> -------- Mensaje reenviado -------- > Asunto: Re: [Fis] Cancer Cure? > Fecha: Tue, 31 May 2016 19:54:05 +0200 > De: Dr. Plamen L. Simeonov <plamen.l.simeo...@gmail.com> > Para: Robert Ulanowicz <u...@umces.edu> > CC: Pedro C. Marijuan <pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es> > Dear Bob and All, > it is a compliment for me to read your notes on the subject. You don't need to excuse. It is indeed a complex world of relations. And tt is good that you rmentioned all this again from your perspective. We do not know how many have entered the discussion later. Reiterations and questions are always good and welcome. Well, I was expecting a vigorous discussion on this subject which approaches its end now. But it is still better to have one feedback rather than writing all this on paper of my own without knowing what the reviewer or the reader would say at the end. I still hope to hear a few more voices on that. We could take on some of the other two major groups of diseases mentioned in the opening session.
Dear Plamen and Pedro, Thank you for your kind words. I hope I am not going over my weekly quota by answering, but I will remain quiet for a while after this. > Bob, I am glad that you mentioned quantum logic. Do you think > we can try using it to express the emergent state of a disease (in combination or not with heterogeneity afine SOC) We are not limited to cancer only. I am no expert in any kind of logic, but am acutely aware that our world requires more than the standard Aristotelian sort. (Just ask Joe Brenner.) As for quantum behavior at macroscopic scales, I remain quite skeptical that it is the same phenomenon that operates at atomic and subatomic scales. On the other hand, I am quite open to quantum-like behaviors at macroscales. I think a few investigators are aware of this ontological difference and are treating the subject in the right manner -- dimensionally speaking. For example, Dr. Diederik Aerts <http://www.vub.ac.be/CLEA/aerts/> of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel was able to show that quantum-like behavior can transpire in macrosystems in total abstraction of the Planck distance and the quantum vacuum <http://www.aaai.org/Press/Reports/Symposia/Fall/fs-10-08.php> <http://arxiv.org/pdf/1212.0109.pdf>. His associate, Dr. Sandro Sozzo <http://www.vub.ac.be/CLEA/people/sozzo/>, has applied Aerts' ideas to ecology. > In fact I am also interested to know your opinion on such > aspects as self-similarity or symmetry/asymetry during the development of a disease throughout all transition phases. These issues have been often discussed in a different context at FIS. I acknowledge self-similarity in physical systems and imagine some of that behavior bleeds over into biology (as for example, with Aert's work that I just mentioned). I don't see self-similarity as a major player in biology, however. My familiarity with dimensional analysis tells me that one should always look for qualitatively different behavior at different scales and that asymmetry plays a greater role in biology than it does in physics. > How about the > biosemiotics aspect which I mentioned earlier? I think biosemiotics provides a viable pathway to understanding living systems. <http://people.clas.ufl.edu/ulan/files/StepSton.pdf> I wasn't always a fan of it, thinking that its narrative was too anthropomorphic. Jesper Hofmeyer, however, showed me some convincing examples that were decidedly not anthropomorphic. > Tell me what do you think could be a promising approach to tackle a tough health problem. As you possibly may know, my hobby horse has been quantified flow networks, because they force one to think in holisitc terms. (Not that holism is all there is, but it is usually a player in any living system.) In my first book, Growth and Development (p160) and later in my second book, Ecology, the Ascendent Perspective (pp149-151), I mentioned how medicine needed to consider more than just oncogenes in their approach to cancer therapy. I suggested that more attention needed to be paid to whole system behaviors, especially that of the immune system. Well, of course immunotherapy has now become the most promising therapy against cancer (but unfortunately not because of my remarks :). > Is there anybody out there? :-) > All the best, > Plamen Some of us are listening! :) The best, Bob _______________________________________________ Fis mailing list Fis@listas.unizar.es http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
