[Fis] _ Biology

[Stanley N Salthe]

Pedro -- You are right to look dubiously at the achievement of neoDarwinism
as the sole theory of biology.  What is missing (and it was realized
already in the 1950’s with Schmalgausen and Waddington) is development. All
dissipative structures develop -- immaturity followed by a short maturity
followed by senescence -- and this was not escaped when the genetic system
was incorporated, creating living dissipative structures. Development is a
material law of nature, to be added to the underlying physical laws in the
case of dissipative structures. Evo-Devo is a currently burgeoning part of
biology discourse aimed at replacing ‘random mutation’ as the source of new
directions with material divergences occurring during ontogeny. These
reflect material tendencies that can not always be suppressed by genetic
information guidance. They might also in some way reflect choices made by a
developing system. This approach will result in bringing in a major fact of
biological evolution long ignored by neoDarwinians because their
explanatory tool kit could simply bot explain it -- convergent evolution.


STAN
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Re: [Fis] SYMMETRY & _ On BioLogic

[Dr. Plamen L. Simeonov]

Dear Lou and Colleagues,

yes, I agree: an artistic approach can be very fruitful. This is like what
Stuart Kauffman says about speaking with metaphors. At some point our
mathematical descriptive tools do not have sufficient expressional power to
grasp more global general insights and we reach out to the domains of
narration, music and visualisation for help. And this is the point where
this effort of reflection upon a subject begins to generate and develop new
expressional forms of mathematics (logics, algebras, geometries). I think
that you and Ralph Abraham noted this in your contributions about the
mystic of mathematics in the 2015 JPBMB special issue. Therefore I ask
here, if we all feel that there is some grain of imaginative truth in the
works of Pivar and team, what piece of mathematics does it needs to become
a serious theory. Spencer-Brown did also have similar flashy insights in
the beginning, but he needed 20+ years to abstract them into a substantial
book and theory. This is what also other mathematicians do. They are
providing complete works. Modern artists and futurists are shooting fast
and then moving to the next “inspiration”, often without “marketing” the
earlier idea. And then they are often disappointed that they were not
understood by their contemporaries. The lack of They are often arrogant and
do not care about the opinion of others like we do in our FIS forum. But
they often have some “oracle” messages. So, my question to you and the
others here is: Is there a way that we, scientists, can build a solid
theory on the base of others' artistic insights? Do you think you can help
here as an expert in topology and logic to fill the formalisation gaps in
Pivar’s approach and develop something foundational. All this would take
time and I am not sure if such artists like Pivar would be ready to
participate a scientific-humanitarian discourse, because we know that most
of these talents as extremely egocentric and ignorant and we cannot change
this. What do you think?

Best,

Plamen




On Thu, Mar 17, 2016 at 8:09 AM, Louis H Kauffman  wrote:

> Dear Plamen,
> I do not know why Gel-Mann supported this. It is interesting to me anyway.
> It is primarily an artistic endeavor but is based on some ideas of visual
> development of complex forms from simpler forms.
> Some of these stories may have a grain of truth. The sort of thing I do
> and others do is much more conservative (even what D’Arcy Thompson did is
> much more conservative). We look for simple patterns that definitely seem
> to occur in complex situations and we abstract them and work with them on
> their own grounds, and with regard to how these patterns work in a complex
> system. An artistic approach can be very fruitful.
> Best,
> Lou
>
> On Mar 16, 2016, at 9:43 AM, Dr. Plamen L. Simeonov <
> plamen.l.simeo...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Dear Lou, Pedro and Colleagues,
>
> I have another somewhat provoking question about the "constructive" role
> of topology in morphogenesis. What do you think about the somewhat
> artistic, but scientifically VERY controversial theory about the origin and
> development of life forms based on physical forces from classical mechanics
> and topology only, thus ignoring all of genetics, Darwinism and Creationism:
>
> http://www.ilasol.org.il/ILASOL/uploads/files/Pivar_ILASOL-2010.pdf
>
> What part of this can be regarded as science at all, and If there is
> something missing what is it? Why did a person like Murray Gel-Mann support
> this?
>
>
> Best
>
> Plamen
>
> 
>
>
> On Tue, Mar 15, 2016 at 12:00 PM, Pedro C. Marijuan <
> pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es> wrote:
>
>> Louis, a very simple question: in your model of self-replication, when
>> you enter the environment, could it mean something else than just providing
>> the raw stuff for reproduction? It would be great if related to successive
>> cycles one could include emergent topological (say geometrical-mechanical)
>> properties. For instance, once you have divided three times the initial
>> egg-cell, you would encounter three symmetry axes that would co-define the
>> future axes of animal development--dorsal/ventral, anterior/posterior,
>> lateral/medial. Another matter would be about the timing of complexity,
>> whether mere repetition of cycles could generate or not sufficient
>> functional diversity such as Plamen was inquiring in the case of molecular
>> clocks (nope in my opinion).  best--Pedro
>>
>>
>> --
>> -
>> Pedro C. Marijuán
>> Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group
>> Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud
>> Centro de Investigación Biomédica de Aragón (CIBA)
>> Avda. San Juan Bosco, 13, planta X
>> 50009 Zaragoza, Spain
>> Tfno. +34 976 71 3526 (& 6818)
>> pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es
>> http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/
>> -
>>
>>