[Fis] An Unbeatable Tradition?

[Dr. Plamen L. Simeonov]

Dear Stu and Pedro,

Thank you for this reinforcement on the essence of life focus. I also
include Kalevi and Don in my response while trying to better structure my
thoughts, which is easier for me offline than at the video conference
we had some days ago. I am not a skilled stage artist to tell what's on
my mind within a limited time, which is a stressful experience for me, even
if I know most of you. In short, the truth we search for is bigger than we
can ever suppose through our senses, thoughts and devices, and it will
always remain so. This is not news, but I will address some of the
contradictions that Stu identified from my perspective.

I will begin with the critics of Newton. To me, his third law always
appeared to have psychological foundations rather than physical ones. (At
that time psychology was unknown however, so people spoke of soul and
spirit which were known to them at least since Pythagoras, Plato.) How did
he come to it? Empirically like Galileo, or through Gedankenexperiments
like Einstein? I say - the second way, which was possibly a "spiritual
enlightenment" - a flash of light/insight that came from above (or the gut
below - never mind). So was his law of gravitation too. Are we afraid to
tell this? There was no deduction using formulas in both laws, and many
others perhaps. They were first "felt", and then logically derived.
Deduction, induction and abduction came later, when the pre-selection was
already done. The Newtonian laws were either experienced by him (and many
others perhaps, but they did not pay attention to them) or "given" to him
like Moses got his stone tables from the Lord. I'll stop here to not
provoke further speculations in the wrong direction. I am simply providing
the argument that physics was not born mathematical. It became mathematical
a posteriori, and in parallel with developing mathematics, e.g.
differential and integral calculus. By the way, until the mid XIX century
there was no difference between physics and mathematics. It was just one
and the same field.  So, there are many illusions/assumptions we still deal
with today. How can we get rid of them or do we need to (Kalevi, Arran and
Don)? Whether we like it or not, the roots of all science and math are
mystic. They are in magic and alchemy. Can you deny your parents? What has
led to this schizophrenia of mid-body split? Splitting things must make
sense. R for instance, as this happened to Osiris, Orpheus and Jesus.
Sooner or later we find what we search for. This is a law. Hunter - bow -
arrow - pray - food. Focus first. That's what all science and engineering
are about. All the time. We are reductionists by definition - whether we
like it or not - in order to be effective. To some extent at least.
Boundary condition. We are also opportunistic - in order to survive. So are
all living things, even the brainless ones. Mind and consciousness came
later. Or maybe they came first, but they were not ours. So, my point here
is about shared foci and conventions which lead to food, tribes-empires and
theorems. But this is only one sort of reality, which is not physical,
biological or social. It is just the same ordered and explainable world (of
how we like it), in which gods and goddesses were replaced by impersonal
and genderless natural forces, laws and formulas, but all this remains a
manifestation of the same (experienced) One and All without division,
computers and bifurcation, Kalevi's paradox of simultaneous presence and
non-presence that is supposed to move life, but I say - also non-live (e.g.
galaxies and stars), so familiar to sages and adepts from all over the
world for thousands of years - note, without the need of organized
religions, ideologis and broadcast networks. Why do we self-censure and
deny all this as if it did not exist and still continues to exist? What are
we afraid of? Therefore I am not so happy with the simplified distinction
based on mathematization between living and nonliving matter. The problems
are just the same. Can we deduce or predict the evolution of the universe?
No, in the long run - not. This is what the latest images of the James Webb
telescope tell us. It is just a question of scale. Time scale and space
scale. We can determine and predict things only within our small
epistemological focus, the circle or sphere of Plato with the floating
boundary of knowledge where the signs emerge. But signs and meaning need to
always have a purpose. Energy, food, reproduction, recycling. A
continuation of self-maintaining processes, autocatalytic sets on multiple
planes, where we always miss something. And here is where Chaos,
Chance/Possibility and Free Will come into play.

But recently, particularly with the advance of the multiple inducted,
deducted and abducted crises, resets and transitions (COVID-19, climate
change, scarcity of resources, etc.), and especially with the AI revolution
which almost attained a religious dimension, I read a number of empirical
research papers suggesting that there is indeed no free will, s. references
elsewhere on the internet since 2020. We have to surrender to the idea, --
recall just an IDEA, like the one of ZERO and ONE, -- that we have limited
options and chances to evolve and progress and need someone to redesign and
command us to not get lost in this big universe. Sounds familiar?  So,
let's throw all the philosophers and all the history through the window and
start anew. Do a reset, to make a better Humanity.  Wow!  What if all that
is really true? Could it be true? Yes, it could be. And also, it could not!
Kaleve - here is your presence and non-presence of the paradox of life. It
can be both, because it is The One. Depending on the focus you put that can
be free, but also directed, if you allow this. Does not a magician wish to
mesmerize our minds to focus on just this one IDEA of being an obsolete and
replaceable being? The Internet of Things?

