[Fis] Summing up: New Year Lecture

Pedro C. Marijuan pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es
Wed Jan 24 14:41:40 CET 2018


Dear John and FIS colleagues,

It was nice hearing your response. For technical reasons of the server, 
_attachments are unwelcome_ (and often directly rejected). Send please a 
web address where interested people can download your document. Also, it 
is better if you send directly your response to FIS list 
(_*fis at listas.unizar.es*_). About your content, I see a couple of 
problems introducing "consciousness" at the cellular/molecular level. 
For this term has a very definite meaning in the /ad hoc/ research that 
is taken place during last decades. Conflating it with basic cellular 
processes may not be necessary, given that other terms (more realistic 
ones?) are available. For instance, I referred to self-referential 
cognition. In any case, I agree that classical autopoiesis  falls too 
short of what is needed... Besides, about the cosmological relationship 
with fundamental physics, is it a convenient step? Does it introduce a 
premature closure in the bio-informational thinking process?

Best--Pedro

El 22/01/2018 a las 16:02, JOHN TORDAY escribió:
> Dear FISers, I greatly appreciate Pedro's comments regarding my New 
> Year Lecture. I fully agree with his comment " That life's physiology 
> is based on the conjunction of a few principles: neguentropy, 
> chemiosmosis, and homeostasis-homeorhesis" applies to non-living 
> states too. I did not intend to make that statement exclusive, and if 
> it sounded like that Pedro's clarification is important. In fact have 
> just published a paper entitled "Quantum Mechanics Predicts 
> Evolutionary Biology" which is predicated on the hypothesis that 
> self-referential self-organization is the result of 
> the Singularity/Big Bang, Newton's Third Law of Thermodynamics that 
> every action has an equal and opposite reaction. That idea would apply 
> to both evolutionary biology and to balanced chemical reactions alike. 
> As for the question of the emergence of self-referential consciousness 
> 'right at the beginning', I am in favor of that concept, as I have 
> expressed it in a recent paper, entitled "From Cholesterol to 
> Consciousness" (see attached) so I look forward to reading your 
> comments about that idea as well, since it has the potential to fully 
> integrate physics and biology in my humble opinion.
>
> On Mon, Jan 22, 2018 at 4:01 AM, Pedro C. Marijuan 
> <pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es <mailto:pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es>> wrote:
>
>     Dear FISers,
>
>     Going to the extreme, I think this year opening lecture can be
>     summarized in three contentious points.
>
>     1. That life's physiology is based on the conjunction of a few
>     principles: neguentropy, chemiosmosis, and homeostasis-homeorhesis.
>
>     2. That communication (cell signaling) is an essential factor in
>     the multicellular evolution towards complexity.
>
>     3. That epigenetic inheritance and the obligate recursion to the
>     unicellular state become the basis of a new evolutionary theory.
>
>     I disagree with point 1, as I think some nonliving states could
>     also be characterized by those principles (eg, chemical
>     cycles/hypercycles in marine vents, and other outcomes derived
>     from "energy flows"); besides, some previous "info stuff" has to
>     be in place. Then I completely agree with point 2, for signaling
>     is not just another characteristic of the cell, it is "the"
>     eukaryotic trait par excellence.  And I am curious on how point 3
>     could be further substantiated... In this respect I recommend the
>     two papers that Bill sent to the list a few weeks ago. Do we need
>     to postulate the emergence of a form of "self-referential
>     cognition" right at the beginning?
>     Perhaps!
>
>     All the best--Pedro
>
>
>
>     El 09/01/2018 a las 19:05, Bill escribió:
>>     Dear Pedro and Colleagues,
>>
>>     I have been following the thread of comments with great interest,
>>     all of  which have all been occasioned by John Torday's profound
>>     insights about the nature of evolutionary development in light of
>>     the importance of cell-cell signaling and molecular biology. 
>>     From the comments, it is clear that there is a strong impulse to
>>     seek a means of integrating the role of symbiogenesis, viruses
>>     and mobile elements, multilevel selection, niche construction,
>>     genomic plasticity into a common narrative with an informational
>>     perspective at its foundation.
>>         In the spirit of that line of discussion, I am offering two
>>     links that discuss evolution as an biologic information
>>     management system. Some of this work shares direct commonality
>>     with John's, since he and I are frequent collaborators.
>>
>>     http://www.mdpi.com/2079-7737/5/2/21/htm
>>     <http://www.mdpi.com/2079-7737/5/2/21/htm>
>>
>>     https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S007961071730233X
>>     <https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S007961071730233X>
>>
>>     Both of these articles can be considered as complementary to
>>     Pedro's very fine article, 'How prokaryotes ‘encode’ their
>>     environment: Systemic tools for organizing the information flow',
>>     which is in BioSystems.
>>
>>     I am grateful to John for inviting me to participate in the forum
>>     and to Pedro for encouraging me to share these manuscripts.
>>
>>     Best regards,
>>     Bill
>>
>>     William B. Miller, Jr., M.D.
>>     602-463-5236 <tel:%28602%29%20463-5236>
>>     wbmiller1 at cox.net <mailto:wbmiller1 at cox.net>
>
>     -- 
>     -------------------------------------------------
>     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 0
>     50009 Zaragoza, Spain
>     Tfno.+34 976 71 3526 <tel:+34%20976%2071%2035%2026>  (& 6818)
>     pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es <mailto:pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es>
>     http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/
>     <http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/>
>     -------------------------------------------------
>
>     _______________________________________________ Fis mailing list
>     Fis at listas.unizar.es <mailto:Fis at listas.unizar.es>
>     http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
>     <http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis> 
>
-- 
-------------------------------------------------
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 0
50009 Zaragoza, Spain
Tfno. +34 976 71 3526 (& 6818)
pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es
http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/
-------------------------------------------------
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listas.unizar.es/pipermail/fis/attachments/20180124/e2384e39/attachment.html>


More information about the Fis mailing list