Re: [Fis] Fwd: Re: Verification of the Principle of Information Science--John Torday

[Mark Johnson]

I was thinking that these words from A.N. Whitehead's "Science and the
modern world" (1926) are highly relevant to our discussions:

"When you are criticising the philosophy of an epoch do not chiefly direct
your attention to those intellectual positions which its exponents feel it
necessary explicitly to defend. There will be some fundamental assumptions
which adherents of all the variant systems within the epoch unconsciously
presuppose. Such assumptions appear so obvious that people do not know what
they are assuming because no other way of putting things has ever occurred
to them. With these assumptions a certain limited number of types of
philosophic systems are possible, and this group of systems constitutes the
philosophy of the epoch" (p.61)

What assumptions are we blind to? From my own perspective, we assume an
education system and a science system which enables us to talk this kind of
talk. We rarely talk about the context which these systems create for us.
In order to get another "way of putting things", we should try see more
clearly the full gamut of constraints which bind us to our existing ways of
putting things.

Best wishes,

Mark

On 19 October 2017 at 14:54, Pedro C. Marijuan 
wrote:

> (Message from John Torday --Note: neither the list nor the server do
> accept attachments)
>
>  Mensaje reenviado 
> Asunto: Re: [Fis] Verification of the Principle of Information Science
> Fecha: Thu, 19 Oct 2017 06:45:07 -0700
> De: JOHN TORDAY  
> Para: Pedro C. Marijuan 
> 
>
> Dear All, I feel like the beggar at the banquet, having arrived at the FIS
> of late in response to Pedro's invitation to participate, having reviewed
> our paper on 'ambiguity' in Progress in Biolphyics and Molecular Biology
> (see attached). In my deconvolution of evolution as all of biology
> (Dobzhansky), I have reduced the problem to the unicellular state as the
> arbiter of information and communication, dictated by The First Principles
> of Physiology- negative entropy, chemiosmosis and homeostasis. I arrived
> at that idea by following the process of evolution as ontogeny and
> phylogeny backwards from its most complex to its simplest state as a
> continuum, aided by the concept that evolution is a series of
> pre-adaptations, or exaptations or co-options. With that mind-set, the
> formation of the first cell from lipids immersed in water generated
> 'ambiguity' by maintaining a negative entropic free energy within itself in
> defiance of the external positive energy of the physical environment, and
> the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The iterative resolution of that
> ambiguous state of being is what we refer to as evolution. For me,
> information and communication are the keys, but they are not co-equals. I
> say that because in reducing the question of evolution to the single cell,
> I have been able to 'connect the dots' between biology and physics, such
> elements of Quantum Mechanics as non-localization and the Pauli Exclusion
> Principle being the basis for pleiotropy, the distribution of genetics
> throughout the organism, and The First Principles of Physiology,
> respectively. So now, thinking about the continuum from physics to biology,
> literally, the Big Bang generated the magnitude and direction of both the
> Cosmos and subsequently biology, i.e. life is a verb not a noun, a process,
> not a thing. For these reasons I place communication hierarchically 'above'
> information. Moreover, this perspective offers answers to the perennial
> questions as to how and why life is 'emergent and contingent'. The
> emergence is due to the pleiotropic property, the organism having the
> ability to retrieve 'historic' genetic traits for novel purposes. And the
> contingence is on The First Principles of Physiology. So we exist between
> the boundaries of both deterministic Principles of Physiology and the Free
> Will conferred by homoestatic control, offering a range of set-points that
> may/not evolve when necessary, depending on the prevailing environmental
> conditions.
>
> And by the way, this way of thinking plays into Pedro's comments about the
> impact of such thinking on society because in conceiving of the cell as the
> first Niche Construction (see attached), all that I have said above plays
> out as the way in which organisms interact with one another and with their
> environment based on self-referential self-organization, which is the basis
> for consciousness, all emanating from the Big Bang as their point source.
> So with all due respect, Information is the medium, but communication is in
> my opinion the message, not the other way around. I see this as a potential
> way of organize information in a contextually relevant way that is not
> anthropocentric, but objective, approximating David Bohm's 'implicate
> order'. Ciao for now, I hopeJohn Torday
>
>
> On Thu, Oct 