It is the idea of distinction that could become true, *a distinction, if
there could be a distinction* (Lou Kauffman) and indeed *makes the
distinction* (Gregory Bateson), i.e. if we all focus on and
vibrate/resonate on it as such. Here is the domain where *science* (social
psychology) meets *religion.* But I understand and use the latter term in
its original Latin meaning * (re-ligere), reconnect and bind together (to
(re)make the One). *And here comes the third Thing and mystic law I wish to
point to in this discussion about science and life, because there are not
many who dare to tell it, but I'll take the risk to sound incredible. What
if everything that we imagine and put enough force/energy on it can become
true? A recipe for magic, or maybe science and mathematics too? Before
speaking of consciousness and mind, how about rethinking (the mystic power
of) thoughts, words, spells and prayers, much older than science itself?

*"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word
was God." (John, 1:1)  *

Stu, before this NY session I sent you two papers:

1. "Contingency, repeatability, and predictability in the evolution of a
prokaryotic pangenome" by Alan Beavan et al., 2023 in PNAS, stating that
evolution is not that arbitrary as we think of it,


2. "Cause of Cambrian Explosion - Terrestrial or Cosmic?" by Ed Steele et
al, .in PBMB, 2018, stating that evolution may have been induced and
accelerated from space.


I made the link to Genesis and the entire human idea heritage, long before
mathematics and science emerged, and asked you what you think about all
this from your perspective with your recent papers with Andrea. And here is
where Kalevi's simultaneous paradoxical being and nonbeing comes again.
Recursions, Lou?

We have not spoken of vibrations, thoughts and forms yet, recall the paper
of Ralph Abraham I have distributed in the biosemiotics circle:
https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.academia.edu/17229104/Vibrations_and_Forms__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!WMpNrKs9RNhxQ_kS_Yq9SAQOZFR93XaW3pdO-JcyQoxJmvDLIQzAgXVYjzdqFO6O6mI3O_StzTfK_h4CfM5C_XARWvHX$ .

What if both science and nonscience, logic and legend, can share the same
phasespace and acquire isolated or superpositioned manifestations?

Let's move on and use our Free Will ;-)

