RE: [Fis] Again about coupling resources and information

Dear Pedro and colleagues,
 
I take the liberty to fight this argument all the way since I wish it to
be correctly understood. I agree with much of what you say and I
appreciate the example of the enzyme regulating the flux efficiently.
However, I think that it is important not only to distinguish between
the flux of resources and the entropy that it generates, but also
between the thermodynamic and probabilistic entropy that is generated by
this flux. Thus, there would be three systems of reference (theories) in
the case of your example.
 
The distinction is important because we are interested in information
theory. Historically, authors from the side of physics and chemistry
have attempted to subsume probabilistic entropy under thermodynamic
entropy as a special case or a little fraction that can be fully
understood using (chemical) physics. The argument becomes then often
unclear because the authors do not specify the system of reference other
than as "the" system. With "the" system, of course, they mean "nature".
(One can show that the probabilistic entropy is smaller than the
thermodynamic entropy times the Boltzmann-contant.)
 
Information theory however provides us with an entropy calculus that is
first independent of the system of reference. Therefore we can also
study the probabilistic entropy in an economic system. Whenever
something is communicated a probabilistic entropy is generated by this
redistribution. For example, in this exchange of emails we can count the
threads, the mails, the words, etc., and compute in each dimension how
much (probabilistic) entropy is generated. This is straightforward and
it does not have anything to do with the thermodynamic entropy produced
by or the energy needed for all the systems which carry the exchange.
(One can compute a thermodynamic entropy of the exchange of message, but
that would not inform us at all about the exchange.)
 
I am sure that you are able to elaborate this for your example of the
enzyme. The question one has to raise first when one studies the
probabilistic entropy of a system is: what does the system redistribute
when it communicates? This provides us with the specification of an
hypothesis. (George Spencer Brown would call this an observation = a
distinction + an identification, but that may be confusing.) Second, one
can ask how one can indicate the communication. This provides us with an
operationalization. Thirdly, the measurement can inform us about the
relative quality of the hypothesis. A system which operates in terms of
energy redistribution can then be considered as a special case that
requires a special theory (e.g., physics). But the one system cannot
reduced to the other without a specific theory (that can be tested!).
 
With kind regards and season's greetings,
 
 
Loet
  _____

Loet Leydesdorff
Amsterdam School of Communications Research (ASCoR)
Kloveniersburgwal 48, 1012 CX Amsterdam
Tel.: +31-20- 525 6598; fax: +31-20- 525 3681
 <mailto:loet@leydesdorff.net> loet@leydesdorff.net ;
<http://www.leydesdorff.net/> http://www.leydesdorff.net/

 
 <http://www.upublish.com/books/leydesdorff-sci.htm> The Challenge of
Scientometrics ; <http://www.upublish.com/books/leydesdorff.htm> The
Self-Organization of the Knowledge-Based Society

-----Original Message-----
From: fis-bounces@listas.unizar.es [mailto:fis-bounces@listas.unizar.es]
On Behalf Of Pedro C. Marijuán
Sent: Friday, December 19, 2003 4:00 PM
To: fis-listas.unizar.es
Subject: Re: [Fis] Again about coupling resources and information

Dear Sergio and All,

Thanks for the many ideas packaged in your message. Let me start with a
brief return to the disagreements.

Am affraid that in my comments two weeks ago about your sentence, the
'hard-core reductionism' expression was rather inappropriate --too trite
and contentious. And maybe in your recent exegesis on my comments there
was inappropriate wording too, as I clearly separated in my text your
own sentence -- with quotations and italics-- from my own inferences
about it (as Alicia said in Wonderland: "I do not mean that you mean
what I mean"). Anyhow, enough of the trivial.

Let me discuss again the the relative presence of absence (the 'weigh')
of the Second Law in the dynamics of living beings. It is for me a very
important subject, rather obscured even by illustrious authors of the
field of physics (and of thermodynamics: Shu-Kun has written some clear
sentences about that). Here, rather than arguing from sweeping
statements --in favor or against--- I would like to enter a few
specific ideas from the scientific discipline in charge of the energetic
analysis of the living: bioenergetics.

