Dear Bob and colleagues,
Thanks for the scholarly work. It was nice reading the vast landscape,
historical and otherwise, you have covered around that new biotic
interpretation of information as "Propagating Organization" or POE. Perhaps
in this list we have already arrived to a truce on Shannonian matters
--notwithstanding a general agreement with your criticisms on that respect,
the problem may be a lack of interesting alternative generalizations,
inclusive enough so that the Shannonian theory gets its proper place as a
great theory of communication and as a great theory of physical structures
(in the guise of "physical information theory") and also as a great theory
in data analysis.
Thus I am sympathetic with integrative quests such as POE, but given that
disagreeements are usually the most valuable stuff for discussions, I would
raise the following points:
--1. Constraints and boundary conditions are conflated (see below), with
some more emphasis on the former. Thus, taking into account that most
chemical constraints are in the form of "activation energies" and "free
energies" which establish the kinetics of the multitude of chemical
reactions and molecular transformations in the cell, How this heterogeneous
collection of variables and parameters may receive a form of global
treatment as POE seems to imply? I have seen no hints in the paper.
...we defined a new form of information, which we called instructional
or biotic information, not with Shannon, but with constraints or boundary
conditions. The amount of information will be related to the diversity of
constraints and the diversity of processes that they can partially cause
to occur.
2. The statement below is ambiguous. E. Coli for instance may contain in
the order of 1 or 2 million molecules (different from water) of 5,000 or
10,000 different classes. The amount of Shannon info is far, far higher in
the living soup than any inorganic soup.
...This contradicts Shannons definition of information and the notion
that a random set or soup of organic chemicals has more Shannon
information than a structured and organized set of organic chemicals found
in a living organism.
3. The origins of life (implicit in the text below) must be explained not
just by means of some formal approach more or less interesting, but by
means of the highest power or upper hand in science: the experimental. I
remember during late 80's and early 90's how different approaches in
artificial life were claiming "explaining away" the "logical" part of the
bio matter (Langton, conspicuously) and being able to put it into the
computer cavalierly...
Kauffman (2000) has described how this organization emerges through
autocatalysis as an emergent phenomenon with properties that cannot be
derived from, predicted from or reduced to the properties of the
biomolecules of which the living organism is composed and hence provides
an explanation of where biotic information comes from.
4. Going back to MacKay ("distinction that makes a difference") to
readdress the Shannonian overextension, looks a very nice note to me.
Independently I had posted here in this list a few years ago an approach to
info as "distinction on the adjacent". The term "distinction" was following
some previous work in the logics of multidimensional partitions as
discussed by Karl (also in this list).
5. The info analysis of life might demand a few other info categories.
Three info genera were discussed years ago by myself and other
patries---structural, generative, communicational. It would be too long a
discussion, the matter may be that bioinformational approaches are a very
promising avenue to offer more integrated approaches to the info
phenomenon. However, another exciting avenue is information physics /
quantum information. Without discarding breakthroughs in other fields,
these two branches may provide the basics of a new info perspective, say.
6. In the approach to cultures and societies (in the paper), I think we
have to recognize a black hole in the territories of the neurosciences. We
may call it "human nature", "theory of mind", "central theory of the
neurosciences" or whatever. But without filling that void, it is very
probable that the info synthesis above mentioned could not occur.
Anyhow, we have also the "info overload" theme of weeks ago. Quite a bit!
best regards
Pedro
=============================================
Pedro C. Marijuán
Cátedra SAMCA
Institute of Engineering Research of Aragon (I3A)
Maria de Luna, 3. CPS, Univ. of Zaragoza
50018 Zaragoza, Spain
TEL. (34) 976 762761 and 762707, FAX (34) 976 762043
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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