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

[Dr. Plamen L. Simeonov]

Dear Pedro and All,

I was not quite correct im my earlier email of today when I said that that
there is not much novelty to be reported in the studying the phenomenology
of dying and death in the West. What should be noticed is definitely the
research of such pioneers as Elisabeth Kübler-Ross  (
http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Kübler-Ross_model) and Lawrence LeShan (
http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Lawrence_LeShan) and many others whose line can
be traced back to Newton’s alchemic experiments, incl. those of the circle
of prominent scientists and humanists who founded the British Society for
Psychical Research in 1882, in an era when the Eiffel Tower and the
Manhattan Building were ascending on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean and
the first direct current lightning began its path around the globe from the
New York”s Pearl Street power station, in the dawn of the birth of two
great physical theories that would reshape the world as no knowledge ever
before. We appear to be a little bit lost and helpless with playing “Bits &
Bolts" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuUxLplR_TI) in our era.

Best,

Plamen



On Sun, May 22, 2016 at 12:34 PM, Dr. Plamen L. Simeonov <
plamen.l.simeo...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear Pedro and Colleagues,
>
> thank you for your comments and insightful suggestions where see there is
> a need to focus research in the field.  We know well that a good physician
> is usually less successful than a good car mechanic, but also that cars
> cannot self-repair (yet). It is true that the matter is complex and tough,
> but also well-studied: healing methods that worked has been applied before
> science as such has emerged. Yet in the past, stress has been given to the
> importance of the bond healer - patient, whereas in the last century with
> the “industrialisation" of medicine and more applied research, the patient
> became impersonalised with attention slowly shifting from a bilateral
> relation to a trilateral (physician  - drug - patient), or even
> a quadrilateral  (physician - computer - drug - patient) one. Great
> discoveries of how we are structured and how we operate were made, before
> realising (again) that all these formations and processes in the human body
> are very individual and have their own history and future, despite knowing
> and classifying every single detail. And yet, we still hope with the
> collection of more and more data and putting more resolution, skill and
> intelligence in our exploration devices to find patters of emergence that
> will allow us to detect and understand regress/illness to repair and
> re-engineer the ill parts of our virtual bodies, and from there the
> physical ones. Is modern medicine a science or an engineering discipline,
> or both perhaps, because it is so important to us? Things are complex and
> tough in medicine not because of much detail and chaos/messiness, but
> because we keep an eye-in-eye contact at the phenomenology of death, which
> have been largely ignored for a long time in our modern Western
> society: without understanding it much from our objective, even if shared,
> viewpoint in science. Dying is a very personal experience, but quite well
> documented, even if not that extensively like love and hate in human
> literature. I am not aware of much (phenomenological) detail provided by
> contemporary science in the process of dying beyond what is known about the
> six transitional states described by Tibetian Buddhism (
> http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Bardo), perhaps because shared evidence and
> reproducibility of scientific results is the common guideline for science.
> Yet, is therefore everything else simply "non-science"? Is not our entire
> research in life science and medicine targeting life and youth perpetuation
> (and commercialisation) for ever?
>
>
> On Thu, May 19, 2016 at 8:02 PM, PEDRO CLEMENTE MARIJUAN FERNANDEZ <
> pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es> wrote:
>
>> Dear Plamen and FIS Colleagues,
>>
>> Discussing on integrative attempts in medicine is really challenging.
>>
>
> In the course of these medicine studies, I realised that integration has
> many different interpretations here. It is not easy to place a term for
> making clear what one has in mind and avoid misunderstanding. Therefore I
> made this first note in my opening session. I began with it, because this
> was our starting point: what does integral biomathics mean in the context
> of medicine? We are moving in a domain very close to the humanities, and
> obtaining a label “exotic” or “esoteric” by the mainstream researchers is
> not promoting. Hence this effort to differentiate.
>
>
>> I do not think that the marriage proposed by Stan, yoking medicine with
>> semiotics in films grounds, will have much progeny.
>>
>
> I think that there is still something that can be used in general terms
> such as developing methodology for treatment. The (bio)semiotics of Peirce
> and Uexkühl may provide a sound base for developing therapies. In my
> reference list is given some acc

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

[Dr. Plamen L. Simeonov]

Caro Francesco & cari Tutti,



La ringrazio molto per i tuoi pensieri interessanti che associano il
dominio soggetto - medicina - con i principi economici di organizzazione.



