It's very nice to have a bunch of related links packed into a post like that. Thanks, Robert.
On 04/26/2016 04:52 PM, Robert Wall wrote:
Stephen, Your discussion with Nick Thompson on the essence of Evolution sounds remarkably similar to the pre-Socratic arguments "between" Heraclitus and Parmenides on Being <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Being> and Becoming <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Becoming_%28philosophy%29>. The modern version of this eternal discussion seems to have manifested in the metaphysical propositions of Process Philosophy <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2013/entries/process-philosophy/> that are substantially promoted in Alfred North Whitehead's seminal /Process and Reality/ (1978). " Modern philosophers who appeal to process rather than substance include Nietzsche <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nietzsche>, Heidegger <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heidegger>, Charles Peirce <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Sanders_Peirce>, Alfred North Whitehead <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_North_Whitehead>, Alan Watts <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Watts>, Robert M. Pirsig <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_M._Pirsig>, Charles Hartshorne <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Hartshorne>, Arran Gare <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arran_Gare>, Nicholas Rescher <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Rescher>, Colin Wilson <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Wilson>, and Gilles Deleuze <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilles_Deleuze>. In physics Ilya Prigogine <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilya_Prigogine>^[3] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process_philosophy#cite_note-3> distinguishes between the "physics of being" and the "physics of becoming". Process philosophy covers not just scientific intuitions and experiences, but can be used as a conceptual bridge to facilitate discussions among religion, philosophy, and science. " - Wikipedia on Process Philosophy I tend to lean in the same direction as you on this topic and I think that is why I have become a devoted student of complexity science (and process philosophy) and the idea of emergence; as Thomas Nagel argues in his /Mind and Cosmos: Why the materialists Neo-Darwinian conception of Nature is almost certainly false/ (2012), not everything is reducible to Substance (atoms ... Being) as an explanation of its essence. It seems to me that the "far-from-equilibrium surprises" that evolve through the unpredictable, stochastic process of evolution validate the idea that we live in a non-deterministic reality; but then this gets us into a long discussion or the essence of randomness--or is it just complexity? (local author George Johnson gets into this though in his /Fire in the Mind: Science, Faith, and the Search for Order/ (1996) :-) And the nature of Time gets muddled into the discussion as well-- see /Time Reborn: From the Crisis in Physics to the Future of the Universe/ (2014) by physicist Lee Smolin. " Now that we have more modern descriptions of living systems and explanations of origin of life, shouldn't our descriptions and explanations of Evolution change along with it? " - Stephen Guerin This conclusion was also reached back in 1989 by Gregoire Nicolis and Ilya Prigogine in their /Exploring Complexity/. "Our physical world is no longer symbolized by the stable and periodic planetary motions that are at the heart of classical mechanics. It is a world of instabilities and fluctuations, which are ultimately responsible for the amazing variety and richness of the forms and structures we see in nature around us. New concepts and new tools are clearly necessary to describe nature, in which evolution and pluralism become the key words." - /Preface /to /Exploring Comnplexity/ (1989) I like the series of books written by Nick Lane and see him as sort of the Carl Sagan of biological evolution. This is a good thing I believe. I have read some of them but not /THE VITAL QUESTION: Energy, evolution, and the origins of complex life (2015)./ However, this thread is good motivation to take the dive. :-) This is all very interesting. Wish I knew more ... and probably said less ... -Robert On Sun, Apr 24, 2016 at 6:04 PM, Stephen Guerin <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: I composed my email before seeing Eric's post. Having now read his email, I would say let's not get too distracted by Nick Lane's Vital Question for the task we set ourselves at FRIAM. I think Eric's talks bests represents what I was calling the view of life as gradient dissipation and a property of the ecological whole and less a property of an individual. As a quick summary for the list, Nick and I have had a 10-year back and forth discussion on evolution since his arrival in Santa Fe. We are setting ourselves the task of coming to a common definition and perhaps explanation of mechanism. If we fail to come to agreement, we hope to at least be able to coherently state each other's position. In this context, I was arguing that evolution is a description of the historical change of the pathways of breakdown (and local buildup) of gradients and that organisms (and by extension, species) are less a focus in this description. Tangents on the list into the dynamics of vortices and tornadoes have been related to the these arguments about far-from-equilibrium explanations. At FRIAM, I argued that we need updated descriptions and explanations of Evolution in the same way that Chemistry has changed each time we discovered new concepts like conservation of mass, thermodynamics, the atom and quantum mechanics. Now that we have more modern descriptions of living systems and explanations of origin of life, shouldn't our descriptions and explanations of Evolution change along with it? _______________________________________________________________________ [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> CEO, Simtable http://www.simtable.com <http://www.simtable.com/> 1600 Lena St #D1, Santa Fe, NM 87505 office: (505)995-0206 <tel:%28505%29995-0206> mobile: (505)577-5828 <tel:%28505%29577-5828> twitter: @simtable On Sun, Apr 24, 2016 at 5:11 PM, Stephen Guerin <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Nick, I downloaded Nick Lane's Vital Question book a couple months back. From a quick skim I got the sense it was a nice review of much of the work going on around non-equilibrium thermodynamic origin of life explanations by the "Seventh Day Ventists" (eg second law arguments for the emegence of life via gradient dissipation around deep sea vents). In addition to reviewing this work, Dr. Lane has original contributions as well. I would recommend it for anyone as a great introduction. In fact our own Eric Smith and Harold Morowitz (who just passed last month) work is mentioned in Vital Question. You might check out Eric's recent talk at the Aspen Institute (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cwvj0XBKlE) which addresses a couple questions that came up at FRIAM yesterday. In particular, I think the talk much more elegantly describes the shift to defining life as an ecological pattern from the prior emphasis on the individual organism. on "are viruses alive" Eric challenges the meaning of a "living thing" https://youtu.be/0cwvj0XBKlE?t=48m21s Also Eric's SFI public lecture from a few years back is very relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElMqwgkXguw _______________________________________________________________________ [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> CEO, Simtable http://www.simtable.com <http://www.simtable.com/> 1600 Lena St #D1, Santa Fe, NM 87505 office: (505)995-0206 <tel:%28505%29995-0206> mobile: (505)577-5828 <tel:%28505%29577-5828> twitter: @simtable On Fri, Apr 22, 2016 at 10:09 PM, Nick Thompson <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Dear Friammers, ____ __ __ Today’s meeting of the Mother Church got back to our old discussions of complexity, gradients, and the origin of life. In that connection I urged everybody to read Nick Lane’s, */THE VITAL QUESTION: Energy, evolution, and the origins of complex life./* The fundamental theory is that life was scaffolded by the microstructure and energy flows taking place in deep ocean vents called “white smokers”. I am curious to know if others have read this book, and what you might think of it. ____ __ __ Nicholas S. Thompson____ Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology____ Clark University____ http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ <http://home.earthlink.net/%7Enickthompson/naturaldesigns/>____ __ __ ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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