A couple more references in this vein: Robert Rosen's work in theoretical biology predates the autopoiesis theory of Maturana and Varela by a couple decades, and is somewhat more general and mathematically rigorous. He's not as well-known, but his book *Life Itself* is well worth reading, although one of his major points is that the essential character of living systems is *not* computable.
More immediately on topic, I've just read a particularly thoughtful essay from Richard Gabriel, titled "Conscientious Computing", which directly addresses these issues of scalability and adaptability in pervasive software systems. Some here may find it interesting. http://dreamsongs.com/Files/ConscientiousSoftwareCC.pdf -- Max On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 2:03 PM, Wesley Smith <[email protected]> wrote: > On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 12:38 PM, Alan Kay <[email protected]> wrote: > > Thanks for the references to The Chemoton Theory -- I hadn't seen this > > before. > > > > But I didn't understand your reference to Bergson -- wasn't he an > adherent > > of the Elan Vital as a necessary part of "what is life?" and that also > drove > > evolution in particular directions. > > > you're welcome. The interesting part of about Chemoton Theory is that > the first papers were written contemporaneously with Eigen's RNA world > theory and Maturana and Varela's autopoiesis ideas. > > The Bergson reference was cryptic. Sorry about that! He did write > about Élan Vital, but in my understanding it doesn't represent a > transcendental category but is rather a name for a self-referential > process by which objects/virtualities/... differentiate. The clearest > exposition I've found on this is the last chapter of Deleuze's > Bergsonism. > > The aspect of Bersgon that I was thinking about though was the concept > of duration, particularly that of the cerebral interval (the time > between a received movement and an executed movement), which generates > perception. Yet perception is both matter (made of up of neurons, > cells, chemical networks, sensors, ...) and the perception of matter. > It's a self-loop of something perceiving itself. We see the same kind > of self-loop pattern in von Foerster's Cybernetics of Epistemology and > Notes on an Epistemology of Living Things where computation is > understood as com + putare or thinking together. > > Where Bersgon was talking about human perception, I think his ideas > can be taken all the way down to the basic (theoretical) units of life > that Ganti describes in Chemoton Theory where instead of a cerebral > interval, there's a metabolic interval. The metabolic interval is the > time of adjustment and reaction to environmental conditions (the cell > shrinks, grows, chemicals flows with varying degrees and directions) > that is a direct result of the structure of an auto-catalytic loop. > By virtue of this self-loop, novel conditions develop through > differentiating patterns of chemical flow that hook on to the > metabolism, over time developing into more and more complex structures > with new hierarchical levels. > > I should point out that I'm not saying this is how life happened, but > rather that I believe it's a compelling way to approach > conceptualizing about how computational systems could be cast in a > biological perspective. I tend to think of computation as mathematics > + duration and biology as chemistry + duration. Computational systems > does not have to mimic in a literal way what biology does, which is > what I see most systems doing. > > wes > > _______________________________________________ > fonc mailing list > [email protected] > http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc >
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