I'll continue in English now. Thank you very much for your interesting
thoughts associating the subject domain - medicine - with the economic
principles of organization.



Yes, indeed these principles are universal and a physicist would consider
them as laws of nature – e.g. for the conservation of energy or breaking of
symmetry.


It is true that we deal mostly with unpredictable events in life, but we
also have the phenomenon of anticipation which makes them to some extent
predictable. It is again true that the creativity of the universe escapes
our human domination and we can only register a small window of events
awailable to our senses and technology.


Thank you for the references to your 2004 "ethics" and 2014 "Higgs"
articles. They will be certainly of interest to some of our listeners. I am
personally impressed by the analogy of the autocatalytical capability of
the Higgs boson which with the definition of life forms. Perhaps illness
behaves in the same way. Imagine cancer as being some sort of "dark matter"
we still cannot understand well. But these are the major depature points:
symmetry breaking, criticality, autopoiesis, even point of singularity,
etc. etc. as I addressed them ina previous correspondence with Pedro. We
are open to define the points of departure for studying a particular
disease. This means in Koichiro's words the selection of initial and
boundary conditions. Please accept my reference to criticality in the my
opening text just as an example linking to Hankey's theme. We couild select
every other point or a set of them to define our frame of reference. I
think that what makes our world unpredictable is the interaction of living
forms. It is too complex to be traced with sufficient precision with a
growing number of elements. Already a three-body-problem in pühysics is a
tough challenge.But then we have the option to move to statistical models
in physics. Is that fair enough for biology and medicine? I don't think
that we are just lost in a big world of interacting elements and we can't
do anything about it. Otherwise we would not be able to learn driving a
bicycle, playing tennis or make a robot mimicing that. Anticipation is the
clue I referred to earlier and there are also more additional fine tuning
twicks we know from diverse disciplines that can be used to address tough
problems in biology and medicine. Even the signalling issues between
diverse kinds of cells that Pedro mentioned earlier could be made traceble.
But Stan Salthe had an interesting idea to move to Peircean semiotics here.
So, I am very exciting about discussing about all these options which
should not be limited to the opening theme of this session. But please let
us select one challenging problem: maybe tumor reenginering or progressing
dementia, or the complex interaction between human systems addressed a
curious but workable way by holistic medicine traditions such as TCM,
Ayurveda or Hawaiian Huna. Are the latter disciplines really so esoteric to
be ignored by modern alopathic medicine?



I think that the goal of our discussion is not to define winners and
losers, but to share information about the different phenomenologies of the
participants. There is always something useful in superimposing diverse
ideas and this is what I am interested in at the end of this round.

All the best!

Plamen





On Sun, May 15, 2016 at 5:27 AM, Francesco Rizzo <
13francesco.ri...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Caro Plamen e Cari Tutti,
> sottolineo lo stile pedagogico e l'efficacia comunicativa di questo
> eccellente contributo. Desidero soffermarmi sulla nota 5. della
> fenomenologia. La discontinuità o il salto brusco e traumatico tra una
> situazione e l'altra è frutto di una trasmutazione che caratterizza i
> "momenti" decisivi e strategici di qualunque settore della esperienza
> esistenziale e cognitiva. Tutto e dappertutto avviene secondo un processo
> economico basato sull'asimmetria creativa che rompe ogni simmetria e
> determina i cambiamenti evolutivi da cui dipende la vita. La vita, miracolo
> dei miracoli, non è un e-vento ordinario, ma un insi-eme di fatti
> imprevedibili, sconvolgenti, asimmetrici. Il cosmo è (o potrebbe essere)
> iniziato in modo arbitrario, cioè indipendente da qualunque conoscenza
> umana, e si svolge (o potrebbe svolgersi) in modo arbitrario, nel senso che
> le rotture o le discontinuità provocate dalle singolarità o asimmetrie sono
> ( o potrebbero essere) il risultato di una sua intrinseca creatività che
> sfugge al dominio dell'uomo al quale è possibile (?) conoscere sola la
> "realtà" compresa tra una singolarità e l'altra. Questo discorso potrebbe
> continuare a lungo, cosa che non faccio rinviando, almeno, alle pagine
> 211-231 di Rizzo F., "Etica dei val

[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 

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

[Dr. Plamen L. Simeonov]

Dear Colleagues,

for those whose email systems do not support special characters like Greek
letters (s. first concept explained in note 1), I have placed a PDF version
of my opening on the cloud:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/39020576/Plamen-Intro.pdf.
Please let me know if you register other problems in the communication.

