[Fis] "express matter and energy in terms of information"

[Carlos Gershenson]

Dear all,

Perhaps we are confusing epistemology and ontology (model and the modeled). When I say that we can describe phenomena in terms of information, I am speaking at an epistemological level. 

Alex wrote:
> P.S. Since the world, particularly that of living forms, is 
> extensively populated by critical points / instabilities,
> the time evolution of the world cannot be fully described
> by digital information.

The world (ontology) cannot be fully described (epistemology) anyhow. Our descriptions are always finite, the world is always infinite (you can always describe more aspects of it). The question is which limited description will be more useful for a given purpose. And the topic of this month is precisely trying to come up with a description useful for describing living systems. And perhaps this will be useful also for intelligence and complex systems in general.

Btw, physics and logics are just other sets of descriptions, but some confuse them with reality.

Last week I was speaking with Francis Heylighen (my PhD advisor), and he reminded me of his ontology of change, perhaps it would be worth taking a fresh look at it:
Heylighen, F. (2023). Relational agency: a new ontology for co-evolving systems. In P. Corning (Ed.), Evolution ‘On Purpose’: Teleonomy in Living Systems (pp. 79-104). (Vienna Series in Theoretical Biology). MIT Press. https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/14642.003.0008__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!V-2Fsh27GcsFiG2hPpavbq8eMzGNzszPv1EhJJZ4vcNAREMI9Jy-RuDjHVE-HE9wPLxjpWbTb2q0kWxTnoc$  

https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://cris.vub.be/ws/portalfiles/portal/79556854/Heylighen_RelationalAgency.pdf__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!V-2Fsh27GcsFiG2hPpavbq8eMzGNzszPv1EhJJZ4vcNAREMI9Jy-RuDjHVE-HE9wPLxjpWbTb2q08kI2LQ8$ 

Best wishes,
Carlos

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