Torday's work generally boils down to a concern for PREADAPTATION in
organic evolution. This is a material necessity. Preadaptation has been
ignored by the neoDarwinian evolutionary biologists, who have viewed their
task to concern the dynamics of natural selection (even in simple models).
So evolutionary biology has become quite abstract (mathematical), while
Torday's work is very materialistic. The information perspective can likely
better be applied to the materialist perspective than to the abstract
neoDarwinian perspective. I think Charley D would have preferred Torday!
STAN
On Fri, Jan 5, 2018 at 8:39 AM, PEDRO CLEMENTE MARIJUAN FERNANDEZ <
pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es> wrote:
> head>
>
> Dear John and FIS Colleagues,
>
> Many thanks for this opening text of the NY Lecture. Indeed
> you have presented us an intricate panorama on one of the most obscure
> scientific problems of our time: the central theory of biology. As you say,
> we find with astonishment that there is literally no cell biology in
> evolution theory. And I would ad that there is no "information biology"
> either. A central theory becomes sort of a big Hall, where plenty of
> disciplinary corridors converge and later criss-cross among themselves.
> Darwinian theory is not that common hall for the really big, big science
> domain of biology. What are or where are the elements to rebuild the common
> Hall of the biological domain? I quote from your opening text:
>
> *"It is as if the unicellular state delegates its progeny to interact with
> the environment as agents, collecting data to inform the recapitulating
> unicell of ecological changes that are occurring. Through the acquisition
> and filtering of epigenetic marks via meiosis, fertilization, and
> embryogenesis, even on into adulthood, where the endocrine system dictates
> the length and depth of the stages of the life cycle, now known to be under
> epigenetic control, the unicell remains in effective synchrony with
> environmental changes."*
>
> It is really brilliant: a heads up reversal perspective. I think out of
> these ideas there are plenty of disciplinary excursions to make. One is
> "informational", another "topological". Putting together two different
> algorithmic descriptions and making them to build a torus (i.e., gastrula")
> as a universal departure for multicellularity also reminds the ideas of
> Stuart Pivart ("Omnia Ex Torus") about the primordials of multicellularity
> and the role of mechanical forces in the patterning of developmental
> processes.
>
> Echoing the ideas discussed in the Royal Society meeting (November 2016),
> there is a pretty long list of elements to take into account together with
> epigenetic inheritance (symbiogenesis, viruses and mobile elements,
> multilevel selection, niche construction, genomic evolution...). As I have
> suggested above, essential informational ideas are missing too, and this
> absence of the informational perspective in the ongoing evo discussions is
> not a good thing.
>
> i any case, it is such a great theme to ponder...
>
> Best wishes to all
>
> --Pedro
>
>
>
> On Wed, 3 Jan 2018 07:15:43 -0800 JOHN TORDAY wrote:
> blockquote>
>
> Dear FIS Colleagues, I have attached my New Year Lecture at the invitation
> of Professor Pedro Clemente Marijuan Fernandez. The content relates a novel
> perspective on the mechanism of evolution from a cellular-molecular
> vantage-point. I welcome any and all comments and criticisms in the spirit
> of sharing ideas openly and constructively. Best Wishes,
>
>
>
> John S. Torday PhD
>
> Professor
>
> Evolutionary Medicine
>
> UCLA
> /div>
>
>
>
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