Best,

Plamen





On Sat, May 14, 2016 at 9:49 AM, Dr. Plamen L. Simeonov <
plamen.l.simeo...@gmail.com> wrote:

> 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 a system at its
> critical point generated by self-organization during a long transient
> period at the complexity edge between order/stability/predictability and
> disorder/chaos/unpredictability.
>
>
>
> *Regulation of growth, form and function as a balance between health and
> illness.* The role of regulation and homeostasis in maintaining the
> structure and function of living systems is critical. Every deviation from
> a regulated state of being leads to imbalances, failures and subsystem
> dysfunction that is usually transitory, but could also become
> life-threatening, if the organism cannot find a way to restore quickly to a
> balanced, healthy state. Living beings are robust and fault-tolerant with
> respect to hazards; they possess multiple alternative pathways for
> supplying and maintaining their existential functions. However, some state
> transitions in response to severe harms can become practically
> irreversible, because of the deep evolutionary interlocking between the
> participating entities and processes. Sometimes the normal functioning of
> the organism cannot be easily restored by its natural repair processes,
> especially when adversities reoccur frequently, and the organism fails ill.
>
>
>
> *Synchronicity of action and information between the building blocks of a
> living system.* There is a need for every physiological function to be
> correctly coordinated with all other “peer” functions. Information flows
> within a living system interconnect all physiological functions and organs
> at multiple levels into a single mesh of regulatory interconnections.
> Multiple feedback-control loops enable the cross-functional interlocking of
> both healthy and ill state changes of the organism.
> Adjacent/peripheral/secondary homeostasis processes act as fine-tuning
> catalyzers of substrate ratios and process rates exchanged within the
> living system. Imbalances of these quantities lead to excess/blockage or
> scarcity/draining of essential nourishment and information exchange
> pathways.
>
>
>
> *Regulation at criticality* not only fine-tunes a process, it *optimizes*
> it for survival: with respect to a given generation’s available
> possibilities in the light of the past generations’ possibilities. To
> survive an organism or a species needs to develop optimal
> *response-ability* to environmental distress.
>
>
> *New ecological definition of life according to Hankey: self-regulating,
> se

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

[Koichiro Matsuno]

At 4:50PM 05/14/2016, Plamen L. Simeonov wrote:

 

The key question in such a “deep holistic” physically-phenomenological 
physiology (3φ) is how to define or comprehend (self-organized) criticality 
operationally within the unifying framework of biomathematics and 
biocomputation.

 

   Let me start with paraphrasing this statement in a pedestrian manner. 
Consider, for instance, the serious physiological issue of metastatic melanoma. 
The microenvironment of the melanoma cells seems to affect the gene expression 
programs with use of a lot of transcription factors. What is unique to the 
genotypic conditions of melanoma tumors is that the malignant cells within the 
same tumor displays transcriptional heterogeneity associated with the cell 
cycle, spatial context and a drug-resistance program, etc. That is to say, a 
subset of genes expressed by one cell type may influence the propagation of 
other cell types as riding on the vehicle of intercellular communication for 
tumor phenotype   
(science.sciencemag.org/content/352/6282/189 ).  


 

   One strenuous problem surrounding metastatic melanoma is in the difficulty 
in conceiving of its global state description  because of its metastatic 
nature. The situation would seem almost similar to the unattainability of the 
macro-state description at the critical point of a phase transition in 
statistical mechanics as Alex Hankey called our attention to. In contrast, the 
unattainability of a state description is everywhere in biology. Exchange of 
matter that is ubiquitous in biology makes its state description unlikely right 
in the middle of the exchange process, while the state description might 
recover either before or after the exchange event. 

 

   In any case, one decisive event making criticality durable must have been 
the origins of life on our Earth, as taking advantage of a lot of 
counterfactual conditionals on the ground of first come, first served. 

 

   Koichiro Matsuno

 

 

 

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