What is a symbolic measurement process?
Lev Goldfarb, S. Deshpande · 2002
Numbers have emerged historically as the most popular/convenient form of representation, and the basic scientific paradigm is built on the foundation of numeric, or quantitative, concepts. Measurement, as conventionally understood, is the corresponding process for (numeric) representation of objects or events. Any (including a future) measurement device is constructed based on the underlying mathematical structure that is thought appropriate for the purpose. It has gradually become clear that the classical numeric mathematical structures, and hence the corresponding (including all present) measurement devices, impose on "real" events/objects a very rigid form of representation, which cannot be modified dynamically in order to capture their combinative, or compositional, structure. To remove this fundamental limitation, a new mathematical structure-evolving transformation system (ETS)-was proposed earlier. This mathematical structure allows one to capture inductively the compositional structure of events. In other words, the model defines a new form of object representation-struct-that captures the combinative, or symbolic, structure of events. Moreover, this combinative structure, which represents what appears to be the only possible natural symbiosis of the discrete/symbolic and the continuous representations, in principle, cannot he captured by the classical mathematical structures. The authors briefly discuss the concept of a fundamentally new, biologically inspired, measurement process, inductive measurement process, based on the ETS.