Dear FISers,
First of all, Happy New Year!
Thanks to Jerry for another scholarly piece. There are abundant food for
thought... However, I have the impression that the whole discussion, and
particularly the proto-number idea, is addressed towards the foundations of
chemical networks. The bionetwork implies several additional tricks which
are monumentally absent in inanimate chemical matter. Given that I have
already tried some aspects of that idea, I will try another vista of the
problem.
The living cell, by means of its peculiar molecular organization (maybe I
disagree with Stan and Igor, as it is in the combinatoric polymerization
games played at the molecular scale where the problem-solving basically
occurs), has achieved a dream of today's research on manufacturing: the
universal agile enterprise. Obviously it is an informational scenario. You
conceive just a blueprint of your final product, and automatically by
amplified communication of that blueprint to a universal tool (ribosomes)
you can assemble your raw materials under any final form you have planned.
Information-driven-assembly: it is valid for any living organism, and the
final reason of any biotechnology. Like in civil engineering, with the
guidance of the different technical blueprints, thousands of different
buildings may be constructed from a very limited standard set of bricks and
mortars (in part, I am following Goodsell, 2004 here; but also Michael
Leyton's generativity grammar process may be invoked. Playing with
symmetries is crucial in this whole issue.).
In this view, the enormous improvement respect the inanimate organization,
and the universality of life forms, relies in that the biological
"investment" is made only in "instructions", what I called years ago
'generative information'. The whole "processual" part ('structural
information') then may be arranged almost in endless forms, or even
parasitized, and the ideas of Kevin and Gordana on natural computer science
and my previous references to 'molecular embodiment' may enter herein. And
finally, "communication" between cellular systems becomes possible in the
interconnection between self-production processes (cellular fabrication of
'meaning'), which paves the way for multicellularity and other organismic
and ecosystemic emergences. Etc.
So, this New Year has resuscitated the "three information genera" proposed
long ago in this list...
best wishes to all FISers for 2006!
Pedro
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Received on Wed Jan 4 14:19:29 2006
