On Thu, 19 May 2005, Pedro Marijuan wrote:
> Economy is not a domain of energies and entropies but of information and
> knowledge --entirely within the symbolic realm. Only one species among 10
> millions on Earth (over 40 or 50 millions?) has developed such
> sumperimposed world of "economy". Why? Just for the same
entropy/energy
> "reasons" applying to any happenstance? One needs a robust
language,
> artificial ecosystems, a counting system, a socialization network,
> elementary institutions, etc., in order than one can progressively assist
> to the emergence of universal equivalents, currencies, values, markets,
> "economic networks", cultures, etc...
> Unfortunately, social information is misunderstood yet (and pragmatically
> mistreated by social disciplines). How could one run a discussion on
> computing &software in entropy grounds?, not much practically indeed.
The
> same are we trying here, treating the "soft" with merely the
concepts of
> the "hard", with an arbitrary concoction. Today, the
physicalist cult is
> in-built in most ways of thinking yet--and it leads to a ping-pong game
> that obliterates the emergence of more multimensional, multidisciplinary
> reflections, badly needed for the extraordinary problems ahead: The new
> "invisible hand" needed previously demands a conceptual
revolution.
Dear Pedro,
I receive your message loud and clear! It is one that has been sent to me
by many biologists as well -- "How can you concentrate on flows of
palpable material or energy and disregard all the informational and
non-material clues and triggers that occur in an ecosystem?" I should say
right off, that I have always had much sympathy with those who pose this
challenge, and recently I have found myself coming over to the view of the
semioticists.
That having been said, I don't think it futile to continue to work with
networks of material, energetic or cash flows, so long as one maintains
the phenomenological perspective. In my first book, "Growth and
Development: Ecosystems Phenomenology" (iUniverse.com), I attempted an
apology of my approach as follows (pp29-30.):
************************************************************************
"Now, the thrust in thermodynamics towards generality runs
counter
to the direction of most biological description, which strives to
differentiate life forms and processes to the greatest degree possible
until each observation can be uniquely catalogued. The resulting
picture is one of a living world so manifold, intricate, and complex as
to seemingly defy any hope of uniform quantification. It is also, at
times, a picture of extreme beauty; and anyone needlessly rejecting all
detail does so at the peril of justifiably being labelled boorish and
insensitive. Therefore, it is categorically stated here that this
effort to portray ecosystem dynamics in terms of "brute" flows of
material and energy (Engelberg and Boyarsky, 1979) is not an attempt to
abnegate the value of descriptive biology or of matters numinous. Most
will agree that an individual's creations in the arts or literature are
valued more than his ability to consume food. Still, if the artist
does not eat over a long enough period, he/she dies. Similarly, the
members of an ecosystem may behave in bizarre and intricate ways in
response to a myriad of nonmaterial cues in the environment. Most such
behavior can be shown to affect the pattern of material and energetic
exchanges in the ecosystem. Still, these extremely intriguing actions
remain contingent upon the underlying networks of brute flows. Just as
the phylogeneticist observes that those traits shared by the greatest
number of species are the most primitive, so the phenomenological
ecologist points out that those attributes shared by ecosystems with
the rest of the universe are also the most elemental and, in at least
one sense of the word, the most essential.
"The flows make possible the higher level behaviors, which in turn
help to order and coordinate the flows. So reflexive is this couple
that the description of one member lies implicit in the description of
the other element. It is in this reflexive sense that a key postulate
in the development of the current thesis should be understood; to
thermodynamically describe an ecosystem, it is sufficient to quantify
the underlying networks of material and energy flows. A more general
form of the postulate would read: the networks of flows of energy and
material provide a sufficient description of far from equilibrium
systems."
*********************************************************************
Note that the phenomenologist strives only for a sufficient description
and not for causality. Once one discovers a regular pattern, one can then
embark upon an invesigation of causalities that lie behind it (as I did in
my second book. :) My attitude has been that we must learn to walk before
we can run.
The best,
Bob
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Robert E. Ulanowicz | Tel: (410) 326-7266
Chesapeake Biological Laboratory | FAX: (410) 326-7378
P.O. Box 38 | Email <ulan@cbl.umces.edu>
1 Williams Street | Web <http://www.cbl.umces.edu/~ulan>
Solomons, MD 20688-0038 |
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Received on Wed May 25 16:48:14 2005