Best,

Plamen


On Tue, Jan 23, 2024 at 4:07 AM Stuart Kauffman <stukauffman at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Bless you Pedro.
>
> Some not quite random comments:
>
> 1) Descartes got us started thinking about a “mind in a vat” wondering if
> it were being deceived. This mind never acts in the world, it only
> observes. Science is knowledge, not action,
> 2) living organisms are open non-equilibrium systems so we all must
> interact with the rest of the world, e.g. to eat, to sense food, avoid
> poison That is all life must ACT or Do. My wife, Katherine Kauffman,
> rightly adds life must sense the world, then FIND and CARE, or Orient and
> Evaluate Good or Bad for me, then choose and act. Value enters here, she
> rightly says.
> 3) Essentially all British empiricism is about knowing the world, not
> acting in it.
> 4) The understanding of “mind” as “representing the world", also  all of
> AI, is latter day Descartes. There is no doing in the world. There is mere
> synthetics, no semantics. Again, Andrea and I have struggled as have
> others, Kalevi Kull and biosemiotics.
> 5) “Doing" in the world includes finding novel affordances that cannot be
> deduced. This is Orienting or FINDING. This is jury rigging,. How does that
> arise?
> …………….
>
> Please turn to Kauffman Roli "The Third Transition", and Kauffman Roli,
> “Is the emergence of life’…..”
>
> 1) It really is true that living entities are Kantian Wholes that achieve
> Catalytic Closure, Constraint Closure, and spatial Closure.
> 2) Therefore cells really do construct themselves. Cells to not deduce
> themselves.
> 3) It is really true that the reproduction of a cell has nothing to do
> with a *separable* set of Instructions that are carried out. See
> Aristotles 4 causes below where the s*eparate instructions* can be
> followed or carried out by *indefinitely many sufficient but not
> necessary * means.
> 4) In evolution, leave MIND out of this for now, it is really true that
> evolving organisms create ever novel adaptions  by creating their ever-
> novel adjacent Possibles and seize SOME of these by heritable variation and
> genetic drift.
> 5) It is really true that these do constitute newly POSSIBLE ways to
> co-exist.
> 6) This IS, in one sense, *the creation of new possibilities in the
> universe*. ii. The new possibilities are *NEW information*.  iii This new
> information did *not require *MIND or consciousness. Think of the
> evolution of the heart or loop of Henle in the kidneys.
> 7) The Newtonian Paradigm requires a fixed phase space where no new
> possibilities can come to exist. So does Boltzmann and so does Shannon.
> This is profoundly inadequate - Andrea Roli and I wrote “The world is not a
> theorem.” There is no *creation *of information in all of physics.
>
> 1) What about MIND, Free Will, Consciousness? Well….
> 2) Think about Aristotle’s Four Causes: Formal, Efficient, Material, Final.
> 3) E.g., the blueprint is the *formal cause*. The *indefinite diversity*
> of different materials, bricks, wood, stones, iron, that are used to
> construct the house are the *material cause*. But no one of this set of
> *sufficient* material causes is also NECESSARY. (Given a function, it can
> be realized in idenfintely many ways. The house is build via *Efficient
> cause, *again indefinite in variety, electric tools, sharp sticks. Each
> suffienct but not necessary. *Final cause,* “I sure want a house. We seem
> to be talking about a science of* propagating sufficient but not
> necessary conditions. *This is neither Classical nor Quantum Physics. (So
> also the evolution of morphologies without mind above.).
> 4) Given MIND,  Free Will, Consciousness and Responsible Choice
> Aristotle’s four cases make sense. They do NOT make sense for the Cell
> constructing itself. So what is going on?
> 5) Mind, Responblible Free Will and Choice among more than one
> ontologically real possibilities makes sense and seems to be one clear
> sense of information that is different from the cell constructing itself.
> In both cases there is something about *alternative sufficient but not
> necessary conditions.* Both can be new in the universe information, ie a
> new plurality of possibles and information guides choice among them. We do
> Jury rig. Inventions are novel over the prior art. Jury rigging is not
> deductive, nor is invention.
>
> So somehow there seem to be more than one way new in the universe
> possibilities can come to exist and unleash, or better, enable the next
> actuals and possibles.
>
> Pedro, there is a lot once beyond the Newtonian Paradigm and strong
> reductionism. The world really is not (only) a theorem.
>
> But sometimes it is a theorem eg Classical and Quantum Physics.  Odd.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Stu
>
>
> On Jan 22, 2024, at 9:32 AM, Pedro C. Marijuán <pedroc.marijuan at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> Dear All,
>
> While watching the evolution of our discussions in this NY Lecture focused
> on the "Third Transition" I have the impression that physics becomes an
> inexorable attractor, the necessary end of any civilized discussion on
> information. Precisely, the initial arguments were about living organisms
> creating ever new ways of "getting to exist", adaptively constructing
> new-in-the-universe possibilities--with their exploration of the
> adjacent-possible going outside of the Newtonian paradigm... Fine, very
> fine.
>
> My contention is that in the last decades we have heard many times that
> rejection of the Newtonian but seemingly we cannot advance in the
> development of truly independent views, post-Newtonian and non-physicalist
> anchored (about information). Not aspiring to any universality about the
> conceptions of this independent informational exploration of life--at least
> shouldn't it be attempted?? Once some basics could be cohered and decently
> developed, it might provide some interesting complementarity with the
> endless conundrums on its and bits by physicist and computerist colleagues.
> Michael Conrad (who in the 70s and 80s was already arguing about the
> unpicturability of enzyme function) put an interesting comment: *"When we
> look at a biological system we are looking at the face of the underlying
> physics of the universe"* (in BioSystems, 38, 1996, p.108). Quite
> enigmatic. So, an unexpected convergence might be found finally--but not
> mandating it at the very beginning.
>
> As I briefly argued days ago, the adjacent possible may be considered in a
> variety of time-scales. The infamous "What is it to be done?" (in Spanish,
> the concise "Qué hacer?" ) may be repeated for cells, for organisms, for
> humans, for societies... Or in other more frivolous words, "Qué será,
> será... the future's not ours to see". No wonder that all these kinds of
> informational creatures are endlessly looking for "signals", to march
> towards truly adaptive adjacent possibles. Our new knowledge on Prokaryotic
> signaling systems, on how they are intertwined with the advancement of the
> life cycle, points exactly in that direction: exploring the
> external/internal environment so to self-orient towards adaptive outcomes.
> They were the First Ones. Our own nervous system continuously scans the
> external and the internal, and mixes up with an elaborate arrangement of
> emotional resources and socialization cues so to do more or less the same,
> achieving viable life courses, etc.etc. Our own societies are involved in
> dire prospects and strange policy navigation towards the adjacent--what?
> Possible? Impossible? Disastrous? Inevitable?
>
> The lack of an informational cosmovision is patent. It was already evident
> for Ortega y Gasset in the 1930s: *"The confusion on the terrible public
> conflicts of the present stems **in good part **from the incongruence
> between the perfection of our ideas on physical phenomena and the painful
> back-warded state of the 'moral sciences'--**about that, **both the
> politician and the physicist are at the very height of the barber" *(in
> Revolt of the Masses, 1930s).
>
> Before putting an end, I have found pretty interesting (maybe converging)
> recent comments on logics by Joseph, Eric, Plamen... Unfortunately the
> "reality" of the life cycle is always maintained perfectly invisible (or
> partially entered via some sanitized surrogates).
>
> Thanking your attention,
>
> Best --Pedro
>
>
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