[Fis] New Year Lecture

Fri Jan 12 06:31:40 CET 2018

Cari tutti,
i messaggi di Pedro e Sungchul sono decisivi e riportano il dibattito
nell'alveo della scienza che si proietta nel futuro. Ho elaborato una
Nuova economia in cui la biologia dell'informazione o l'informazione della
biologia è fondamentale per l'esistenza e la conoscenza umane in-centrate
sulla triade semiologica o semiotica della significazione, informazione,
comunicazione. Per quanto gli studiosi abbiano fatto di tutto per separare
e contrapporre campi diversi  del sapere, la legge dell'informazione li
unisce e univoca tutti.
Grazie e auguri.
Francesco. .

2018-01-11 23:25 GMT+01:00 Sungchul Ji <sji at pharmacy.rutgers.edu>:

> Hi Pedro, John and other FISers,
>
> (*1*)  Thank you John for the succinct summary of your cell-based
> evolutionary theory.  As I indicated offline, I too proposed a cell-based
> evolutionary theory in 2012 [1] and compared it with the gene-centered
> evolutionary theory of Zeldovich and Shankhnovich (see Table 14.10 in [1]).
>
>
> (*2*) I agree with Pedro that
>
> ". . . ..  essential informational ideas are missing too, and this absence
> of the informational perspective in the ongoing evo discussions is not a
> good thing. . . . "
>
>
> I often wonder if this situation has arisen in biology because biologists
> blindly apply to their problems the information theory as introduced by
> Shannon almost 7 decades ago in the context of communication engineering
> without due attention paid to the fact that  the Shannon-type information
> theory is not designed to handle the "meaning" or semantics of messages but
> only the AMOUNT of the information they carry.  If we agree that there are
> three essential aspects to information, i.e., *amount* (e.g., my USB
> stores 3 Megabytes of information), *meaning *(e.g., the nucleotide
> triplet, ACG, encodes threonine),  and *value* (e.g., the same message,
> 'Yes', can have different monetary values, depending on the context), we
> can readily see that the kind of information theory most useful for
> biologists is not (only) the Shannon-type but (also) whatever type that can
> handle the semantics and pragmatics of information.
>
>
> (*3*) One way to avoid the potential confusions in applying information
> theory to biology may be to recognize two distinct types of information
> which, for the lack of better terms, may be referred to as the "meaningless
> information" or I(-)  and "meaningful information" or I(+), and what Pedro
> regarded as the missing "essential informational ideas" above may be
> identified with I(+) (?)
>
>
> (*4*)  There may be many forms of the I(+) theories to emerge in the
> field of "new informatics" in the coming decades.  Based on my research
> results obtained over the past two decades, I am emboldened to suggest that
> "linguistics" can be viewed as an example of the I(+) theory. The term
> "linguistics" was once fashionable in Western philosophy and humanities (
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_turn) in the form of "linguistic
> turn" but apparently became outmoded (for some unknown reason to me, a
> non-philosopher), but I am one of the many (including Chargaff who
> discovered his two parity rules of DNA sequences; https://en.
> wikipedia.org/wiki/Chargaff%27s_rules) who believes that linguistics
> provide a valuable tool for elucidating the workings of living structures
> and processes [2, 3].  In fact we may refer to the emerging trend in the
> early 21st century that explore the basic relations between linguistics and
> biology as the "Linguistic Return", in analogy to the "Linguistic Turn"
> referring to the  "major development in Western philosophy during the
> early 20th century, the most important characteristic of which is the
> focusing of philosophy and the other humanities primarily on the
> relationship between philosophy and language." ((https://en.wikipedia.org/
> wiki/Linguistic_turn)
>
> (*5*)  So, linguistics played an important role in philosophy in the
> early 20th century and may play a similarly important role in biology in
> the coming decades of the 21st century.  What about physics?  Does physics
> need linguistics to solve their basic problems ?   If not
> linguistics, perhaps semiotics, the study of signs?  The latter possibility
> was suggested by Brian Josephson in his lecture
>
> "*Biological Organization as the True Foundation of Reality"*
>
>
>  given at the 66th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting held in Lindau, Germany,
> stating that
>
>
> “*Semiotics will eventually overtake quantum mechanics in the same way **as
> quantum mechanics overtook classical physics.”*
>
> I referred to this statement as the "Josephson conjecture" in [3].  When I
