Replying to Bob Logan, then to Pedro, then to Ted -
-snip-
Bob said:
>The reader will find in this paper an argument that Shannon info
>does not work for biological systems precisely because as has been
>pointed out in the discussion evolution cannot be predicted. This
>reinforces Bob U's remark In my judgement there are far too many
>folks who want to use the Shannon entropy itself as the measure of
>information, and I believe that doing so erects major impediments to
>grasping what information truly is. Bob U remark is right on the
>money according to POE.
The material reason that Shannon information cannot be used to
calculate information carrying capacity in biology (or for any
dissipative structures), is that there is no way way to find the
complete repertoire of any such system. Thus, it is not
technologically 'useful'. However, it does carry conceptual weight
nevertheless. It can be used to roughly assess relative
configurations. Thus, a tornado has more possible macroscopic
conformations than does a bird, and this has more than a snail.
-------------------------------
Pedro said -
>
>1. The Hegelian structure of thesis - antithesis -synthesis is in my
>terms abstract and idealized, applicable to linguistic entities. What is
>the driving force, even in Hegelian terms, that enables movement from
>one stage to the other?
>
>2. Real systems, on the other hand, have a dynamics, usually driven by
>some form of energy gradient. My approach is different in that I
>attribute a logic to the resulting changes, which seem to follow a
>pattern of alternating predominance of first one element, then the
>opposing one.
S: It seems to me that you appear here to have joined Engels in
trying yo generalize the Hegelian developmental movement to material
systems
------------------------------.
Ted said:
>
>Let me start the metaconversation by repeating something I have said
>before. I think we are at the threshold of a new science that
>provides a better, deeper set of principles for understanding things
>in terms of self-organizing systems.
>
>I believe that it will help address problems that seem "very hard" or
>impossible with standard methods, and indeed insist that to be the
>definition of "new science."
S: The distinguishing factor is that modern science has worked
with 'existents', and has never dealt with origins. It has been my
position that the emergence-of-the-new sort of idea about origins is
wrong. I think there has never been an emergence of the totally new.
Rather there have been developments of initially vague tendencies
into gradually more and more highly specified emergent particulars as
the universe proceeded from physical to chemical to biological to
sociopolitical (in some locales). From this perspective the origin
of informational constraints is 'epigenetic', with the more
particular molded from the vaguer, more generally present prior
situations. Thus, information would be a gradient from barely
liminal vaguenesses to definite particulars in an ensemble of them.
STAN
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