Hi all, I have been enjoying the current discussion and appreciate Dieter’s focus on process. I am an evolutionary biologist, not a physicist, but I would like to suggest one way in which some of the views expressed in different posts might be reconciled.
>From a simplistic point of view, I think it is fair to posit that spatial >pattern (e.g., the existence of particles) is manifested information, and that >pattern is generated by process (e.g., particle interaction). Process itself >can also be viewed as information in the form of temporal pattern. Pattern >and process are inextricably linked in self-organizing dissipative systems, >which represent a special class of “its”. Other kinds of “its” include >artifacts of dissipative system dynamics, which stumble from one local entropy >peak to another under thermodynamic constraints. Of course, particulate >artifacts can also be swept up in other thermodynamic cascades, including >those exploited by other dissipative systems. The Prigogine notion of dissipative systems provides a compelling case, in my view, for including both pattern and process in generic treatments of information. Regards, Guy -- Dr. Guy A. Hoelzer Department of Biology, MS 314 University of Nevada Reno Reno, NV 89557 On 9/29/10 3:38 AM, "Pedro Clemente Marijuan Fernandez" <pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es> wrote: (herewith a very interesting text received off-line from a newcomer to our list --welcome Dieter! ---Pedro) ------------------------------------------------------------------ 1. For many years I highly estimate the work of Michael Conrad – whom I never could see or hear in person. So the study was restricted to reading some papers, and to store them as a separate file. I am very glad for the references to more recent work. 2. Before making any comment on the transmitted text, I must admit that I do not have sufficient knowledge on biology to give convincing remarks. 3. Modern physics must necessarily be "physics at the Planck scale". I do not know whether in this moment there is a sufficient, explicit physics at the Planck scale such that one build up on this basis. Anyway, it must be a theory of processes, not of particles. 4. "Anti-entropy" or negentropy are children of the classical Shannon-Weaver theory, which is incorrectly (only due to a certain historical development) called "information theory". There are specific (narrow, local) situations in biology where Shannon-Weaver is sufficient. But in the general case – and for a modern, futuristic theory – it can really be doubted whether Shannon-Weaver (here it is always meant: together with extensions and ramifications) will be sufficient. It seems to me that the comprehensive theory is needed, which (again for historical reasons) is named theory of pragmatic information. This is not opposed to Shannon-Weaver, but the latter is included as a special case (one can state conditions under which Sh.-W. will be adequate for a situation). An overview (including the historical development) can be found: Gernert, D., Pragmatic information: historical development and general overview. Mind and Matter, vol. 4 no. 2 (2006) 141-167. Here I am really only a reporter and historian – I did not make concrete contributions. The article can be downloaded (google > dieter gernert). 5. For any concept setting out to connect "the manifest and the unmanifest" a mathematical structure is required which permits us to describe the manifest and the nonmanifest and the interaction between both realms, or more precisely: conditions for an influence to occur in a single situation. It seems to me that one can do this along the lines sketched in my paper: Gernert, D., Formal treatment of systems with a hidden organizing structure, with possible applications to physics. Int. J. of Computing Anticipatory Systems 16 (2004) 114-124. It will become inevitable to use a vector space on the basis C (the algebraic field of complex numbers). Best candidates in this moment are C^3 and C^4 (such that we have 6- or 8-parametric manifolds – not 6 or 8 dimensions!). Equally important is a measure for the similarity between complex structures. To both issues I published proposals, and if there will be better ones, I shall quickly adopt them. 6. Models like particle/anti-particle pair production is a matter of the underlying physical structure; it will not contribute to explain the interaction or non-interaction between two complex structures. Any answer to the question "interaction between these two or not?" must take into account the entire structure of those two. 7. I do not believe that consciousness has something to do with rather elementary processes like the "unmasking" mentioned in the text. From the viewpoint of a research strategy one can put off this question and first try to understand the processes. Kindest regards, Dieter Gernert Professor of Computer Science Technical University of Munich ---------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ fis mailing list fis@listas.unizar.es https://webmail.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
