[Fis] What is the (Information) Phenomenon? / ​Marijuán Navarro 2021 [ IMD ]

[Pedro C. Marijuán]

Dear All,

I am responding to Malcolm's interesting posting (offline, below) and to 
Jerry.

My contention is that "disciplines" and "pluridisciplines", at least in 
natural science, are not logical bodies or "sequences of formalisms", 
but say "paradigmatic" realizations. They contain a lot of experimental 
and theoretical findings, usually in many disconnected areas, but 
responding to some commonality of thinking inspired by some seminal 
piece of work. It is in this sense that I was referring to those 
"founding phenomena" below. They are very good pieces of experimental 
work both of them that have attracted many other related works.

With the above I also respond to Jerry, as I was insisting on the lack 
of that kind of seminal work in the biological-informational arena, a 
work capable of attracting attention, followers, funding, etc., so that 
later on people could say "yes, that's the bio-info kind of approach 
that was really started with this work". It is the realistic sense of 
"paradigms" as new foci for thought and action. The new information 
science paradigm recently proposed by our colleague Yixin Zhong could 
well be taken as an exemplar, tentative case.

Further, pointing that "None of these are /fundamental/ phenomena. They 
rest on other phenomena..." (by Malcolm, below) touches in my mind two 
keys. But first, let me state that the whole paragraph is quite rich and 
meaningful. My suggestion about biological info and the observer is that 
without a multitude of concrete evolutionary inventions, (that 
presumably revolve around signaling systems as privileged handlers of 
the information flow) there would be nothing, but a scum of  bacterian 
life in an isolated, barren planet.

Well, the first key about that short sentence is that it may sound like 
the outdated reductionism of past decades. Why should physics or 
mathematical physics be more fundamental? They also rest on other 
phenomena and assumptions (social, philosophical, mathematical, 
metaphysical, methodological). And these sciences are ostensibly 
provisional, always in the making (e.g., suddenly "dark matter" and 
"dark energy" appear from nothing and fill everything!). The past 
century was a show of new, changing fundamentalities (superstrings, q. 
gravities, cosmic expansion...). So I do not buy that supposed 
fundamentality (except in a restricted, comparative sense). 
Metaphorically the sciences are not monarchic but republican.

And the other key relates to the general interrelationships between 
sciences. John Dupré's work (1993) "The Disorder of Things: Metaphysical 
Foundations of the Disunity of Science" rightly points, in my opinion, 
to the directions in which a richer conception might be developed. Like 
in all collective endeavors of humans, there could be "importance", 
"dominance", "relevance", etc. but probably the most important term 
should be "knowledge recombination." One of the troubles for the 
sciences involved in planetary sustainability is not having developed an 
adequate philosophy of science yet.

And that was it. We are approaching the end of January... and of the NY 
Lecture.

All the best

--Pedro

PS. To Jerry repeated tests, and to those who may need checking about 
the diffusion of their messages, they always can go to our fis list 
archives at: _*http://listas.unizar.es/pipermail/fis/*_


