[Fis] Towards a 3φ integrative medicine

[Karl Javorszky]

Just a small detail on the information density of food (air, water, sensory
input, etc.) in medicine:

The DNA has a high informational value for the organism. Can it be said
that poison has also an informational value?

Can the de-constructive effect of a substance quantified based on the same
semiotic system of references as the constructive effect of a substance can
be referred to in that same system of references?
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[Fis] _ Re: _ Re: _ Re: _ Re: _ Towards a 3φ integrative medicine

[Dr. Plamen L. Simeonov]

Dear Colleagues,

I’d like to share a possible sensation as of today if true:

http://phys.org/news/2016-05-complex-life-billion-years-earlier.html

What would this mean in terms of our discussion about life and medicine?

Best.

Plamen





On Tue, May 17, 2016 at 6:27 PM, Dr. Plamen L. Simeonov <
plamen.l.simeo...@gmail.com> wrote:

> This is a very interesting note for me, John!
> So, the modern symptomatic medicine, the collection of data about illness
> characteristics has its roots in philosophy?
>
> Best,
>
> Plamen
>
>
> 
>
>
> On Tue, May 17, 2016 at 6:16 PM, John Collier  wrote:
>
>> Ironically, “semiotic” originally was a medical term referring to signs
>> (symptoms) of disease. John Locke (my favourite modern philosopher)
>> introduced the term as we use it today, and may have derived it from the
>> Greek *seme*.  But he also knew a lot about medicine (and just about
>> everything else at the time, but he apparently lacked a sense of humour).
>>
>>
>>
>> From an online dictionary (the other I found had the first known use in
>> 1880. Which is clearly wrong. So beware!):
>>
>> 1615-20; (def 3) < Greek *sēmeiōtikós* significant, equivalent to
>> *sēmeiō-,*verbid stem of *sēmeioûn* to interpret as a sign (derivative of
>>  Greek *sēmeîon*sign) + *-tikos* -tic
>> ; (def 4) < Greek *sēmeiōtik**ḗ*
>> *,* noun use of feminine of*sēmeiōtikós,* adapted by John Locke (on the
>> model of Greek *logik**ḗ* logic ,
>> etc.; see -ic  ) to mean “the
>> doctrine of signs”; (defs 1, 2) based on Locke'scoinage or a reanalysis
>> of the Gk word
>>
>>
>>
>> Also, from a medical dictionary:
>>
>> semiotic
>>
>>  /se·mi·ot·ic/ (se″me-ot´ik)
>>
>> *1. **pertaining* to signs or symptoms.
>>
>> *2. **pathognomonic*
>> .
>>
>> Dorland's Medical Dictionary for Health Consumers. © 2007 by Saunders, an
>> imprint of Elsevier, Inc. All rights reserved.
>>
>>
>>
>> For which, if like me, you may further need:
>>
>> pathognomonic
>>
>>  [path″og-no-mon´ik]
>>
>> specifically *distinctive*
>>  or characteristic of a disease or pathologic condition; denoting a sign or 
>> symptom on which adiagnosis can be made.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> John Collier
>>
>> Professor Emeritus and Senior Research Associate
>>
>> University of KwaZulu-Natal
>>
>> http://web.ncf.ca/collier
>>
>>
>>
>> *From:* Fis [mailto:fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es] *On Behalf Of *Stanley
>> N Salthe
>> *Sent:* Tuesday, 17 May 2016 4:21 PM
>> *To:* Dr. Plamen L. Simeonov ; fis <
>> fis@listas.unizar.es>
>> *Subject:* [Fis] _ Re: _ Re: _ Re: _ Towards a 3φ integrative medicine
>>
>>
>>
>> Plamen, Pedro --
>>
>>
>>
>> It seems to me that perhaps Medicine should not look to mathematics for
>> support or underpinning so much as to SEMIOTICS (that is, Peircean
>> semiotics, being worked today as biosemiotics).  Biosemiotics is, in the
>> verbal conceptual realm, almost as complex and messy as medicine, and so
>> the two might be matched up fruitfully!
>>
>>
>>
>> STAN
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, May 17, 2016 at 9:03 AM, Dr. Plamen L. Simeonov <
>> plamen.l.simeo...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Daer Pedro,
>>
>> thank you for your entertaining way of presenting my Sisyphus theme about
>> medicine in a nutshell, which was mostly enjoyable to read. Actually, you
>> are right, medicine is "messy", which qualifies it more like a liberal art
>> discipline rather than science, full of workshop type of hustle and bustle,
>> ad hoc insights of mystic adepts followed by faithful scholars and mixed
>> with cutting edge technology wherever possible (in the Western world). It
>> appears that every effort to organize it in the manner we know in
>> mathematics and physics is doomed to failure.  I realise that the subject's
>> depth reflected in my presentation is indeed overwhelming. Yet, it was not
>> my intention to put a Sisyphus rock upon this forum. Thank you for your and
>> Koichiro's simplified pedestrian analysis of the theme. We can go with thes
>> rephrased set of questions further.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, May 17, 2016 at 12:51 PM, Pedro C. Marijuan <
>> pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es> wrote:
>>
>> Dear Plamen,
>>
>> Thanks for the synthetic attempt. You have put together pretty complex
>> strands of thought that become too demanding for a general response. I will
>> concentrate in a few points.
>>
>> What is Medicine? In what extent is it amenable to "integration"? Is
>> reductionism an anathema in medicine? Can we regularly ascend from cellular
>> info flows to organs/systems, and to healthy individuals/environments?
>>
>>
>>
>> These are good general questions, but I'd rather wish to focus on one
>> specific problem, e.g. the one of the metastatic melanoma that Koichiro
>> addressed in his example and try to 

