I am reading now Beyond Mechanism: Putting Life back into Biology. In
Foreword: Evolution beyond Newton, Darwin, and Entailing Law, Stuart A.
Kauffman writes:
p. 9 "Here is the first 'strange' step. Can you name all the uses of a
screwdriver, alone, or with other objects or process? Well, screw in a a
screw, open a paint can, wedge open a door, wedge closed a door, scrape
putty off a window, stab an assailant, be an objet d'art, tied to a
stick a fish spear, the spear rented to 'natives' for a 5 percent fish
catch return becomes a new business, and so on. I think that we all are
convinced that the following two statements are true: (1) the number of
uses of a screw driver is indefinite; and (2) unlike the integers which
can be ordered, there is no natural ordering of the uses of a screw
driver. The uses are unordered. But these two claims entail that there
is no 'Turing Effective Procedure' to list all the uses of a screwdriver
alone or with other objects or processes. In short, there is no
algorithm to list all the uses of a screwdriver."
Any comment?
Evgenii
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