Re: [Fis] A definition of Information (II)

Dear colleagues,

Thanks to Stan, Viktoras and others for their recent comments. About the
discussion on entropy and information, I think better that we reserve our
best ammunition for the next weeks (around beginnings of April), when we
will start the new session in a more or less organized way. In particular,
I much appreciate the coherence of Stan's views (and other parties') about
the entropic theme in biology, but at the same time I strongly feel that a
new point of view is needed. The pervasive phenomenon (protein, cellular,
neuronal, economic, cultural), biologically rooted, of massively getting
rid of un-adaptive parts --parts which are perfectly healthy in themselves
concerning their functioning-- has only been known in biology in the 90's
(protein degradation in proteasomes, apoptosis, rhythms of synaptic growth
and decay). It is amazing that it has been left largely out of theoretical
focus. In my opinion, as I have argued too often in this list, the
resulting 'evanescent permanence' of the living is at the very center of
its 'informability', the capacity to alter the own structure after some
signal has been received, implying both synthesis and degradation of
components (the global coupling of the communicational, structural and
generative forms of cellular information). In other words, thorugh protein
synthesis/degradation, we would be talking about the very fabric of meaning
at the biomolecular level...

Of course, I just point out the amazing parallel among all those realms,
and have not found the analytical keys at all. At least one has to put into
brackets the usual view of conflating this emerging (and un-analyzed) form
of dynamics with the workings of the 'entropic hands', the norm almost
everywhere (let us remember the discussions on ecological economics). This
does not mean that I attack the enormous importance that thermodynamic
entropy deserves at the micro-meso and macro levels (and also of other
forms of entropy as argued in this list).

Let me conclude by putting things into colorful writing. The divine
Pantheon should be presided by the serene beauty of Gaia (the Greek Goddess
of Life on Earth), caught in a romantic triangle with Oknos (the Egypcian
rope-maker, the God of agile fingers endowed with the wonders of "molecular
recognition") and Kali (the jealous, irate Hindu Goddess, of powerful but
stumped hands that disperses everything)... I promise not to indulge in
further theologies.

best regards

Pedro

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Received on Thu Mar 4 15:10:44 2004