[Fis] _ Re: _ Re: _ Towards a 3φ integrative medicine

[Dr. Plamen L. Simeonov]

Daer Pedro,

thank you for your entertaining way of presenting my Sisyphus theme about
medicine in a nutshell, which was mostly enjoyable to read. Actually, you
are right, medicine is "messy", which qualifies it more like a liberal art
discipline rather than science, full of workshop type of hustle and bustle,
ad hoc insights of mystic adepts followed by faithful scholars and mixed
with cutting edge technology wherever possible (in the Western world). It
appears that every effort to organize it in the manner we know in
mathematics and physics is doomed to failure.  I realise that the subject's
depth reflected in my presentation is indeed overwhelming. Yet, it was not
my intention to put a Sisyphus rock upon this forum. Thank you for your and
Koichiro's simplified pedestrian analysis of the theme. We can go with thes
rephrased set of questions further.


On Tue, May 17, 2016 at 12:51 PM, Pedro C. Marijuan <
pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es> wrote:

> Dear Plamen,
>
> Thanks for the synthetic attempt. You have put together pretty complex
> strands of thought that become too demanding for a general response. I will
> concentrate in a few points.
>
> What is Medicine? In what extent is it amenable to "integration"? Is
> reductionism an anathema in medicine? Can we regularly ascend from cellular
> info flows to organs/systems, and to healthy individuals/environments?
>
>
These are good general questions, but I'd rather wish to focus on one
specific problem, e.g. the one of the metastatic melanoma that Koichiro
addressed in his example and try to "dissect" it as in the article in his
example. It is clear to me that I cannot focus on one single thing and
brainstorm on it all the time. But the idea behind this concluding workshop
was to be less philosophical and more practical in trying to investigate if
we can reshape medicine as an extension of biology. After all, huge amounts
of money are given for research here, more than in any other field, as far
as I know. Are these investments justifyable in the way this "engineering
science" is performing today? Is there anything that could make this
discipline more predictable, at least at the curruculum level?


> The history of Medicine shows messiness in the highest degree. To note
> that it was not included in the Trivium/Quadrivium medieval scheme of
> knowledge, and was only accepted within the "mechanical arts" after Hugh of
> St. Victor compilation (XIII Century), many decades after the first
> Faculties of Medicine were created in Italy. Why medicine is so messy? Just
> go the wiki pages on the topic: hundreds of subspecialties are listed, and
> under all those terms we imply all the internal and external ("natural")
> phenomena that can derail and put out of track the advancement of a life
> cycle. Each one of those specialties has to arrange its own world of
> knowledge, with lots of analytical and synthetic avenues not amenable to
> neat overall schemes and to formal approaches except in some reduced
> pockets. Successful reductionist strategies and analytical techniques are
> piled up with holistic views, and reams of tacit knowledge (indeed medicine
> is a very stratified small world of "lords", "masters", "disciples",
> "servants", and "beginners").
>

This is all true. But it is also true that medicine has been always very
important for us human beings.


>
> So, like in engineering, one has to be suspicious of far reaching
> implications for the term "integrative". Not necessarily in this case with
> the "3φ" connotation.
>

Indeed, there coud be a "3φ", a "4φ",  or a "3φ+ 1ψ", ... etc. Greek
alphabet built polynomial connotations encoded in this prefix. The question
is wether we can use such kind of combination from the known natural
science disciplines and extend them by some humanitarian fields in order to
address key issues in an organised and diligent manner in medicine. We know
well that there are both serios conflicts between some branches and efforts
to reconcile them. The prefix I used was to make clear that we are asking
for a novel kind of integration, if possible. Yet this prefix definition
should not be considered "fixed" once for ever.

