<html><head></head><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:HelveticaNeue, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, Lucida Grande, sans-serif;font-size:16px"><div>Very nice, dear Pedro,</div><div>Otto<br></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1488031619878_88687"><span></span></div><div class="qtdSeparateBR"><br><br></div><div class="yahoo_quoted" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1488031619878_88691" style="display: block;"> <div style="font-family: HelveticaNeue, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, Lucida Grande, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1488031619878_88690"> <div style="font-family: HelveticaNeue, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, Lucida Grande, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1488031619878_88689"> <div dir="ltr"> <font size="2" face="Arial"> <hr size="1"> <b><span style="font-weight:bold;">From:</span></b> Pedro C. Marijuan <pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es><br> <b><span style="font-weight: bold;">To:</span></b> 'fis' <fis@listas.unizar.es> <br> <b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Sent:</span></b> Monday, February 27, 2017 5:39 PM<br> <b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Subject:</span></b> Re: [Fis] WHY WE ARE HERE? ...AN UNPLEASANT ANSWER?!<br> </font> </div> <div class="y_msg_container" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1488031619878_88688"><br><div id="yiv1578508070"><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1488031619878_88892">
<div class="yiv1578508070moz-cite-prefix" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1488031619878_88891">Dear Arturo and colleagues,<br clear="none">
<br clear="none">
Very interesting piece, indeed. It has strongly reminded me
Teilhard de Chardin's views on the Omega Point of cosmic maximal
complexity--although this was for him not a pessimistic outcome
but a brilliant and up-beating prospect for all humankind. His
eclectic views were bitterly rejected by most of the scientific
and religious establishment of his time (no wonder that
particularly by evolutionary biologists); but the arrival of
Internet, as well as today's multi-level selection approaches, and
the works of some quantum information scientists (Tipler, Deutsch)
have vindicated his brave, Quixotic figure. Late Popes of the
Catholic Church (Benedict XVI) have also vindicated his whole
intellectual legacy.<br clear="none">
<br clear="none">
I have some minor problems with the present essay, but
substituting some of the excessively teleological "purposive"
terms about life (perhaps all of them?), and using instead a more
austere description of organizational facts.... who knows! If life
contains a unitary principle, I think it is more subtle, and
cannot be expressed in unilateral physical terms such as maximum
entropy production, symmetry restoration, free energy
maximization, etc. Well, symmetry and information have more clout
and hidden complexity, so I express not a rejection but some
uneasiness regarding too direct "orthogenetic" views on biological
and social evolution. <br clear="none">
<br clear="none">
My further suggestion --could it be a good idea that you change
Monod's style "unpleasantness" (Oh, we the accidental discover
that we are alone in the cosmos!) and point towards some of
Teilhard's and Vernadsky's noosphere and the Omega Point? You
would have several curious items to choose...<br clear="none">
<br clear="none">
More opinions??<br clear="none">
<br clear="none">
Best wishes to all--Pedro <br clear="none">
<div class="yiv1578508070yqt9436858604" id="yiv1578508070yqtfd38618"><br clear="none">
El 24/02/2017 a las 16:24, <a rel="nofollow" shape="rect" class="yiv1578508070moz-txt-link-abbreviated" ymailto="mailto:tozziarturo@libero.it" target="_blank" href="mailto:tozziarturo@libero.it">tozziarturo@libero.it</a> escribió:<br clear="none">
</div></div><div class="yiv1578508070yqt9436858604" id="yiv1578508070yqtfd50457">
<blockquote type="cite">
</blockquote></div></div><div class="yiv1578508070yqt9436858604" id="yiv1578508070yqtfd02467"></div><div><div><div class="yiv1578508070yqt9436858604" id="yiv1578508070yqtfd38478">
<div class="yiv1578508070MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;">Dear FISers, </span></div>
<div class="yiv1578508070MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;">hi! </span></div>
<div class="yiv1578508070MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;">A possible novel discussion (if you
like it, of course!): </span></div>
<div class="yiv1578508070MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;"><br clear="none">
</span></div>
<div class="yiv1578508070MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><font color="#000000" face="Times New Roman, serif"><span style="font-size:13.3333px;"><b>A SYMMETRY-BASED ACCOUNT
OF LIFE AND EVOLUTION</b></span></font><br clear="none">
</div>
<div class="yiv1578508070MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;">After the Big Bang, a gradual
increase in
thermodynamic entropy is occurring in our Universe
(Ellwanger, 2012). Because of the relationships between
entropy
and symmetries (</span><span style="font-size:9.0pt;">Roldán et al., 2014</span><span style="font-size:10.0pt;">),
the
number of cosmic symmetries, the highest possible at the
very start, is declining
as time passes. Here the evolution of
living beings comes into play. Life is a
space-limited increase of energy and complexity, and
therefore of
symmetries. The evolution proceeds
towards more complex systems (Chaisson, 2010), until more
advanced forms of
life able to artificially increase the symmetries of the
world. Indeed, the human brains’ cognitive abilities
not just think objects and events more complex than the
physical ones existing
in Nature, but build highly symmetric crafts too. For
example, human beings can watch a rough
stone, imagine an amygdala and build it from the same stone.
