[Fis] Fw: Sustainability through multilevel research: Energetic Realm-Informational Realm. Social Complexity

[Dr. Shu-Kun Lin]

Dear All,

MDPI has a journal "Sustainability"
(http://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability). You may publish your
papers in it. It is great that you show interest in sustainability. It
is mainly a worldwide politics issue. I also found that TripleC journal
becomes a politics journal. Very interesting phenomena. I hope some of
you become president of your country :)

Merry Christmas! Seasonal greetings! Best wishes!

Shu-Kun

On 13.12.2015 12:09, Joseph Brenner wrote:
> Dear Pedro, I agree with your presentation here of the dynamics of
> informational entities and the necessary dominance of the
> informational realm. But my reaction to your placing the energetic
> and informational realm in a kind of opposition was a Capurrian
> 'hm'. What is still and will be always needed is a proper description
> of the relation between the two. The principles of Logic in Reality
> may provide that relation without being 'thermodynamic inflation',
> and I believe more attention should be paid to the relation than any
> disjunction. We have had too much of /those/. Regarding social
> complexity, the long-term trend is probably irreversible.
> Short-term, in spite of the 'inventions', processes of regression and
> reduction are now flourishing world-wide. Fukuyama is one of people
> I personally trust least to say what's wrong here. Gloomily, Joseph
>
> ----- Original Message ----- *From:* Pedro C. Marijuan
> <mailto:pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es> *To:* 'fis'
> <mailto:fis at listas.unizar.es> *Sent:* Friday, December 11, 2015 1:36
> PM *Subject:* Re: [Fis] Sustainability through multilevel research:
>
> Dear FISers,
>
> I agree with Loet's views (for once! :-) ).  The energy flow
> supporting the biosphere and society as a whole have not much
> explanatory power regarding the bonding complexity of contemporary
> societies. Of course, it is an interesting exercise, particularly
> concerning the limits of sustainability, but we have had so much
> thermodynamic inflation that it is very difficult adding anything
> relevant. Irrespective of its sophistication, the energetic realm
> can hardly substitute for the informational realm. About the
> intriguing interrelationship between kinship and nonkinship
> modalities of human bonding, a very interesting view was drafted by
> Francis Fukuyama (1995), centered on "trust". He was distinguishing
> between "familial" centered societies and "high trust" societies. In
> European terms (exaggerating), it is the dichotomy between the
> Mediterranean societal culture and the Anglosaxon culture. It is not
> a black and white narrative, as each polarity has advantages and
> disadvantages (think on wine & Mediterranean food!), and actually
> today each country and each culture has some terrible mix of
> everything, but it is interesting just to see how the two kinds of
> bonding may interact within a complex society.  I also penned a few
> ideas about the matter in my recent "How the Living is in the
> world"(DOI information: 10.1016/j.pbiomolbio.2015.07.002.) I am
> copying below a paragraph (maybe a little bit long--excuses). /
>
> This coarse reflection on the dynamics of successive “informational
> entities” helps us make sense of fundamentals of social evolution.
> The transition to a new social order, more or less ‘revolutionary’,
> tends to be produced by new information channels and communication
> practices that support the emergence of new ways to organize the
> structures of social self-production. Thus, the development of
> social complexity appears as irreversibly linked to a chain of
> historical inventions for communication and knowledge generation:
> numbers, writing, alphabet, codices, universities, printing press,
> books, steam engines, means of communication, computers, Internet,
> etc. (Stonier, 1990; Hobart and Schiffman, 1998). This succession of
>  fundamental inventions has dramatically altered the “infostructure”
>  of modern societies, and subsequently the informational formula for
>  being in the world has been applied with multiple variants along
> that complexity runaway: with plenty of room generated by the new
> information tools, not at the bottom but at the supra-individual
> top. We should not forget that the momentous Scientific Revolution
> was preceded by what has been called the silent “corporate
> revolution” (Huff, 2011), which opened the way for collective
> organizations legally autonomous in European cities during XIII and
> XIV centuries: universities, parliaments, counsels, municipalities,
> professional colleges, guilds, mercantile associations, charities,
> schools, etc. It was this Medieval awakening in the cities of Western
> Europe what made possible the later hyperinflation of autonomous
> collective organizations, –“information based”– growing exponentially
> and propelling all the further complexity of modern societies./
>
> All the best--Pedro
>
> Loet Leydesdorff wrote:
>>
>> Dear colleagues,
>>
>> I don’t consider it as fruitful to recycle the argument that
>> society were to be modeled as a meta-biology. The biological
>> explanation can perhaps explain behavior of individuals and
>> institutions; but social coordination more generally involves also
>>  the dynamics of expectations. These are much more abstract
>> although conditioned by the historical layer. For example, one
>> cannot expect to explain the /trias politica/ or the rule of law
>> biologically. These cultural constructs regulate our behavior from
>> above, whereas the biological supports existence and living from
>> below. The historical follows the axis of time, whereas the
>> codification (albeit historical in the instantiations) also
>> restructures and potentially intervenes and reorganizes social
>> relations from the perspective of hindsight.
>>
>> In analogy to codifications such as the juridical ones, scientific
>>  knowledge provides the code for technological intervention. This
>> type of knowledge is human-specific; perhaps, we are also able to
