Re: [Fis] Group-theoretic biology

Dear FIS colleagues,

Thanks to Sergei and Michael for their recent exchanges on theoretic
biology. Let me add that there is now included among the fis papers a
contribution of mine on the informational phenomena of the cell ('From
inanimate molecules to living cells: the informational scaffolding of
life'). It is a chapter of a whole book the editor of which is Franco
Musumeci (in this list too): his 'Foreword' for that very interesting book
can also be visited in our web (let us thank Rey Abe for his accurate
maintenance of our site!!). http://fis.iguw.tuwien.ac.at/resources/papers.html

I am reluctant to get into depth about this discussion right now, in spite
of its centrality... Mixing that group-theoretic biology with the
generative-structural and communicational fis categories, and the insights
we gained about molecular recognition and cellular 'abduction' and
'constraints' in fis 2002 will be a challenging experience (this Summer,
this Autumn?). Perhaps we will be lead to re-discuss some of Ted's and
Jerry's postings months ago about fis theoretical options: the elegant
tools proposed from group theory, so useful for rationalization of
'computational fields', could they do a similar job for the central
'informational fields' (in my opinion, the triad bio & neuro & socio)?
Indeed we will have to examine very carefully the phenomenology of the cell
(what I tried to do in my above paper).

And about music? Someone attempting to build a bridge in between the
different levels recently addressed here would do a great job. For my
taste, Michael and Andrei have gone for the 'syntactic analysis' while Juan
focuses on 'word structure' (and I was heading towards the 'emotional
utterance'--or the 'semiotics' of music?). Along this very text metaphor,
some reflection on the origins of the Western musical notation itself could
be illuminating... the accurate alphabetic 'picture of the voice' by the
Greeks, the Medieval 'picture of the song' achieved in the monasteries
(curious, Why in the monasteries?).

About some of Juan's questions, the auditory perception would be caught
into similar enigmatic processes as other sensory infos. For instance, the
Weber-Fechner logarithmic law, that (in Rodolfo Llin�s' opinion--2001)
underlies the octave tonal structure. The preference for '7' in quite many
of our sensorimotor categorizations could be linked to aspects of musical
representation too (the seven basic notes, but also seven colors, seven
vowels.... again see Llin�s, and the classical work of G. Miller). Some of
my paper interpretations on 'cellular and tissular measurement problems'
could also be pertinent in this regard, and also would be, I think, Karl's
funny 'partitional constancy' of 7 (it is the only number with that
property!). Again, we are lead to discuss the formal grounding that
underlies the biological strategies of 'info optimization': rather confussing.

all the best

Pedro

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Received on Fri May 30 14:23:37 2003