Dear FISers,
Thanks to Kevin and Joseph for their excellent texts --and to the many
other responding parties. For my own argumentation purposes I find very
useful the comments from Stan, Kevin Clark, Koichiro. There are three
different aspects I would like to deal with. Given my burden of nasty
complicate tasks, I have to leave them as open questions to try to
formulate better in the future, or maybe to be kindly dealt with by
other parties.
About the formalism to deal with entropies: How does the treatment of
entropies by Michael in his Adaptability Theory --extended by the
fluctuon model into the microphysical realm-- relate with the
contemporary quantum information theory, and the qubits stuff? Given
that it was initially conceived from the ecological perspective, can it
be connected with Bob Ulanowicz's conceptualization of energy flow and
diversity (and his tentative variational principle?) The paper by Kevin
on "Biological adaptibilities and quantum entyropies" (BioSystems 64,
2002, 33-41) is an excellent portal for this question.
Gravitation and the quantum--and information. There are plenty of
theories on quantum gravitation to compare with the ideas in the
fluctuon model, and to try to link with the information discussion.
Given the curious biological penchant of Lee Smolin ("The Life of the
Cosmos",1997, "Three roads to Quantum Gravity", 2000) and the relative
clarity of his discussions on string theory and other approaches, I am
very tempted to take some of his ideas on Calabi-Yau (manifolds) spaces
as an ultimate Planckian scenario where energy and information collide
and only elementary "distinctions" survive. They are communicable in
some "open" dimensions, but not in the other "closed" ones... the idea
of information as "distinction on the adjacent" is realized there; also
in Smolin's discussions on information in black holes, birth of "baby
universes, etc. Could this frame of thought be put in agreement with
the formal underpinnings of the fluctuon model --as far as I know,
inspired by Josephson "fluxons" or electron solitons in quantum
tunneling? It goes beyond my reach.
Percolation --and the all pervasive and reverberating circulation of the
"perpetual disequilibrium" as Koichiro as put. This aspect of Michael's
thought was fascinating for me, a "vertical" but terribly heterogeneous
scenario of information flows. Given that Joseph and Stan have made neat
statements from different angles about a "hierarchical" structure of
levels, I contend in favor of the general predominance of the
heterarchical scheme. When we leave the narrow confines of a discipline,
or the boundaries of an experimental setting, "everything comes together
again"... Given the limitations of our individual cognition, those
vagaries in the environment are not accidental, but fundamental--and
they percolate in our collective cognition and in our social use of the
sciences. I agree with Joseph (I think) in the need of a more cogent
logic "for the real" and not only for the formal-theoretical. Part of
the problem is that this artificial "contention of percolation" has been
treated differently in each major discipline. See for instance Peter
Denning views on Computational Science-versus Information Science.
Echoing McLuhan centennial, couldn't we call this problem as the
irrenunciable "mosaic" structure of information percolation?
Thanking the patience,
Pedro
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Pedro C. Marijuán
Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group
Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud
Avda. Gómez Laguna, 25, Pl. 11ª
50009 Zaragoza, Spain
Telf: 34 976 71 3526 (& 6818) Fax: 34 976 71 5554
pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es
http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/
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