Hi All, I appreciate this topic and discussion. I find myself in strong agreement with the basic point made by Stan and Bob. Not all fluctuations penetrate upwardly across levels of functional organization. Structural resonance in the organization at some level makes it sensitive to certain kinds of fluctuations in embedded lower levels of organization. John seems to raise an issue that follows this view. That is, are there processes (synchronization, harmonization, rhythmic entrainment...) that lead complex adaptive systems to evolve mechanisms for sensing particular kinds of lower level fluctuations? It certainly seems that such mechanisms have indeed evolved in biological systems, but is this a generic expectation?
Regards, Guy On 11/1/10 2:46 AM, "John Collier" <[email protected]> wrote: > At 09:13 AM 01/11/2010, Loet Leydesdorff wrote: >> 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. > > There is an attempt to deal with this sort of thing at > http://complex.unizar.es/~yamir/papers/phys_rep_08.pdf > > It is quite a bit more general. With my administrative load right now > I haven't had time to read the paper, just to glance over it. Their > central interest is not information or information processing, > but it is mentioned in several places. > > Synchronization is another term like harmonization and > rhythmic entrainment. > > A friend who sent me the reference says that the mathematics > starts off well, but gets shakier through the paper. > > Now back to the budget. > > John > > > ---------- > Professor John Collier, Acting HoS and Acting Deputy HoS > [email protected] > Philosophy and Ethics, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 4041 South Africa > T: +27 (31) 260 3248 / 260 2292 F: +27 (31) 260 3031 > http://www.ukzn.ac.za/undphil/collier/index.html > > _______________________________________________ > fis mailing list > [email protected] > https://webmail.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis _______________________________________________ fis mailing list [email protected] https://webmail.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
