Dear FISers:
This message seeks to address some of the discussion points during
the past few weeks on "Ecological Economics and Information". These
comments are terminal only in the sense that our allocated time has
expired. Facets of this discussion will continue as components of
numerous other facets of the FIS agendas.
Personally, I remain humbled by the breadth of this topic. I stand
in awe of the perplexity of nature.
<http://wires.news.com.au/special/mm/030811-hubble.htm>http://wires.ne
ws.com.au/special/mm/030811-hubble.htm
Perhaps I can best reflect on the discussions by quoting from my
opening remarks on Oct. 23, 2003:
-----------------
"In earlier work (Chandler, NYAS,vol. 879, 75-86, 1999, vol. 901,
75-85, 2000) a suitable classification of systems was developed. The
proposed classification is organic. That is, a degree of
organization is used to distinguish among components. The chemical
basis of the classification provides a natural relation with
biological systems without discarding the concept of distance. The
organic basis of the scale, grounded in the atomic numbers of the
chemical elements, provides an intrinsic meter for counting and for
accounting of relations in terms of semantic names of components. It
is a simple, direct scientific classification that separates
components on the basis of the degree of organization rather than
linear distance or arithmetic operations .
"The categories are:
O� 1 subatomic particles
O� 2 chemical elements
O� 3 molecules
O� 4 biomacromolecules
O� 5 cells
O� 6 organs
O� 7 individuals
O� 8 populations
O� 9 ecosystems
O�10 planet
"The objective of this categorization is not to give a theory of
everything. Rather the objective is to provide a basis for
reflection on the structure of scientific languages and the potential
for relations among these scientific languages in nature. Other
categorizations can add finer structures to the distinctions. Each
degree of organization provides a "home" for a collection of terms
and scientific theories. Frequently, individual terms may be used in
multiple layers or stages or hierarchical levels or degrees of
organization. The multiplicity of usages generates a polysema that
strongly influences communications among different scientific
subdisciplines. Usage of a term in multiple degrees of organization
introduces uncertainty.
-----------------
The categorization of natural systems into 10 distinctive classes is
a value laden classification, deeply grounded in a natural synthesis,
a natural materialism, a natural organization by scale, a natural
structure. (I am indebted to De Chardin, Bergson, Whitehead and the
chemical sciences for suggesting this structuring of categories.)
The value laden categories listed above are not independent from one
another. Indeed, the categorization is a particular form of
opposition to the highly simplistic but mathematically elegant
concepts of independence, linear independence, linear vector spaces
and so forth.
The value laden categories relate relate to one another via a path of
dependencies, not independence. Each enumerated "degree of
organization" emerges from the one below, except the first and the
last.
It is now widely acknowledged that the dependencies among these
categories are intrinsic to a natural value system, a natural value
system which supports the continuing emergence of ever more perplex
systems with iterative enfoldings of dependent categories within one
another. Such is the natural history of our planet. The concept of
"mathematical independence" remains a powerful tool for the design,
analysis and synthesis of artificial systems. (By artificial systems
I mean engineered systems -- computers, spaceships, automobiles and
other machines of all sorts designed for human purposes.) But the
role of "independence" in *Mother Nature* herself remains to be
elucidated.
Historically, humans have generated an amazing array of philosophical
beliefs which relate the dependencies of language to the dependencies
of nature. Perhaps A. N. Whitehead captured central concept about
relationships when he writes in Process and Reality:
p. 9. "The field of a special science is confirmed to one genus of
facts, in the sense that no statements are made respecting facts that
lie outside that genus. The very circumstances that a science has
naturally arisen concerning a set of facts secures that facts of that
type have definite relations among themselves which are obvious to
all mankind."
p. 11. "Every science must devise its own instruments. The tools
required for philosophy is language. Thus, philosophy redesigns
language in the same way that, in a physical science, re-existing
appliances are redesigned. It is at exactly this point that the
appeal to facts is a difficult operation."
p. 12. "The technical language of philosophy represents attempts of
various schools of thought to obtain explicit expressions presupposed
by the facts of experience."
The bridge between natural categories and abstract thought is
grounded in abstract symbol systems. We humans have created a range
of symbol systems -- numbers, alphabets, chemical symbols, musical
notations, economic symbols, medical symbols and so forth. It
appears that all symbol systems originated in natural language.
Symbols are integral to human communications. During the course of
our discussions, individuals have invoked various symbol systems,
often with value laden connotations in order to express (represent)
concepts related to our topic. I wish now to comment on some of
these relations among abstractions.