Humankind is able, through its ability to manipulate
tools and technology, to produce objects (and ideas, i.e.,
equations) with complexity
levels higher than the objects and systems encompassed in
the pre-existing
physical world. Therefore, human beings
are naturally built by evolution in order to increase the
number of environmental
symmetries. This is in touch with recent
claims, suggesting that the brain is equipped with a number
of functional and anatomical
dimensions higher than the 3D environment (Peters et al.,
2017). Intentionality, typical of the living beings
and in particular of the human mind, may be seen as a
mechanism able to
increase symmetries. As Dante Alighieri
stated (<i>Hell,</i> <i>XXVI, 118-120</i>), “y<i>ou were
not
made to live as brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge</i>”.
</span></div>
<div class="yiv1578508070MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;">In touch with Spencer’s (1860) and
Tyler’s (1881)
claims, it looks like evolutionary mechanisms tend to
achieve increases in environmental
complexity, and therefore symmetries (Tozzi and Peters,
2017). Life is produced in our Universe in order to
restore the initial lost symmetries. At
the beginning of life, increases in symmetries are just
local, e.g., they are
related to the environmental niches where the living beings
are placed. However, in long timescales, they might be
extended to the whole Universe. For
example, Homo sapiens, in just 250.000 years, has been able
to build the Large Hadron
Collider, where artificial physical processes make an effort
to approximate the
initial symmetric state of the Universe.
Therefore, life is a sort of gauge field (Sengupta et al.,
2016), e.g.,
a combination of forces and fields that try to
counterbalance and restore, in
very long timescales, the original cosmic symmetries, lost
after the Big Bang. Due to physical issues, the
“homeostatic” cosmic
gauge field must be continuous, e.g., life must stand,
proliferate and increase
in complexity over very long timescales.
This is the reason why every living being has an innate
tendency towards
self-preservation and proliferation.
With the death, continuity is broken. This talks in favor of
intelligent
life scattered everywhere in the Universe: if a few species
get extinct, others
might continue to proliferate and evolve in remote planets,
in order to pursue
the goal of the final symmetric restoration. In touch with
long timescales’ requirements,
it must be kept into account that life has been set up after
a long gestation:
a childbearing which encompasses the cosmic birth of
fermions, then atoms, then
stars able to produce the more sophisticated matter (metals)
required for
molecular life. </span><span style="font-size:10.0pt;"></span></div>
<div class="yiv1578508070MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;">A symmetry-based framework gives
rise to two opposite
feelings, by our standpoint of human beings.
On one side, we achieve the final answer to long-standing
questions: “<i>why are we here?</i>”, “<i>Why does the
evolution act in such a way?</i>”, an answer that reliefs
our most important concerns and gives us a <i>sense</i>;
on the other side, however, this framework does not give us
any hope: we are
just micro-systems programmed in order to contribute to
restore a partially
“broken” macro-system. And, in case we
succeed in restoring, through our mathematical abstract
thoughts and
craftsmanship, the initial symmetries, we are nevertheless
doomed to die:
indeed, the environment equipped with the starting
symmetries does not allow
the presence of life.</span></div>
<div class="yiv1578508070MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;"> </span></div>
<div class="yiv1578508070MsoNormalCxSpLast" style="text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><b><span style="font-size:10.0pt;">REFERENCES</span></b></div>
<div class="yiv1578508070MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="margin-bottom:6.0pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;">1)<span style="font-stretch:normal;font-size:7pt;line-height:normal;">
</span></span><span style="font-size:10.0pt;">Chaisson EJ. 2010.
Energy Rate Density as a Complexity Metric and Evolutionary
Driver. Complexity, v 16, p 27, 2011; DOI:
10.1002/cplx.20323.</span></div>
<div class="yiv1578508070MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;">2)<span style="font-stretch:normal;font-size:7pt;line-height:normal;">
</span></span><span style="font-size:10.0pt;">Ellwanger U.