But the strong reliance on criticality could be subject to scrutiny. Quite
> many cellular / biomolecular phenomena do not especially rely on
> criticality --perhaps the most essential ones, related to "codes", genomic
> maintenance, protein synthesis, protein degradation, signaling, apoptosis,
> etc. Why the integrative strategy should rely on a term that
> notwithstanding strong physical grounds, has relatively thin explanatory
> capability in the biological?
>

Criticality is a phenomenon that holds both for living and non-living
matter. This is something that "matters". Of course, one could take
"autopoiesis" instead, which is also a good choice. I am not sure how far
we can go with this this "criticality" bus. I had to start somewhere my
talk, and I made this choice to facilitate the transition to medicine. 

[Fis] _ Re: _ Towards a 3φ integrative medicine

[Pedro C. Marijuan]

Dear Plamen,

Thanks for the synthetic attempt. You have put together pretty complex 
strands of thought that become too demanding for a general response. I 
will concentrate in a few points.


What is Medicine? In what extent is it amenable to "integration"? Is 
reductionism an anathema in medicine? Can we regularly ascend from 
cellular info flows to organs/systems, and to healthy 
individuals/environments?


The history of Medicine shows messiness in the highest degree. To note 
that it was not included in the Trivium/Quadrivium medieval scheme of 
knowledge, and was only accepted within the "mechanical arts" after Hugh 
of St. Victor compilation (XIII Century), many decades after the first 
Faculties of Medicine were created in Italy. Why medicine is so messy? 
Just go the wiki pages on the topic: hundreds of subspecialties are 
listed, and under all those terms we imply all the internal and external 
("natural") phenomena that can derail and put out of track the 
advancement of a life cycle. Each one of those specialties has to 
arrange its own world of knowledge, with lots of analytical and 
synthetic avenues not amenable to neat overall schemes and to formal 
approaches except in some reduced pockets. Successful reductionist 
strategies and analytical techniques are piled up with holistic views, 
and reams of tacit knowledge (indeed medicine is a very stratified small 
world of "lords", "masters", "disciples", "servants", and "beginners").


So, like in engineering, one has to be suspicious of far reaching 
implications for the term "integrative". Not necessarily in this case 
with the "3φ" connotation. But the strong reliance on criticality could 
be subject to scrutiny. Quite many cellular / biomolecular phenomena do 
not especially rely on criticality --perhaps the most essential ones, 
related to "codes", genomic maintenance, protein synthesis, protein 
degradation, signaling, apoptosis, etc. Why the integrative strategy 
should rely on a term that notwithstanding strong physical grounds,has 
relatively thin explanatory capability in the biological? It is a long 
story of looking for responses "where the physical/math light is" and 
not where the biol. problems are.


My view, I can be wrong but I have worked considerably on the matter, is 
that cellular signaling, the crisscrossing of info flows that provide 
the singular intelligence and adaptability of organisms, is not well 
articulated yet. Neither in evo-devo, nor in physiology, medicine and 
health. In this regard all the present parlance on information 
processing that accompanies the tremendous technological info-tech 
revolution does not represent a help, maybe the opposite. The deep info 
problems are taken as already solved and articulated synthesis are 
undertaken as mere agglutinations. Maybe the problem is too deeply 
complex, and medicine is as always too messy.


Sorry if seemingly I have joined the  "Cassandra" club!
Best--Pedro



El 14/05/2016 a las 9:49, Dr. Plamen L. Simeonov escribió:

Dear Colleagues,

My contribution will finalize the discussion on phenomenology in the 
domains of biology, mathematics, cyber/biosemiotics and physics by the 
previous speakers (Maxine, Lou, Sœren and Alex) with a “challenging 
topic” in _3φ integrative medicine_. *You may wish to skip the small 
font text notes following each underscored phrase like the one below.*


_Note 1:_Although this term is often used as synonym for holistic 
healing (s. ref. list A), its meaning in this context with the prefix 
3φ goes much “deeper” into the disciplines’ integration leaving no 
room for speculations by mainstream scientists. The concept is a 
linguistic choice of mine for the intended merge of the complexity 
sciences _ph_ysics and _ph_ysiology with _ph_enomenology for 
application in modern medicine along the line of integral biomathics 
(s. ref. list B).


It is rooted in the last presentation of Alex Hankey, since it 
naturally provides the link from physics to physiology and medicine, 
and thus to an anthropocentric domain implying a leading part of 
phenomenological studies. To begin, I compiled a précis of Alex’ 
thesis about self-organized criticality (s. ref. list C) from his 
paper “A New Approach to Biology and Medicine” -- the download link to 
it was distributed in a previous email of him -- and extended it with 
my reflections including some questions I hope you will resonate on.



I am curious of your opinion about how to apply the scientific method, 
and in particular mathematics and information science, to study 
illness and recovery as complex phenomena.


*Alex Hankey: self-organized criticality and regulation in living systems*

*There is a continuous growth and change at the end of a phase 
transition in an organism, i.e. at its critical point, which is the 
end point of phase equilibrium.*


**

*Both endo and exo, genetics and epigenetics are important for life.*

**

*Self-organized criticality*is a characteristic state of