In his post of Dec. 11, 2003, Loet communicates a philosophy of mathematics:
"For example, the distribution 1/2 + 1/2 contains one bit of information,
independent of whether it is about coin flipping or anything else."
I am puzzled on how one would fit chemical philosophy into such a
mathematical philosophy. Chemistry philosophy is grounded on ratio's
of small whole numbers and neither nuclei or electrons can be
distributed into "1/2 + 1/2". Loet's post suggests that we need to
look carefully at how the marketing of information is tied to simple
mathematical operation of addition.
In his post of Dec. 13, 2003, Sergio writes of his philosophy of
thermodynamics:
"Exergy ("the amount of work obtainable when some matter is brought
to a state of thermodynamic equilibrium with the common components of
the natural surroundings by means of reversible processes, involving
interaction only with the above mentioned components of nature",
Szargut et al., 1988) measures the physical and chemical
"information" of an item in relation to its conversion into useful
work (mechanical, electric, etc). Since exergy refers to reversible
processes (and real processes are never reversible), it states very
clearly an upper limit to the work obtainable and allows a
sustainability assessment mainly focussing on the way resources are
used and on what can be obtained from them (i.e. an user-side
sustainability). Of course, we are not talking here of the exergy of
a person or a standing tree, since exergy is not sensitive to life
(using Luis' words). Herefore, we do not use exergy to measure the
work of an artist or the complexity of a flower or fruit (as Enzo
also pointed out).".
I am puzzled by the meaning of this passage. Where is the
correspondence between the mathematical symbols and the natural
system? In what sense is the concept of thermodynamic work to be
restricted to a subset of nature that excludes life? Can we identify
a rigorous boundary that suffices to distinguish biological work
from mechanical work? Or, does the problem lie in the mathematical
presuppositions that thermodynamic variables are bilinear relations
that permit a small subset of additive relations?
Pedro starts to address this issue when he writes:
"Initially, most of living matter is composed by polymers of enormous
lenght, thermodynamically pretty unusual, for all of those reactions
imply an entropy decrease. Who pays for that evident entropy
decrease? It is enthalpy, the other player in the Gibbs free energy
of almost every biological reaction--bigger, far bigger
quantitatively, around one order of magnitude, or even two in most
reactions within the living. The famous DNA polymer, for instance,
repeating a eloquent saying by GR Desiraju (2003) is but " a
manifestation of mutual recognition, a storage device for structural
information, and a victory of enthalpy over entropy"."
Pedro's remark clearly identifies an economic source of biological
organization and growth. This source is well known in the
biochemical literature, with extensive discussions since the 1950's.
Of course, in simple systems, the concept of enthalpy is seldom
linked with time. However, in perplex systems which are regulated by
internal enfoldings of dynamics, enthalpy is is a function of the
existing network of relations and hence of time.
Pedro continues:
"The many (and factually incommensurable) dimensions of the social
body: cultural, political, moral, religious, nationalistic, racial,
esthetic, hedonistic, etc., steer our global trajectory in very
strange ways--irrational ones quite often."
But, Pedro, can we stop at this point in the analysis?
What are the informational consequences of incommensurate dimensions?
At what points in the list of categories does nature become
incommensurate with herself? Or is it we humans who have constructed
artificial systems of thought that lack commensurability?
In thinking of these matters, I am reminded of Michael Leyton's
sweeping conclusions on the relations between mathematics, music and
mind. If I can roughly paraphrase Michael's logic in terms of
Quine's universal structure for logical statements, it ran something
like this:
"If musical notation is a natural harmony of the mind and if in
mathematical group theory begets music, then mathematical group
theory begets mind."
Such simple equivalences are attractive for internal mental
abstractions about human thought but elide the external world of
material, chemical and neurological facts. In addition, I am deeply
skeptical that all of Mother Nature can be made commensurate by the
single operation of group theory. I am equally skeptical that two
operations of addition and multiplication in a linear vector space
are sufficient to construct a coherent view of Mother Nature. I
suggest that we need an extension to our conceptualization of
"operation" in order to give an accounting of information flows in
living and higher order systems in economies and ecologies.
In closing, the time, energy and thoughts of the individual
contributors to this discussion are gratefully acknowledged.
Undoubtedly, these topics will continue to fascinate us in the coming
years!
Best Wishes for the Holidays.
May everyone enjoy the fruits of their labors throughout the New Year!
Cheers
Jerry LR Chandler
Received on Sat Dec 27 01:12:56 2003
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