[Fis] Fwd: Re: Verification of the Principle of Information Science--John Torday

[Pedro C. Marijuan]

(Message from John Torday --Note: neither the list nor the server do 
accept attachments)



 Mensaje reenviado 
Asunto: Re: [Fis] Verification of the Principle of Information Science
Fecha:  Thu, 19 Oct 2017 06:45:07 -0700
De: JOHN TORDAY 
Para:   Pedro C. Marijuan 



Dear All, I feel like the beggar at the banquet, having arrived at the 
FIS of late in response to Pedro's invitation to participate, having 
reviewed our paper on 'ambiguity' in Progress in Biolphyics and 
Molecular Biology (see attached). In my deconvolution of evolution as 
all of biology (Dobzhansky), I have reduced the problem to the 
unicellular state as the arbiter of information and communication, 
dictated by The First Principles of Physiology- negative entropy, 
chemiosmosis and homeostasis. I arrived at that idea by following the 
process of evolution as ontogeny and phylogeny backwards from its most 
complex to its simplest state as a continuum, aided by the concept that 
evolution is a series of pre-adaptations, or exaptations or co-options. 
With that mind-set, the formation of the first cell from lipids immersed 
in water generated 'ambiguity' by maintaining a negative entropic free 
energy within itself in defiance of the external positive energy of the 
physical environment, and the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The 
iterative resolution of that ambiguous state of being is what we refer 
to as evolution. For me, information and communication are the keys, but 
they are not co-equals. I say that because in reducing the question of 
evolution to the single cell, I have been able to 'connect the dots' 
between biology and physics, such elements of Quantum Mechanics as 
non-localization and the Pauli Exclusion Principle being the basis for 
pleiotropy, the distribution of genetics throughout the organism, and 
The First Principles of Physiology, respectively. So now, thinking about 
the continuum from physics to biology, literally, the Big Bang generated 
the magnitude and direction of both the Cosmos and subsequently biology, 
i.e. life is a verb not a noun, a process, not a thing. For these 
reasons I place communication hierarchically 'above' information. 
Moreover, this perspective offers answers to the perennial questions as 
to how and why life is 'emergent and contingent'. The emergence is due 
to the pleiotropic property, the organism having the ability to retrieve 
'historic' genetic traits for novel purposes. And the contingence is on 
The First Principles of Physiology. So we exist between the boundaries 
of both deterministic Principles of Physiology and the Free Will 
conferred by homoestatic control, offering a range of set-points that 
may/not evolve when necessary, depending on the prevailing environmental 
conditions.


And by the way, this way of thinking plays into Pedro's comments about 
the impact of such thinking on society because in conceiving of the cell 
as the first Niche Construction (see attached), all that I have said 
above plays out as the way in which organisms interact with one another 
and with their environment based on self-referential self-organization, 
which is the basis for consciousness, all emanating from the Big Bang as 
their point source. So with all due respect, Information is the medium, 
but communication is in my opinion the message, not the other way 
around. I see this as a potential way of organize information in a 
contextually relevant way that is not anthropocentric, but objective, 
approximating David Bohm's 'implicate order'. Ciao for now, I 
hopeJohn Torday



On Thu, Oct 19, 2017 at 4:35 AM, Pedro C. Marijuan 
> wrote:


   Dear All,

   After Xueshan clarion call, I partially change what I was writing.
   Of course I have to thank him for his support of the 10 principles.
   Actually, in connection with the recent exchanges, particularly with
   Gordana's and John (Torday) posts, I was working in some ideas
   further related to the principles. On the one side the general view
   on the "new kind of natural science/philosophy" around information,
   and on the other side the transcendentalism of life... I think they
   also connect with Xueshan call of synthesis between info disciplines
   in his last paragraph. Trying to be concise I present herewith three
   points:

   First. "There is Life--and Information."
   Second. "We contemplate the World."
   Third. "The society around us."

   1. Life and Information: In biology, information is the new mantra.
   All kinds of scientific-technological-entrepreneurial gurus have
   proclaimed it, based on the revolutionary discoveries and gigantic
   bio-data accumulations. But scientifically, few people are trying to
   accommodate a new central theory of biology that could incorporate
   that new empirical reality of amazing complexity. In my own
   preliminary approach I describe how