Re: MD Relations between levels

[Wim Nusselder]

Dear Lawry,   Your 27/6 17:51 -0400 post should be an evaluation of my analogy "Biological/Social/Intellectual evolution can be seen as a process by which weak Dynamic forces at a subatomic/subcellular/individual level discover stratagems for overcoming huge static inorganic/biological/social forces at a superatomic/supercellular/collective level" (That's what I asked for at least.)   You write "Static patterns can control systems at all levels, big or small, individual or collective. A subsystem may be the place where dynamic change is launched upon the larger system to which it belongs, or dynamic change can be initiated at the level of the system-as-a-whole, and imposed upon its parts, including those parts that would prefer to remain static."   This seems to me to only list logical alternatives without evaluating which is most real or most Meaningful (in your experience). I am not clear how your "systems" relate to my "levels", either. Do you understand biological patterns to be a subsystem of social patterns and social patterns to be a subsystem of intellectual patterns or the other way round? Or, if you understand "systems" to be on one level only: What is the source of the Dynamic? Why would either a subsystem or the system-as-a-whole "want" to change if it is subject to the same laws as the rest of the level?   Do you mean to say that biological/social/intellectual evolution can be driven by Dynamic forces at any level below or on the biological/social/intellectual level itself? That would mean that biological evolution (the breaking up of biological patterns of value and the creation of new and better ones) can be driven by biological organisms' drive to live? That would mean that social evolution (the breaking up of social patterns of value and the creation of new and better ones) can be driven by the human drive for status (depending on furthering the collective "good")? That would mean that intellectual evolution (the breaking of intellectual patterns of value and the creation of new and better ones) can be driven by individuals' drive for truth (true representation of an external or internal world)?   Maybe that's right, but I am not sure if that accounts for the creation of better static patterns of value, patterns of value that create more freedom from the next lower level. The drive to live would need to have some "consciousness" of the inorganic level to "know" how to distance itself from it. The drive for status would need to have some "consciousness" of the biological level and the drive for truth some "consciousness" of the social level. In other words: these drives would derive some itself (part of the "drive") from a lower level.   I don't think that accounts for how biological/social/intellectual evolution originate. They can't originate in their own level, because that does not exist yet. They can't originate in the next lower level, for that is what they are freeing and distancing themselves from. So they must originate two levels lower.   With friendly greetings,   Wim Nusselder