[Fis] FW: New Year Lecture. Logic of Recursive Transductions

[Joseph Brenner]

Dear Mark, Dear FISers

 

Mark's term "logic of recursive transductions" cuts to the heart of the
current debate. If one objects that this is 'just' physics or biology, my
answer is that it is both logic and physics and biology, and that many
problems have come simply from our separation of them, and characterizing
them without including their dynamics as processes.

 

Energy is involved when I "go back over something", as I have with John
Torday's stimulating approach, in order to see what is in it that I must
take into account (and vice versa I hope).

 

At this point, I feel I need a 'refresher' on Loet Leydesdorff's important
distinction, with reference to information, between recursion and incursion.
Loet?

 

When one thinks outside the box, as Bob U. will have us do, the air may seem
a little thin, for a while. However, one can soon get acclimatized, with
some good will.

 

Cheers,

 

Joseph

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Fis [mailto:fis-bounces at listas.unizar.es] On Behalf Of Mark Johnson
Sent: mercredi, 10 janvier 2018 11:08
To: JOHN TORDAY
Cc: fis
Subject: Re: [Fis] New Year Lecture

 

Dear John,

 

Thank you very much for this - a great way to start the new year!

 

I'd like to ask about "communication" - it's a word which is

understood in many different ways, and in the context of cells, is

hard to imagine.

 

When you suggest that "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 seems

that this is not communication of 'signs' in the Peircean sense

supported by the biosemioticians (Hoffmeyer). But is it instead a

recursive set of transductions, much in the spirit of Bateson's

insight that:

 

"Formerly we thought of a hierarchy of taxa-individual, family line,

subspecies, species, etc.-as units of survival. We now see a different

hierarchy of units-gene-in-organism, organism-in environment,

ecosystem, etc. Ecology, in the widest sense, turns out to be the

study of the interaction and survival of ideas and programs (i.e.,

differences, complexes of differences, etc.) in circuits." (from his

paper "Pathologies of Epistemology" in Steps to an Ecology of Mind)

 

Recursive transduction like this is a common theme in cybernetics -

it's in Ashby's "Design for a Brain", Pask's conversation theory, and

in Beer's Viable System Model, where "horizon scanning" (an

anticipatory sub-system gathering data from the environment) is an

important part of the metasystem which maintains viability of the

organism (It's worth noting that Maturana and Varela's autopoietic

theory overlooks this).

 

"Communication" would then be much more like "conversation".

etymologically, "con-versare". "to turn together". dancing! Does this

fit?

 

A further point is to then ask whether a logic of evolutionary biology

is a logic of recursive transductions over history. The critical point

is what Joseph Brenner argued before Christmas in objecting to Peirce:

we struggle to express the specificity and basis for change in our

logic. Do we need a different kind of logic?

 

Best wishes and Happy new year,

 

Mark

 

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