Yes, I agree: the next-order (emerging) system can be expected to contain a
structure and therefore to operate as a selection mechanism on the
lower-level ones. The latter thus become more constrained. But the
constraint is at the phenotypical level; the system gains a degree of
freedom at the "genotypical" level, that is, analytically.
Best, Loet
________________________________
Loet Leydesdorff
Amsterdam School of Communications Research (ASCoR),
Kloveniersburgwal 48, 1012 CX Amsterdam.
Tel.: +31-20- 525 6598; fax: +31-20- 525 3681;
[email protected]
; http://www.leydesdorff.net/
> -----Original Message-----
> From: fis-bounces@listas.unizar.es
> [mailto:fis-bounces@listas.unizar.es] On Behalf Of Stanley N. Salthe
> Sent: Sunday, January 29, 2006 11:34 PM
> To: fis@listas.unizar.es
> Subject: RE: [Fis] biological "dynamics"
>
> Loet said:
> >Dear John and colleagues:
> >
> >The issue is, in my opinion: under which conditions is the emerging
> >system able to develop an additional degree of freedom? If
> this is the
> >case, the situation cannot be contained in the phase space ex ante.
>
> We may ask, what is entailed by the addition of a degree of
> freedom? In my just previous posting (pasted in below) I
> noted that the addition of biological constraints to a
> chemical system, or the addition of social contraints to a
> biological system, each time limits further the freedom with
> which involved molecules can take up positions in spacetime
> with respect to each other, by initiating strong correlations
> between them. As well, increasing amounts of entropy
> production would be taken over by activities involving
> supramolecular configurations. From the point of view of the
> involved molecules, the impostion of biology and sociality
> amount to increasing degrees of UNfreedom. In fact, the
> degrees of freedom that are instituted by biological and
> social informational constraints would not have existed, as
> such, in a purely physical-chemical system, and so the
> molecules would have been freer to move around as
> individuals. I think it is not always clearly seen that the
> emergence of new realms in nature (e.g., biology, sociality)
> involves the imposition of MORE constraints upon a
> phsical-chemical system). Failure to see this, I think,
> happens because these emergences are often viewed as ways
> that the world comes to transcend its previous limitations.
> I think this perspective is misleading. What substance this
> viewpoint has can be appreciated when -- after instituting
> new degrees of freedom -- it happens that they do NOT get
> fixed, but remain
> as part of informational entropy instead. Now the emergent
> system seems
> to have acquired, indeed, more degrees of freedom to play
> with, even though degrees of freedom have been lost at the
> lower levels. This is to say that degrees of freedom appear
> as openings and opportunities only when they are NOT fixed.
> To the extent that a system acquires more and more degrees of
> freedom AND they also get fixed, that system gets inceasingly
> nailed down by information (this information 'overload' is
> the basis of a strong theory of senescence). Thus, a
> biological system, say, or social system, is interesting only
> to the extent that its various possibilities remain
> uncertain. From the point of view of molecules at lower than
> biological / social levels, degrees of freedom opened by the
> emergence of these higher integrative levels impose barriers
> to their freedom to move whether they are fixed or not.
> These new degrees of freedom can create openings and
> possibilities ONLY at the higher levels, after closing down
> possibilities
> at the lower levels. With emergence, some of the possibilities of
> activity by a system will have moved upscale from the molecular level.
>
> John said:
>
> >In my original complaint I was objecting to the idea that sociality
> >alone is sufficient to produce new information (or new information
> >capacity). The issue is similar to that of whether or not
> neural nets
> >can produce anything new (substitute social nets to get the argument
> >for the social case mutatis mutandis). Jerry Fodor argues that they
> >cannot, since space of possibilities is not increased by
> anything that
> >happens in the net.
> I think that this might not be quite correct. If there
> come to be habitual connections between certain nodes, like
> feedbacks in emergent 'autocatalytic' loops, the rates of
> reaction of such regions will become slower than the average
> for the network, and if that rate is significantly different,
> even a new level of scale might emerge. In the 'unevolved'
> network it might be that the rates of communication between
> nodes would be power law distributed, but if different rates
> are not allocated to certain regions (as would be the case
> that I just described) but could emerge anywhere in the
> network, then there would have been no emergence of a new level.
>
> STAN
>
> my previous posting:
>
> >Suppose we have two heterogeneous systems with the same
> numbers of the
> >same kinds of molecular constituents.
>
> >System A is purely physical/chemical. The states of the
> system pass on
> >endlessly to new configurations, each one >is historically
> unique but
> >in the long run the system is ergodic. It is not very far from the
> >most likely >configuration of thermodynamic equilibrium.
>
> >System B has further levels of organization (say, both
> 'biological' and
> >'social'). But we are reductionists, and we >seek to
> observe only the
> >chemical level constituents at any time. We will find that
> these low
> >level configurations >in System B are selected from
> possibilities that
> >might arise in System A. There is no new information here
> -- >except
> >INFORMATION itself. That is, System A (except for the heterogeneity
> >itself) is one of pure informational >entropy, while system
> B has had
> >constraints put on possible configurations -- the emergent
> biological
> >and
> >>social level constraints.
>
> >History has worked in System B too, but so has selection and
> >preservation of (using a Peircean term) 'habits' (=
> >information). So
> >there is no statistical difference in these systems at the phys-chem
> >level, except that state >transitions have been drastically
> slowed down
> >(generating
> >friction) in System B. The generation of new historical
> >states (and
> >of entropy! -- which is produced as well during the higher level
> >arrangings) has been partially moved >upscale, to the higher
> levels in
> >System B. But at the molecular level, we find no states not
> observable
> >in System >A, merely strange associations of such states and
> lags in their replacements.
>
> >How might the transition from System A to System B be generated? By
> >accelerated expansion of the overall >system (as in the Big
> Bang). In
> >the Universe this has increased the force pulling matter
> together, so
> >that bigger >and bigger configurations (or configurational
> constraints)
> >become possible.
>
> >Is it possible that some phsical-chemical configurations might be
> >reached during imposition of the higher level >constraints
> that could
> >not be possible in System A? I don't think it is possible
> to know the
> >answer to this. If not, >then the only new thing to have
> emerged has
> >been stability of states, which, again, = information.
>
> STAN
>
>
>
>
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Received on Sun Jan 29 22:37:37 2006