Initially, most of living matter is composed by polymers of enormous
lenght, thermodynamically pretty unusual, for all of those reactions
imply an entropy decrease. Who pays for that evident entropy decrease?
It is enthalpy, the other player in the Gibbs free energy of almost
every biological reaction--bigger, far bigger quantitatively, around one
order of magnitude, or even two in most reactions within the living. The
famous DNA polymer, for instance, repeating a eloquent saying by GR
Desiraju (2003) is but " a manifestation of mutual recognition, a
storage device for structural information, and a victory of enthalpy
over entropy".

In enzymes, the influence of entropy in their overall efficiency is
extremely low --they fantastically decouple information and energy
processes, and they do so by becoming extremely good players with the
enthalpy processes (always evitating the conversion to heat). Up to the
point that, for instance, the whole cost of our brain processing
operations is in the order of 10 watts. Almost of all of the energy
transformations occur throughout the enthalpic path, scaping from the
thermalization inherent to the change of entropy --it is crucial working
always at room temperature, opposite of our engines, until now, for
socially what we try to do now with the 'fuel cells' is but an imitation
of biological metabolism.

One of the consequences of the energy-information decoupling is the
almost arbitrary complexity of the circuits of the latter --in types,
forms, relative magnitude, connections, etc. By this extra informational
complexity, the biological type of extremely efficient use of
'resources' may escalate up to 99.999 % (e.g., in key mitoch.
respiratory chain reactions). This is only possible because there is the
previous enormous accumulation of information classes both in the
sequence of DNA and in the dynamic processes of the enzymic agents and
the numerous concentration gradients around. Without that information,
and without genes and ad hoc machinery, there is no detection of the
necessary resources, no efficient transportation and inner
transformation, no exchange of metabolic processing functions with other
cellular types, etc.

Even more interesting is the theme of enzyme degradation. Actually, it
does not exist 'per se', rather it is a sophisticate mechanism of
chopping away the unnecessary enzymes and proteins (idle ones, or
misfolded, or oxidized ones) and reconverting them to their original
amino acid constituents, isolated. Then, these amino acids are used
again and again to produce new proteins, i.e., other types better suited
to the immediate metabolic circumstances of the cell. Perhaps this is a
big lesson for our linear industrial system of products and wastes --and
that lesson could be prolonged up to the many strands of biological
wisdom that converge on GAIA. The planetary wisdom exists by means of a
myriad of co-adapted genomes & intracellular & intercelluar info
labyrinths.

In my opinion, the information provided by science and technology for
our societies, is not far away from what is done in such a complex way
around the cellular genomes. Then, I think that Loet is quite right when
he concludes that "there is no alternative to knowledge-based
innovations." So to speak, in our own societies Information and
Resources become equal partners too, indeed mutual pre-requisites of
each other: without knowledge and techniques we could not even talk
about such resources --would coal, or oil, or the nuclear be a
'resource' without the appropriate know-how? Irrespective of their
immediate environmental wealth, 'clever' societies have always found
resources --and will keep finding them quite probably, provided an
overall wisdom guides them.

Implicitly, I was recognizing that, for good or for bad, science is not
alone and does not cover the whole spectrum of human life and human
knowledge. It is a robust but, in actuality, a very modest player that
far from been situated 'on top' is 'on tap' ... The many (and factually
incommensurable) dimensions of the social body: cultural, political,
moral, religious, nationalistic, racial, esthetic, hedonistic, etc.,
steer our global trajectory in very strange ways--irrational ones quite
often. And for us, scientists, it is quite difficult to convey our
messages beyond our narrow disciplinary bounds and to be heard. Actually
society listen to us as a cacophony of little voices.

In this aspect I think we need the mutual tuning up, as much as
possible, of our disciplinary messages to society, and a continuous
adaptation of our paradigms to the changing intellectual circumstances
--as Enzo put. These days maybe I have exaggerated the critical part in
my comments on the second law (another poor expression, thanks Sergio,
was my "putting the tool on the altar"). But I might have a grain of
truth in my freshman vision of the current clash between neoclassic and
ecological econometrics. Ecological economics and information science
might have important goals in common, and somehow we should get along
concerning some particular discussions in the future, I think. (The
informational theory of value is for me sort of a 'pot of gold'
relatively close by).

Well, given that we will close the session at the end of next Monday,
this is my final posting in the session. My personal thanks to all of
our ecological economics invitees who have contributed so informatively:
Sergio, Enzo, Pavel, Edgar, and particularly to our elegant chairs Jerry
and Luis.

best wishes--season greetings.

Pedro
Received on Sat Dec 20 09:32:05 2003