Re: mechanics vs. info

Dear Pedro and Jerry:

>>.... Jerry's puzzlement about "chemicalities" is easy to
solve: I was lumping in
>> a short parenthetical expression the Three Mechanics with
several branches
>> of chemistry and implicitly also with thermodynamics. The
relationship
>> between thermodynamics and statistical mechanics is
rather lawful, but it
>> has too many subtilities (eg, time irreversibility!) so I
dropped any
>> mention of it.
>>
>
>Do you wish to imply that chemical and biochemical systems
are
>expressible in the same form of mathematics which are used
in mechanics?

Why not? In my opinion, a very important distinction has to be made -- that
between the reality and the model of reality. As we think mostly in terms of
models, we tend to mix these two entities. A reality, as such, cannot be
expressed in any mathematics but through models. If we talk here about
similarities at the level of models, they obviously exist. A trivial example
may be oscillations of concentrations in model chemical systems and
mathematical pendulum. There are numerous other examples of using same
mathematics in models in classical mechanics and models in bioscience.
Summing up, the similarity at the level of models is obvious, and, in my
view, we cannot even consistently define any other mathematical similarity
at the level of reality clear enough to discuss it.

>If so, would this imply that Shannon information would be
readily
>applicable to biochemical systems?

Surely we can pick up models in which this is so. One example may be found
at my recent exercise in that direction at
http://www.plantphys.umu.se/~igor/research/mapping/mapping.shtml
A reality as such is covered not by a single model, but a continuum of
models. Language of Reality is polymorphic. Language of mathematics is
mostly rigid, therefore a continuum in mapping comes about.

>Not to mention the whole question of genetics...
Same...
>Nor the role of history in selecting the dynamics of the
mechanics...

Non-Markovian processes with memory?
>
>Cheers
>
>jerry
>

Igor
Received on Mon Mar 01 10:29:15 1999