Richard:
As I read your post, you seem to be involved with an internal debate
with yourself.
It appears to me that a starting point for your post is a
philosophical perspective about your personal relationship with
nature and I have responded in that vain.
Your post suggests that you do not give serious consideration to the
natural logic of associative relations but that is merely an
intuitive conjecture on my part.
A few comments are interlaced; my comments may or may not be relevant
to what you had in mind.
On Nov 12, 2006, at 5:45 PM, fis-request@listas.unizar.es wrote:
> Jerry,
>
> You wrote:
>
>> Biological information emerges as flows of changes of chemical
>> relations - metabolic dynamics.
>
> By what principle does this emergent property you describe adopt a
> specifically digital language to manage those analogously chemical
> affairs of biological systems? To recognize such an emergent
> property I would have to agree to a few brave assumptions. One
> would be that biological systems, comprising hierarchical atoms and
> molecules, are just naturally capable of writing their own
> operational programs. That's a reach for me, because nothing is
> explained. Even though I am aware that organisms do exactly that,
> there are no principles I know of to support it. HOW they do it
> (not WHY they do it) is the key issue for me. How do analogs write
> their own digital scripts? One again, the only other time in
> natural history that I know of this sort of thing happening was
> when human analogs wrote their own digitally symbolic language
> about 10,000 years ago.
>
Living systems are natural. Conceptual words such as analog and
digital are artifacts of human cultural history. Written symbol
systems need grammars so that we can communicate with one another.
Closure over symbol systems and "colonies" of statements are
necessary and or essential for logical expressions in written symbol
systems. Your paragraph appears to me to conflate many concepts in
such a way as to exclude nature from herself!
> As Stan has said:
>
>> Of course, the origin of the genetic system is arguably the most
>> outstanding problem facing natural science.
>
> And you go on to say:
>
>> Thus, if one wishes to develop a compelling argument about
>> chemical numbers and structures and genetic information, one
>> should start with relational algebras that keep track of changes
>> of relations... A living system is a society of associative
>> relations among atomic numbers.
>
> If an emergent property truly emerges in nature I think it ought to
> do so on first principles.
I have no idea why nature "ought" to follow your principles. Nature
is what nature does. So what?
"First principles" is a theological concept, is it not?
> Still, to argue that "biological information emerges as flows of
> changes..." interests me. Seems a little like a DC electrical system
> �something new for me to worry about. But how did those upstart
> crystalline micelles, containing numerical/chemical relations,
> learn algebra well enough to enable the emergence of a genetic
> code? How did such a uniquely non-analogous language for
> communicating pure digital information in biological systems come
> into existence?
>
Your philosophy of mathematics appears to be based in I have no idea
what.
If you expect chemical atoms and molecules to follow your vision of
algebra, you may be severely disappointed.
The order of the list of the chemical elements apparently proceeded
the man's expression of order by several billion years. From my
perspective, you are putting the cart before the horse.
> Maybe this emergent property cannot be explained in hierarchical
> terms applying to a single universe. Maybe the emergent property
> Jerry speaks of is evidence of another universe, a coincidental
> one, where digits rule and analogs are the exception. Yes, it's a
> wild idea. But I don't think there is enough hierarchy in this
> pedestrian universe of ours to get us the principles we need to
> explain what biological life actually is and where it came from.
>
If one wishes multiple universes, one first has to cope with the
intrinsic mis-use of the usual definition of the noun "universe".
Personally, I would only resort to such an argument if it was the
only possibility and even then I would not use it! :-)
Cheers
Jerry
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Received on Sat Nov 18 02:12:28 2006