>> build machines that mimick it. This technological evolution is
>> going on for centuries. If I look up from my screen, I look into
>> the gardens which have a typical Dutch polder vegetation. The
>> polder was made in the 17^th century and replaced the natural
>> ecology of marsh land and lakes. The order of the explanation was
>> thus inverted: the constructed structures (instead of the
>> constructing agencies) increasingly carry the system. The
>> constructs don’t have to be material; see my example of the rule
>> of law. It is not a religion, but a dynamics of expectations.
>> Replacing it with a biology misses the point.
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Loet
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>
>>
>>
Loet Leydesdorff
>>
>> Professor, University of Amsterdam Amsterdam School of
>> Communication Research (ASCoR)
>>
>> loet at leydesdorff.net <mailto:loet at leydesdorff.net>;
>> http://www.leydesdorff.net/ Honorary Professor, SPRU,
>> <http://www.sussex.ac.uk/spru/>University of Sussex;
>>
>> Guest Professor Zhejiang Univ. <http://www.zju.edu.cn/english/>,
>> Hangzhou; Visiting Professor, ISTIC,
>> <http://www.istic.ac.cn/Eng/brief_en.html>Beijing;
>>
>> Visiting Professor, Birkbeck <http://www.bbk.ac.uk/>, University
>> of London;
>>
>> http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ych9gNYAAAAJ&hl=en
>>
>> *From:*Fis [mailto:fis-bounces at listas.unizar.es] *On Behalf Of
>> *Nikhil Joshi *Sent:* Friday, December 11, 2015 9:47 AM *To:* FIS
>> Group *Cc:* Nikhil Joshi *Subject:* Re: [Fis] Sustainability
>> through multilevel research: The Lifel, Deep Society Build-A-Thon
>> - 1
>>
>> Dear Guy and FIS colleagues,
>>
>> Thank you for your comments and the copy of your article. Your
>> views on the roots of biological systems and their evolution in
>> dissipate systems are very interesting. Your paper reminds me of a
>>  paper by Virgo and Froese on how simple dissipative structures can
>>  demonstrate many of the characteristics associated with living
>> systems, and the work of Jeremy England at MIT.
>>
>> Given your research focus and expertise in looking at living
>> systems as dissipative systems, I would appreciate your views and
>> assistance in understanding the energetics involved in the common
>> multilevel organisational pattern (CMOP) (presented in the paper
>> II of the kick-off mail).
>>
>> At first glance, it appears that different levels in
>> self-organization in living systems  a core dynamic in living
>> systems is comprised of a cycle between a class of more-stable
>> species (coupled-composite species) and a class of less-stable
>> species (decoupled-composite species), see paper II in the
>> kick-off mail.
>>
>> hence:
>>
>> Level 1: Molecular self-organization, involves a cycle between
>> oxidised molecules (more stable) and reduced molecules (less
>> stable) in molecular self-organization in photosynthesis and
>> cellular metabolism [Morowitz and smith].
>>
>> Level 2: Cellular self-orgnaization, involves a cycle between
>> autotrophic species (more stable) and heterotrophic species (less
>> stable) in ecosystems [Stability of species types as defined by-
>> Yodzis and Innes Yodzis, P.; Innes, S. Body Size and
>> Consumer-Resource Dynamics. /Am. Nat./ 1992, /139/, 1151].
>>
>> Level 3: Social self-self-organization, involves a cycle between
>> kinship-based social groups (more stable) and non-kinship-based
>> social groups (less stable) [Stability of species types as
>> suggested in Paper II, based on an extension of work of Robin
>> Dunbar and others].
>>
>> At level 1 (molecular self-organiztion)- solar energy is stored in
>>  the  high-energy reduced molecules. Do you see a possibility that
>>  living systems could store energy in cycles involving less stable
>>  species at the two other levels (level 2, and 3) as well? (When I
>>  speak of stored energy, I am referring to stored-energy as
>> introduced by Mclare, and discussed by Ulanowicz and Ho
>> [Sustainable Systems as Organisms?, BioSystems 82 (2005) 39–51].
>>
>> These are early thoughts and your views are much appreciated.
>>
>> Many Thanks,
>>
>> Warm regards,
>>
>> Nikhil Joshi
>>
>> On 01-Dec-2015, at 10:27 pm, Guy A Hoelzer <hoelzer at unr.edu
>> <mailto:hoelzer at unr.edu>> wrote:
>>
>> Hi All,
>>
>> I have been following this thread with interest as much as time
>> permits.  I think multilevel approaches to understanding
>> information flow is an important one.  I also think the structure
>> of natural systems exhibits both hierarchical and heterarchical
>> features.  The hierarchies we formally recognize can be extremely
>> useful, but they are rarely exclusive of alternatives.  Here is a
>> link to a paper Mark Tessera and I published a couple of years ago
>> arguing for one particular hierarchy of multilevel emergence in
>> physical systems connecting lower level physical systems to
>> biological systems:
>>
>> Tessara, M., and G. A. Hoelzer.  2013.  On the thermodynamics of
>> multilevel evolution.  Biosystems 113:  140–143.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Guy
>>
>> Guy Hoelzer, Associate Professor Department of Biology University
>> of Nevada Reno
>>
>> Phone:  775-784-4860 Fax:  775-784-1302 hoelzer at unr.edu
>> <mailto:hoelzer at unr.edu>
>>
>
>
> -- ------------------------------------------------- Pedro C.
> Marijuán Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group Instituto
> Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud Centro de Investigación Biomédica
> de Aragón (CIBA) Avda. San Juan Bosco, 13, planta X 50009 Zaragoza,
> Spain Tfno. +34 976 71 3526 (& 6818) pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es
> http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/
> -------------------------------------------------
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>
_______________________________________________ Fis mailing list
> Fis at listas.unizar.es
> http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________ Fis mailing list
> Fis at listas.unizar.es
> http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
>