<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:large">Beware of the cryptic Cartesianism of opposing informationalism to physicalism (as in "it from bit").</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:large">By accepting this framing, we risk falling for the old idealism vs materialism trap, just in a new form.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:large"><br></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Fri, Jan 5, 2024 at 3:59 AM Pedro C. Marijuán <<a href="mailto:pedroc.marijuan@gmail.com">pedroc.marijuan@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div>
<div>Dear Stuart and FIS colleagues,</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>We are honored that you impart the FIS
New Year Lecture this time. In this list, quite a few members
share the impression that we are involved in a historical
transition in science. Maybe, as you and Andrea Roli state, it
could be the Third Great Transition. That it revolves around
putting into question the predominance of physicalist views was
coincidentally discussed in a previous discussion session, when
two pioneers of AI research (Yixin Zhong from China and Eric
Werner from Oxford) were arguing for a paradigm change away for
physicalism. Now you are providing strong arguments from the
biological self-construction and evolutionary points of view. An
important point is the argument on Kantian wholes, from the
closure of auto-catalitic sets. It could also be considered as the
organizational reliance on "cycles". In biological systems there
is a towering presence of cycles: from elementary reaction cycles,
to enzyme work-cycles, to regional reaction cycles, gene
expression cycles (your Boolean networks!!), to genetic
macro-cycles... to the cell's entire life cycle. And an even
larger story could be told about cycles in complex organisms... <br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>To put the argument in a nutshell: bye
to physicalism (as a fundamental meta-scientific vision). Yes, but
what would substitute for it?</div>
<div>I dare say "informationalism". You
mention the biosphere and the global economy, and even our
cultures. Aren't all them based on the circulation of "information
flows" (in vastly different forms, of course)??</div>
<div>Let us think, for instance, on the
enormous disarray created by the new social networks in our
societies... we do not much understand the psychological changes
derived for the intertwining of natural vs artifical info flows in
our societies. <br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>I am just reading Joseph's just arrived
comments, philosophically and formally oriented. Fine. I would ad
that we are lacking a vast informational view that can help us to
understand that strange world put into action 3,000 million years
ago, full of emergent realms. So, filling in the gap that
physicalim is unable to fill in consistently.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Best regards to all,</div>
<div>--Pedro</div>
<div><b><br>
</b></div>
<div><b>PS. If anyone has doubts about the
messages effectively distributed in the list, go please to the
instantaneous archive: <a href="http://listas.unizar.es/pipermail/fis/" target="_blank">http://listas.unizar.es/pipermail/fis/</a></b><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------</div>
<div>El 04/01/2024 a las 23:54, Stuart
Kauffman escribió:</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">Hello to All,</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">I am truly grateful to have this opportunity to
discuss with you the recent Stuart Kauffman and Andrea Roli
paper, “A Third Transition In Science?” J. Roy. Soc. Interface,
4/ 14 2023. I attach a link below. It’s eventual publication in
a fine journal after almost two years has its own wry history. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">Andrea and I think we are correct, but we may be
wrong. More, I only slightly begin to understand what our
results, if correct, mean. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">I had thought that the First Transition in science
was Newton’s invention of Classical Physics in 1689 A.D. And I
thought the Second Transition was the reluctant discovery of
quantum mechanics between 1900 and 1927 A.D.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">I begin to suspect I was wrong. The First
Transition in science was in 1299A.D. when the first mechanical
clock was invented and installed at the Wallingford Abby. It was
installed because the monks were often late for prayers. Within
less than a century, Europe was dotted by chuch towers with ever
- more impressive mechanical clocks. Modern people in 1379 A.D.
must have begun to wonder if the World itself was some amazing
clockwork machine. Then Copernicus, 1543 A.D., then Kepler,
Galileo and Newton. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">This, then, was the Second Transition in Science.
Yes, yes, yes! The World is a vast clockwork machine. No room
for God’s miracles – the Deistic God of the Enlightenment. No
room for mind – Descartes lost his Res cogitans to Newton’s Res
extensa. No Free Will.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">With Planck, Heisenberg, and Schrodinger cam a loss
of determinism, but still within the Newtonian Paradigm. And no
mind and no responsible Free Will. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">If Andrea and I are correct, this Third Transition
demonstrates for the first time since 1299AD, 725 years later,
that the evolving biosphere is not a clockwork machines.
Evolving life is not a machine at all. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">Are the two of us correct? If so, what does this
Third Transition portend? These issues now lies before us.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">Merci a tous,</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><br>
</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">Stu Kauffman</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><br>
</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">A Third Transition in Science? Link </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"> </p>
<a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsfs.2022.0063__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!RH-1N1FEJfqU41WdGgs7y8jJfe5UgMaHIJlh56CZUw76fWIEwZkUE9gIll06GR3L150IpC24ewV5iF7LveZK0HwbrDZ8$" style="color:rgb(149,79,114)" target="_blank">https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsfs.2022.0063</a>
<br>
</div>
<br>
<p><br>
</p>
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</blockquote></div><br clear="all"><div><br></div><span class="gmail_signature_prefix">-- </span><br><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><font size="4" face="georgia, serif"><i>Professor Terrence W. Deacon<br>University of California, Berkeley</i></font></div></div>