2012. From the Universe to the
Elementary Particles. A First
Introduction to Cosmology and the Fundamental Interactions.
Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg. ISBN 978-3-642-24374-5.</span></div>
<div class="yiv1578508070MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;">3)<span style="font-stretch:normal;font-size:7pt;line-height:normal;">
</span></span><span style="font-size:10.0pt;">Peters JF, Ramanna S, Tozzi A, Inan
E. 2017.
Frontiers Hum Neurosci.
BOLD-independent computational entropy assesses functional
donut-like
structures in brain fMRI image. doi:
10.3389/fnhum.2017.00038. </span></div>
<div class="yiv1578508070MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;">4)<span style="font-stretch:normal;font-size:7pt;line-height:normal;">
</span></span><span style="font-size:10.0pt;">Sengupta B, Tozzi A, Coray GK,
Douglas PK, Friston KJ.
2016. Towards a Neuronal Gauge
Theory. PLOS Biology 14 (3): e1002400.
doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1002400.</span></div>
<div class="yiv1578508070MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;">5)<span style="font-stretch:normal;font-size:7pt;line-height:normal;"> </span></span><span style="font-size:10.0pt;">Spencer H.
1860. System of Synthetic
Philosophy. </span></div>
<div class="yiv1578508070MsoListParagraph" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:13.0pt;"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;">6)<span style="font-stretch:normal;font-size:7pt;line-height:normal;">
</span></span><span style="font-size:10.0pt;" lang="IT">Roldán
E, Martínez IA, Parrondo JMR, Petrov
D. 2014. </span><span style="font-size:10.0pt;">Universal
features in the energetics of symmetry breaking. <i>Nat.
Phys. 10</i>, 457–461.</span></div>
<div class="yiv1578508070MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;">7)<span style="font-stretch:normal;font-size:7pt;line-height:normal;">
</span></span><span style="font-size:10.0pt;">Tozzi A, Peters JF. 2017.
Towards Topological Mechanisms Underlying Experience
Acquisition and
Transmission in the Human Brain. J.F.
Integr. psych. behav.
doi:10.1007/s12124-017-9380-z</span></div>
<div class="yiv1578508070MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;">8)<span style="font-stretch:normal;font-size:7pt;line-height:normal;"> </span></span><span style="font-size:10.0pt;">Tyler EB. 1881.
Anthropology: an Introduction to the Study of Man and
Civilization. </span></div>
<div><br clear="none">
</div>
<div><br clear="none">
</div>
<div class="yiv1578508070MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0cm;text-align:justify;line-height:115%;"><span style="font-size:14px;line-height:normal;"><font face="courier new, monospace"><b>Arturo Tozzi</b></font></span></div>
<div class="yiv1578508070MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0cm;text-align:justify;line-height:115%;"><span style="line-height:115%;"><font face="courier new, monospace">AA Professor Physics, University North Texas</font></span></div>
<div class="yiv1578508070MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0cm;text-align:justify;line-height:115%;"><span style="font-size:14px;line-height:normal;"><font face="courier new, monospace">Pediatrician ASL
Na2Nord, Italy</font></span></div>
<div class="yiv1578508070MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0cm;text-align:justify;line-height:115%;"><span style="font-size:14px;line-height:normal;"><font face="courier new, monospace">Comput Intell
Lab, University Manitoba</font></span></div>
</div><div class="yiv1578508070MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0cm;text-align:justify;line-height:115%;"><font face="courier new, monospace"></font></div><div class="yiv1578508070yqt9436858604" id="yiv1578508070yqtfd04466"><font face="courier new, monospace"><a rel="nofollow" shape="rect" target="_blank" href="http://arturotozzi.webnode.it/" style="font-size:14px;color:rgb(5, 68, 126);line-height:normal;">http://arturotozzi.webnode.it/</a></font></div><font face="courier new, monospace"><span style="font-size:14px;line-height:normal;"> </span></font><br clear="none">
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<pre class="yiv1578508070moz-signature">--
-------------------------------------------------
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)
<a rel="nofollow" shape="rect" class="yiv1578508070moz-txt-link-abbreviated" ymailto="mailto:pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es" target="_blank" href="mailto:pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es">pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es</a>
<a rel="nofollow" shape="rect" class="yiv1578508070moz-txt-link-freetext" target="_blank" href="http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/">http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/</a><div class="yiv1578508070yqt9436858604" id="yiv1578508070yqtfd24541">
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