[Fis] Fw: Sustainability through multilevel research: Bias
Joseph Brenner
joe.brenner at bluewin.ch
Wed Dec 16 14:11:47 CET 2015
Dear Pedro, Guy and All,
Pedro raises an important point about the evolution of any principles and
their defence. The answer to Pedro's question of whether establishing those
of LIR could lead to a biased stance is "of course it could"! The difference
between LIR and other physical or physics-based theories is that it predicts
and assumes that that will happen, according to its own rules. A metalevel
of critique is therefore also established at which dialogue is favored, if
not insured. Nothing can do that.
Thus, Guy's view of the evolution of altruism in the emergence of social
organization is most interesting, but it should not lead to a utopian
conclusion that it /will/ happen. The principle at issue here is, of course,
the Maximum Entropy Production Principle (MEPP). As far as I am concerned,
its account (see the article by Skene, which refers to Guy's) of
directionality is partly OK, but it (the MEPP) fails to account
satisfactorily for the bidirectionality in nature. New forms of selfishness
are emerging every day . . .
Best,
Joseph
----- Original Message -----
From: "Pedro C. Marijuan" <pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es>
To: "'fis'" <fis at listas.unizar.es
Cc: "Joseph Brenner" <joe.brenner at bluewin.ch>
Sent: Wednesday, December 16, 2015 12:28 PM
Subject: Re: [Fis] Sustainability through multilevel research: Energetic
Realm-Informational Realm. Social Complexity
> Dear Joseph and colleagues,
>
> Thanks for the correction. You are right, the "disjunction" is unnecessary
> and the "relation" is far more productive. The problem I see is that given
> the far more advanced theoretical development of the physical side,
> establishing the new principles might conduce to a biased stance, as
> generally happens (could it also be the case with LIR?). In my humble
> guess, the interplay of symmetry and information (& symmetry breaking and
> restoration) is, in the most abstract approach, what runs most of the
> complexity theater around. But there seems to be a big divide in the way
> the symmetry-information game is played in the physical, the biological
> and the economic... So the general interest of the discussion started
> these days, around Nikhil's quest for parallels and common patterns. As
> Xueshan pointed, this may be the essential question of information
> science.
>
> As for Loet's religious interpretation of the "medieval awakening", I
> think that the change of social mentality was previous, mostly motivated
> by a series of deep factors of several classes --one of them disregarded
> until Joseph Needham's terrific work, was the intensity and magnitude of
> the "technological loan" from the Oriental world to the Western world,
> precisely in those times: gun powder, magnetic compass, paper making,
> printing press... in combination they formed sort of a "dynamite" that
> exploded into the Medieval way of life.
>
> All the best--Pedro
>
> 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
>>> <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/
>> -------------------------------------------------
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
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>> Fis at listas.unizar.es
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>>
>
>
> --
> -------------------------------------------------
> 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/
> -------------------------------------------------
>
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