Re: reply to Burgin

"james a barham (by way of "Pedro C. Mariju�n" )" wrote:

> (from James Barham)
> -------------------------
>
> Mark Burgin wrote:
>
> "(1) Life emerged due both to material and information processes.
>
> (2) There is no information where there is no life.
>
> (1) and (2) imply:
>
> (3) Life cannot emerge!"
>
> The fallacy lies in (1). It is not correct to say that "life emerged
> due to information processes." Rather, we should say "life emerged" and
> the thing that emerged was an information process. In other words, life
> CONSTITUTES an information process. That is just what life consists of,
> that is the very thing that emerged with the origin of life.
>
> If one believes that there was a time when there was no life, then it
> must be admitted that life emerged. If one accepts my view that life
> consists of a sui generis dynamics which constitutes information use (in
> the form of low-energy triggers mediating nonlinear oscillators and the
> circumstances supporting their dynamical stability), then the emergence
> of information is no more mysterious than the emergence of life itself.
> They are one and the same phenomenon.
>
> Now, I do not pretend that emergence, in any form, is not a little
> mysterious. Furthermore, I must admit that the emergence of life is even
> more mysterious than other forms of emergence. But the only alternative
> to emergence is universal, Laplacian reductionism, which I consider
> absurd. Emergence has now become quite well integrated into parts of
> physical theory (especially, effective field theory). In this
> connection, one must side with the condensed-matter physicists against
> the high-energy physicists.
>
> So, within a general picture of a series of symmetry breakings from the
> big bang forward, each of which gives rise to qualitatively novel states
> of matter with new causal powers (cf. Walter Thirring's notion of the
> "evolution of the laws of nature"), the emergence of life and
> information becomes a little less mysterious. But the mystery will only
> be throrougly dissipated when we have a real theory of the living state,
> that is, a theory of information dynamics that can be properly
> formalized, integrated into an expanded quantum field theory, and
> empirically confirmed.
>
> I don't know how far away that day is, but maybe not as far as we think
> (see the work of Emilo Del Giudice, Giuseppe Vitiello, Mae-Wan Ho, and
> others).
>
> James

Dear James and other participants of FIS,

You write that "... life CONSTITUTES an information process." It seems more
relevant to write that life IS BASED on information processes.
According to the Principle O2a of the general theory of information (M.
Burgin THE ESSENCE OF INFORMATION: PARADOXES,
CONTRADICTIONS, AND SOLUTIONS), what we consider as information depends on
the choice of the class of infological systems. If we choose large and
complex polymer-like macromolecules as infological systems, as suggests
Juan Roederer then there is no other information.
However, when we take infological systems of non-living things (computers,
stars, trees etc.), we can find
information even in unimated nature. If we allow only social infological
systems, then we restrict information only to society.
Different types of infological systems are related to different types of
information. The situation is similar to the situation with energy. There
are different types of energy: potential, chemical, kinetic etc.

Sincerely,
   Mark
Received on Thu May 23 23:04:25 2002