info phase transitions

Dear fis colleagues,

There are currently several discussions open --one can hardly choose!
I will try to interconnect some of them, at least superficially .

Jerry big question about defining interrelationships between structures at
different scales (that motivated my historical reference to Dionysius
Exiguus--wrong spelling included, for I did put "Dyonisius", sorry) may be
considered in relation with the concept of INFORMATION PHASE TRANSITIONS...
I mean, how physicochemical work and info processes are both broken down
(and integrated) from molecules to cells, from cells to organisms, etc.,
unceasantly up and down from one realm to another... my opinion is that
this is possible only because certain special evolutionary inventions have
been produced ("infostructures") capable of performing such spectacular
info phase transitions ---viz cellular signaling systems, nervous
systems... a mere bunch of chemicals, a mere bunch of cells, a mere bunch
of organisms do not build higher order organizations unless they invent the
right infostructural tools!

Then going back to physics, the idea of info phase transition may have a
certain parallel in the Q. measurement problem, when the quantum state
vector collapses towards a macrsocopic record...

May I suggest, then, that the perennial controversies on the collapse of
the wave function could be related to the very idea of state as an
independent characterization both of particles and waves... conversely,
does it make any sense a perspective where "states" could be understood
only as "voids" or "bubbles" of uncertainty arising in the confluence or
collision of "processes"? Then should processes be understood as space-time
lines or tubes interconnecting potential "states"?

This mutual interdependece takes me to the topic that both Koichiro and Ray
have raised on info and language, particularly the dialectical relationship
between names and verbs. Names as "states", verbs as "processes". Both
generating each other... the phrase uniting them, and the unilateral state
description forcing us to speak only in the passive voice... perhaps info
becoming the verb, or the verbal noun, as appears to me in Ray�s points.

Undoubtedly the "info thought-complex" is a very crazy thing!

best greetings,

Pedro

-----------------------------------------------------------
Pedro C. Mariju�n --FAX 34 976 761 861 --TEL 34 976 761 927
Dto. Ingenieria Electronica y Comunicaciones
CPS, Universidad de Zaragoza
Zaragoza 50015, SPAIN
Received on Thu Feb 5 13:47:18 1998