Hermeneutik und Gehirntheorie vorlegten. Selbstverständlich war ein wesentlicher weiterer Grund meines Aufenthaltes in Japan das Kennenlernen der dortigen Kultur, die mich restlos begeistert(e).

(Ab hier vorläufig nur in Englisch) Both, Ichiro Tsuda and Yukio-Pegio Gunji, attracted my attention because of their endophysical reasoning. Tsuda was among the first who linked brain science with hermeneutics. A prominent role is thereby ascribed to the chaotic nature of brain activity. A glue to hermeneutics is provided by his concept of "chaotic itinerancy". Gunji is an expert in "category theory". In one of his papers he addressed "Russel's paradox" of a "set of all sets". Under the usual assumption of an external objective (exo-) "for-all-quantifier" this leads to a paradox which resolves when "endo-quantifiers" are introduced. Thus, Tsuda's approach is mainly a dynamical one whereas Gunji's strategy is basically a set theoretical one.

My own scientific roots are rather "dynamical" the more so as I'm Rössler-bred. I was, however, fascinated by the formalization of concepts and contexts in category theory, and by Gunji's discussion of consistency - or rather the competition between analyticity and consistency, that one earns when starting to categorize.

A complete and at the same time disjunct cover of the Universe through concepts seems not to be feasible. Indeed, biological taxonomy is bribingly consistent. And a natural scientist may not worry about inconsistencies in philosophical categorization.

A classification in physics, however, is a concern of mine. And I wonder, whether the basic classification (from a physical point of view) of elementary particles have other meanings than irreducible representations of symmetry groups. My main concern is how time enters the scenery.

In a microscopic interpretation of a chemical reaction two molecules - let's call them A and B, respectively - change their identities according to a given reaction scheme like A+B->2A, for example, when their mutual interaction energy exceeds a certain threshold. Admittedly, in this autocatalytic reaction relatively complicated rules of conformation changes have to be applied. But the following reasoning holds for basic reactions where just some ions are produced, too. Anyhow, I guess one can refrain here from taking complicated reactions into account that contain mysterious symmetry violations known in some nuclear reactions. Normally, Newton's time symmetrical laws are applied here, although the interpretation of the 2nd law of thermodynamics within a time-reversible dynamics on a micro level was controversially debated ever since its formulation.

It was argumented by Fredkin and many others, that even computation is a physical process that underlies the Newtonian law. Fredkin mapped computation to a Newtonian billard ball system and constructed a reversible logical gate now known as "Fredkin gate". If one applies this reversible logic to the above chemical reaction then it will always remain clear which identity the two molecules of species A had before the precedent reaction. Thus, identity cannot be an objective entity of nature. On the other hand, denying the existence of identities entails the denial of processes. Together with Ichiro Tsuda, I tried to link Heidegger's "being and time" with the micro-macro-interface. The main argument of our paper can be condensed to the hypothesis, that the categorization of the world by means of drawing differences and introducing identities is equivalent to the process and that this can be confirmed through the atomistic approach to micro physics. The micro-macro-interface is so fundamental that we suggest to call it "fundamental interfaciology" (full paper as pdf) to remind to Heidegger's "fundamental ontology".