El 23/01/2022 a las 3:38, Malcolm Dean escribió:
> Thanks Pedro,
>
> I applaud the valiant struggle of your recent paper 
> <https://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/22/21/11965>, having to cope with the 
> broad and messy legacy of the Bio-sciences.
>
> What you have listed is a sequence of formalisms, each depending on a 
> lower level. Chemistry, Molecular Physics, Natural Signals, 
> define/ biological/ phenomena. The whole "Information flow" is 
> connected with life cycles, multicellularity, and so on. These are all 
> specialized fields with their own terminologies. Secret sauces include 
> "life" and "consciousness."
>
> None of these are /fundamental/ phenomena. They rest on other 
> phenomena. Significantly, you base an important part of your argument 
> on the ideas of S. K. Lin [Ref. 31], who explores /broken symmetry/ in 
> Thermodynamics and Information.
>
> Bohr believed that to be a phenomenon, there must be an irreversible 
> act of amplification which carries an event to another level, where it 
> is recorded and interpreted. Wheeler, his thesis student, generalized 
> this insight in his Observer-Participator. /Distinction/ is the 
> fundamental phenomenon of Information processes (Bateson), and the 
> /Count-as-One/ is the core event (Leibniz, Badiou). Both comprise an 
> /interaction/.
>
> You relate "information flow" with the observation that "every 
> substance 'ingested' is first 'touched' or 'tasted.'" This to me is 
> the most important assertion of Vladimir Lerner's Information 
> Macrodynamic (IMD) formalism 
> <https://books.google.com/books?id=oI9hwgEACAAJ>. IMD relates to /all/ 
> Information processes. From the quantum to the cosmic, IMD shows that 
> natural  regularities (Kolmogorov) produce interactions which lead to 
> the emergence of hierarchical structures, intelligence, and 
> Observership. Each interaction "probes" the environment (action), 
> returning pieces of Information (re-action) which are then processed 
> as Hidden Information. In the biological realm, each cycle of touching 
> and tasting is a probe, forming an Information (IMD) process in 
> physical structure of the experiencing entity, the Observer-Participator.
>
> Best wishes for 2022,
>
> — Malcolm ]
>
> On Sat, Jan 22, 2022 at 11:34 AM Pedro C. Marijuán 
> <pedroc.marijuan at gmail.com <mailto:pedroc.marijuan at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     Thanks Malcolm.
>
>     *Bio-chemistry* was launched (say) after Whöler *inorganic
>     synthesis* of urea.
>     *Bio-physics* was launched after Meyerhof and Lohmann on ATP
>     phosphate-bond *energetics* (or more recently, Morowitz "energy
>     flow in the biosphere")
>     *Bio-information* was launched after... in my opinion after Ulrich
>     and Galperin recent works on prokaryotic (one-component)
>     *signaling systems*.
>
>     Why? We may finally ascertain the whole "information flow", that
>     *every substance "ingested" is first "touched" or "tasted"* by the
>     OCSs; and we may connect this with the life cycle advancement,
>     with multicellularity, etc.
>
>     So, that's the *defined biological phenomenon*. No more secret sauces!
>
>     Best--Pedro
>
>
>     El 21/01/2022 a las 2:45, Malcolm Dean escribió:
>>     Without a defined phenomenon, there will be little progress.
>>
>>     Often "Information" is used like a secret sauce.
>>
>>     Malcolm
>>
>>     ---------- Forwarded message ---------
>>     Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2022 19:55:48 +0100
>>     From: Pedro C. Mariju?n <pedroc.marijuan at gmail.com
>>     <mailto:pedroc.marijuan at gmail.com>>
>>     To: "'fis'" <fis at listas.unizar.es <mailto:fis at listas.unizar.es>>
>>     Subject: Re: [Fis] NEW YEAR LECTURE (Youri Timsit)
>>     Message-ID: <8fe0691f-6d5f-7abe-d882-f2c2ed885378 at gmail.com
>>     <mailto:8fe0691f-6d5f-7abe-d882-f2c2ed885378 at gmail.com>>
>>     Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"; Format="flowed"
>>
>>     Dear Youri and All,
>>
>>     Gojng back to the Lecture theme, one of the things that worries
>>     me is
>>     the biological disarray when having to deal with "the
>>     informational." I
>>     mean, when you work with the relational properties of these
>>     fascinating
>>     ribosomal proteins, apart of mathematical-statistical techniques and
>>     algorithms to make sense of their interactions and evolutionary
>>     co-adaptations, you have nothing else but to recur to the metaphor,
>>     "molecular brains", neural like", etc.? It is fine, as you do not
>>     have
>>     any consisting framework to refer to. It already happened to the
>>     proponents of "bacterial intelligence", also forced to the metaphor
>>     (Bray, Armitage...).
>>
>>     In my view, tools from maths, statistics, computer science, etc. are
>>     just that, tools. Ironically some of these tools themselves had
>>     biological origins (genetic algorithms, neural networks,
>>     perceptrons).
>>     So, my contention is that a new filed like bio-chemistry or
>>     bio-physics
>>     would be needed concerning the biological-informational themes, a
>>     bio-information discipline comparable to those just mentioned.
>>     According
>>     to several authors? (me included), the prokaryotic cell should be
>>     considered as the fundamental, basic unit of biological cognition.
>>     Thereafter, there would be different ways to characterize its
>>     informational processes, particularly along the "information flow"
>>     conceptualization... interested parties may go to the recent
>>     contribution of Jorge Navarro and mine:
>>     https://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/22/21/11965
>>     <https://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/22/21/11965> , it is in the
>>     special issue
>>     coordinated by Youri.? I also discuss that the from the
>>     informational
>>     thinking one could find the ways and means to renew the outdated
>>     Modern
>>     Synthesis.
>>
>>     Otherwise, without a clearer disciplinary framework, am afraid
>>     the new
>>     biology will be reduced to bioinformatics and experimental "omic"
>>     disciplines. Just another (advanced, "very advanced") technology.
>>
>>     Best wishes to All,
>>     --Pedro
>



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