Dear colleagues, It seems to me that we have a more elaborated apparatus for discussing the distances of a perturbation across a number of interfaces.
Two information processing systems can be considered as "structurally coupled" when the one cannot process without the other. A single (system/environment) interface is then involved. If two interfaces are involved, the in-between system mediates; the coupling can then be considered as operational since the mediating system has to operate before transfer can take place across the interfaces. When more than two interfaces are involved, the coupling becomes increasingly loose, and another mechanism thus has to be specified for the explanation. With best wishes, Loet Loet Leydesdorff Professor, University of Amsterdam Amsterdam School of Communications Research (ASCoR), Kloveniersburgwal 48, 1012 CX Amsterdam. Tel.: +31-20- 525 6598; fax: +31-842239111 l...@leydesdorff.net ; http://www.leydesdorff.net/ -----Original Message----- From: fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es [mailto:fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es] On Behalf Of Robert Ulanowicz Sent: Monday, November 01, 2010 12:17 AM To: Stanley N Salthe Cc: fis@listas.unizar.es Subject: Re: [Fis] Tactilizing processing Quoting Stanley N Salthe <ssal...@binghamton.edu>: > Bob -- I think that 'coupling over such a disparity in scale' is not > really going on differently in biology either. The only messages that > could 'percolate upwards' in a material system would be those the > higher level(s) are prepared to receive, in all cases. This might > allow information from smaller populations of lower scale entities to > be detected. But it would always be the larger scale system > constructing some kind of ensemble information, or it would be ... > magic! Biology manages to get a greater uniformity (via genetic > controls) of smaller scale populations, thus increasing the precision > or definiteness of the lower scale 'messages', which are still a kind > of 'mass action', but with clearer, more reliable and less muddy, 'colors'. > > STAN Stan, We agree 100% on this one. I have always qualified Prigogine's "order through fluctuations" by pointing out that not just *any* perturbation will change the dynamics of the system. (In the Prigogine scenario, all perturbations are generic and homogeneous.) The system will only respond to those perturbations (for better or worse) that resonate with the configuration of the larger system. Cheers, Bob _______________________________________________ fis mailing list fis@listas.unizar.es https://webmail.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis _______________________________________________ fis mailing list fis@listas.unizar.es https://webmail.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
