Dear Joseph & FIS colleagues,
My impression on that work is that rather than achieving a universal
law, it elaborates a very interesting synthesis on multitude of
physical, biological and engineering themes related with the "flow"
phenomenon. The author claims that there is a universal natural tendency
of flow systems to evolve into configurations that provide increasingly
greater access to the flow. He works very well with different variables
and parameters that appear with a lot of regularity in those phenomena.
The hint is that as local optimal configurations of flow are explored,
successive levels of organization are formed that factically achieve
very complex optimized designs.
Personally I find very stimulating these views with the caveat that the
"energy flow" phenomena are not exactly parallel to the information
flow. They have different constrains. Although information is always
physical, informational constrains are not the same as physical
constrains--but please, don't ask me what these differences are;
probably every informational realm lives within its own world of
constraints...
Considering that "doing" science is very different from discussing about
science, or philosophizing, these ideas are very fertile in the former
acs, and not very interesting yet for the latter (except as a work in
progress, I think).
best --Pedro
When doing science
Joseph Brenner wrote:
Dear Pedro,
I would be very interested, and I believe other FISers also, in your
views of the seriousness of the constructal law as a fundamental law
of nature, as claimed. I thought that for flow to occur it is
sufficient to have some kind of energy gradient which must operate in
a context of any other forces present. In the case of rain drops,
these will include surface tension and so on.
I think a comparison is called for with Gerhard Luhn's
Causal-Compositional Concept of Information which also talks about the
emergence of new 'laws', or lawful behavior, in the universe. His
approach is grounded in the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, as is Bejan's,
but the Pauli Exclusion Principle is suggested as the driver toward
complex systems. Bejan's concepts seem to me more ad hoc, but I am
curious to know how they strike others.
Best regards,
Joseph
----- Original Message ----- From: "Pedro C. Marijuan"
<[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, November 11, 2014 5:27 PM
Subject: [Fis] The Two Systems
Dear FIS colleages,
Thanks for the opinions received. Let us keep thinking about the
issue. On the one side, the fis list was explicitly conceived to be a
helping mechanism for "slow thinking" during the 90's. The Second
Rule was incorporated quite a few years ago, to put an end to nasty
bubbles and unceasing exchanges on trifling matters. It was not only
a matter of too many messages, but also that very influential parties
left the list due to those excesses (eg, Michael Arbib, Otto Rossler,
Eduard Punset).
It is interesting that Daniel Kahneman speaks about two thinking
systems: System 1: Fast, automatic, frequent, emotional, stereotypic,
subconscious. System 2: Slow, effortful, infrequent, logical,
calculating, conscious...
Trying to implement the two thinking systems in the same list will
inevitably conduce (given the medium) to the preponderance of the
former. Mixed schemes will be confusing and will not work. Besides,
increasing the number of weekly messages to 3 or 4 will imply that 50
% or 100 % more messages will be received. Not good at all.
Solution? Raquel and I are working (slowly, too slowly ) to migrate
from current FIS web pages at the University of Zaragoza to Sciforum
(courtesy from Shu-Kun Lin). It is also possible that we recuperate
ALL exchanges during last 17 years--lost during the ignominious
server crash a few months ago, it would become just anecdote. At
Sciforum we will be able to incorporate complementary spaces where
fast and furious exchanges might be maintained (for those
frequent-post addicts), perhaps useful to accompany the main, quiet
discussion---or maybe the viceversa, the slow thinking serving as a
complement!
Well, at the time being, let us continue abiding by the Second Rule,
and let us wait for the changes... we should also prepare for the
Vienna encounter. By the way, a very interesting meeting refers to
Adrian Bejan's work on the "energy flow" that I mentioned days ago:
the 9th Constructal Law conference will be held in Parma on 18-19 May
2015, see:
http://www.clc2015.eu/
best regards to all---Pedro
--
-------------------------------------------------
Pedro C. Marijuán
Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group
Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud
Centro de Investigación Biomédica de Aragón (CIBA)
Avda. San Juan Bosco, 13, planta X
50009 Zaragoza, Spain
Tfno. +34 976 71 3526 (& 6818)
[email protected]
http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/
-------------------------------------------------
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