> visited him in Cambridge last summer to discuss this statement, he did not
> object to his name being used in this manner.
>
>
> (*6*)  If the concepts of the "Linguistic Return" in biology and
> the Josephson conjecture  in physics prove to be correct in the coming
> decades and centuries, it may be possible to conclude that *philosophy*,
> *biology, *and *physics* are finally united/integrated in the framework
> of semiotics viewed as a generalized linguistics.
>
>
> All the best.
>
>
> Sung
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>   [1] Ji, S. (2012).  The Zeldovich-Shakhnovich and MTLC Models of
> Evolution <http://www.conformon.net/?attachment_id=1112>: From Sequences
> to Species.  In: Molecular Theory of the Living Cell: concepts, Molecular
> Mechanisms, and Biomedical Applications.  Sprinter, New York.  Pp. 509-519.
> PDF at http://www.conformon.net/model-of-evolution/
>    [2] Ji, S. (2012).  The Isomorphism between Cell and Human Languages: The
> Cell Language Theory <http://www.conformon.net/?attachment_id=1098>. In: *Molecular
> Theory of the Living Cell: Concepts, Molecular Mechanisms, and Biomedical
> Applications.*  Springer, New York.  Section  6.1.2, pp. 164-168. PDF at
> http://www.conformon.net/cell_language_theory_pp_164_168/|
>    [3] Ji, S. (2017).  The Cell Language Theory: Connecting Mind and
> Matter.  World Scientific Publishers, New Jersey.
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
> *From:* Fis <fis-bounces at listas.unizar.es> on behalf of PEDRO CLEMENTE
> MARIJUAN FERNANDEZ <pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es>
> *Sent:* Friday, January 5, 2018 8:39 AM
> *To:* JOHN TORDAY; fis at listas.unizar.es
> *Subject:* Re: [Fis] New Year Lecture
>
> head>
>
> Dear John and FIS Colleagues,
>
> Many thanks for this opening text of the NY Lecture. Indeed
> you have presented us an intricate panorama on one of the most obscure
> scientific problems of our time: the central theory of biology. As you say,
> we find with astonishment that there is literally no cell biology in
> evolution theory. And I would ad that there is no "information biology"
> either. A central theory becomes sort of a big Hall, where plenty of
> disciplinary corridors converge and later criss-cross among themselves.
> Darwinian theory is not that common hall for the really big, big science
> domain of biology. What are or where are the elements to rebuild the common
> Hall of the biological domain? I quote from your opening text:
>
> *"It is as if the unicellular state delegates its progeny to interact with
> the environment as agents, collecting data to inform the recapitulating
> unicell of ecological changes that are occurring. Through the acquisition
> and filtering of epigenetic marks via meiosis, fertilization, and
> embryogenesis, even on into adulthood, where the endocrine system dictates
> the length and depth of the stages of the life cycle, now known to be under
> epigenetic control, the unicell remains in effective synchrony with
> environmental changes."*
>
> It is really brilliant: a heads up reversal perspective. I think out of
> these ideas there are plenty of disciplinary excursions to make. One is
> "informational", another "topological". Putting together two different
> algorithmic descriptions and making them to build a torus (i.e., gastrula")
> as a universal departure for multicellularity also reminds the ideas of
> Stuart Pivart ("Omnia Ex Torus") about the primordials of multicellularity
> and the role of mechanical forces in the patterning of developmental
> processes.
>
> Echoing the ideas discussed in the Royal Society meeting (November 2016),
> there is a pretty long list of elements to take into account together with
> epigenetic inheritance (symbiogenesis, viruses and mobile elements,
> multilevel selection, niche construction, genomic evolution...). As I have
> suggested above, essential informational ideas are missing too, and this
> absence of the informational perspective in the ongoing evo discussions is
> not a good thing.
>
> i any case, it is such a great theme to ponder...
>
> Best wishes to all
>
> --Pedro
>
>
>
>   On Wed, 3 Jan 2018 07:15:43 -0800 JOHN TORDAY wrote:
> blockquote>
>
> Dear FIS Colleagues, I have attached my New Year Lecture at the invitation
> of Professor Pedro Clemente Marijuan Fernandez. The content relates a novel
> perspective on the mechanism of evolution from a cellular-molecular
> vantage-point. I welcome any and all comments and criticisms in the spirit
> of sharing ideas openly and constructively. Best Wishes,
>
>
>
> John S. Torday PhD
>
> Professor
>
> Evolutionary Medicine
>
> UCLA
> /div>
>
>
>
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>
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