Invitations to WESS dinner meeting, WESSbook

From: by way of Pedro C. Mariju�n <[email protected]>
Date: Wed 28 Nov 2001 - 10:10:52 CET

(from: jlrchand@pop.mail.rcn.net)

Dear Colleagues:

  You are invited to a WESS dinner meeting with Professor Stan Salthe
on Thursday, November 29, 2001, as announced in early October. Stan,
a long time member of WESS, is known for his books on Hierarchy
Theory and Natural Philosophy. His abstract is included with this
announcement (see below).

  Speaker:
          Prof. Stan Salthe
          Biological Sciences, Binghamton University, NY.

  Title: "Why is there anything? Why so many kinds of things?
         Entropy in Natural Philosophy"

  Time: 5:30 PM Cocktails
          7:00 PM Dinner
          8:15 PM Speaker

Place: Les Halles Brasserie
          1201 Penn Ave NW
          Washington, DC, 20004
          (202) 347-6848
          www.LesHalles.net

Please email your reservation to me in a timely manner. Or, you can
leave a message on the answering machine at 703-790-1651. Our
agreement with our hosts requires us to submit to them a firm number
of reservations at least 24 hours in advance of the meeting.

The location of Les Halles Brasserie is about four blocks east of the
White House, close to the Washington Metro stops of Metro Center and
Federal Triangle and to several parking garages in downtown
Washington.

Guests are welcome.

Another WESS event is scheduled for December. WESSbook will meet on
Saturday afternoon, Dec. 8, 2001 at 1:00 PM in Room 262 at the Reiss
Science Building on the Georgetown University campus. The book to be
discussed is:

Freedom, Modernity and Islam, Toward a Creative Synthesis
Syracuse University Press
By Richard K. Khuri
Richard will participate in the discussions.

Guests are welcome at the open discussions of WESSbook. The
discussions usually run four or five hours with a lunch break in the
middle. For further information, please contact either Andrew Vogt or
myself.

Friends of Jack Corliss are invited to spend an evening with Jack in
early December. Jack, who currently is residing in Hungary, will be
visiting the Washington area sometime in early December; a special
notice will be distributed when I have further information.

Professor Salthe is in Washington to address a annual meeting of the
American Association of Anthropology. If you are interested in
attending this meeting, I have appended an email below which provides
further information.

Cheers

Jerry LR Chandler

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Why is there anything? Why so many kinds of things? Entropy in Natural
Philosophy
S.N. Salthe (Biological Sciences, Binghamton University)

      the inefficiency of energy gradient utilization (Carnot /Clausius)
results in a multiplication of energy gradients, and the mutational
dissipation of embodied information (Brooks and Wiley) generates new kinds
of consumers. Together these forces generate an increasing diversity in
the biosphere -- which should continue as long as the universe keeps
expanding (Layzer, Frautschi) -- even though each individual dissipative
structure eventually senesces, hobbled by information overload (Salthe).
If the universal expansion itself eventually slows, we can expect that it,
too, will senesce. The world can be viewed as a dialectic between
gravitation (the build-up of gradients, embodying information) and the
Second Law (their destruction, using information, leading to smaller
gradients). In this perspective, life is a way of inserting smaller, more
stable gradients into larger ones -- generating a kind of friction, thereby
plateauing the destruction of gradients (Lotka), so that we don't burn
oxidatively so much as we slowly dehydrogenate.
      So, why is there anything? Because the universe is expanding faster
than it can equilibrate. Why are there so many kinds of things? Because
the universe is trying to destroy as many energy gradients as possible in
its attempt to equilibrate.

Stanley N. Salthe; Professor Emeritus, Biology, City University of New
York; Visiting Scientist in Biological Sciences, Binghamton University.
      I have been breaking out of biology for a long time now. It is too
constricting a discipline for those who wish to find an intelligible
understanding of what the world is all about. Natural philosophy is the
framework for attempting this, based in scientific knowledge.

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Received on Wed Nov 28 10:10:55 2001

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