Re: [Fis] Group-theoretic biology

John:

See interlaced comments.

>>> "jlrchand@erols.com" <jlrchand@pop.mail.rcn.net> 06/03/03 01:37 AM >>>

An Open Comment:
You ask "why"?

Because the simplest possible mathematical representation of a
chemical molecule is a labeled bipartite graph.

JDC: It seems to me that there is a lot that leaves out with respect
to relative energy levels, structure of non-ioniv bonds, and other
things. Scott's a physical chemist by original training, and is not
insensitive to the importance of these things.

JLRC: Yes. Chemical attributes are either deduced from the
structure or measured. If you re-read my post carefully you may wish
to reflect on the relation to denotation.

And, because the structure of a mathematical object need not
represent the relations among or correspond to the structure of
natural object.

JDC: Part of the subtlety of Scott's treatment is that he has
developed a way to test whether or not this is true for specific
mathematical objects and specific physical states for which we can
have evidence. Jaynes argues for the ambiguity of information content
because of multiple accurate descriptions. Scott shows that Jaynes'
argument is flawed beecase there is a general way to overcome the
ambiguity problem. We still need evidence of the structure, of
course, and we may well not be clever enough to come up with an
accurate description of this evidence.

JLRC: My original post consisted of comments about chemistry and
mathematics. At issue are the relations between chemical objects,
physical objects and mathematical objects. A labelled bipartite
graph is not ambiguous as a chemical structure. If life itself were
simply a trivial extension of well known physical and mathematical
principles, these positions and statements would be superfluous,
nicht wahr?

I conclude that the languages and structures of natural systems are
vastly richer than I was able to state or imagine.

Cheers

Jerry LR Chandler

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Received on Wed Jun 4 23:13:38 2003