<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
</head>
<body>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Dear All,</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">This quest, about "the roots of the
roots" of art, becomes cellular, quite cogently. To the cell
properties exposed by Bill and Francesco, I would add the
extraordinary capability of cells & multicells to discover
endless math patterns. We see fractals, Fibonacci sequences,
spirals, symmetries, and all kind of math niceties. </div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Does it relate to the creation of
beauty' -- to remind not only Wigner's “The Unreasonable
Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences” but also how
mathematical beauty lies in the harmony, patterns, and structures
of numbers, and symmetries that explain the universe.</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Seemingly, we would close a circle,
with transcendence of art & aesthetics linked both to the
bottom and to the top of existence. Not to forget the fundamental
role of sexual selection in the evolutionary quest for beauty as
the best way to stay in the world.</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Makes sense??</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Best --Pedro</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"> El 03/02/2026 a las 18:27, William
Miller escribió:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:965516760.4780958.1770139634147@mail.yahoo.com">
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<div class="ydp2e278b2byahoo-style-wrap"
style="font-family:times new roman, new york, times, serif;font-size:16px;">
<div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">
<div>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in">Dear Francesco, </p>
<p align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in">Thank you for
your eloquent
response. I agree with your assessment of cellular
circumstances.
Reductionism as a research tool is necessary, but a cell
can only be
understood as a Kantian whole, as Stu Kauffman and my
colleagues and
I have argued. Further, we are in complete agreement that
each
organism is unique. I believe you have hit upon an
essential
difference between my view and others. In my terms (and my
colleagues'), each cell is a unique, competent, and
exclusive
individual entity (agent). Of course, I don't mean in the
same manner
as with our human sensibilities, but within their scope
and at their
scale, and importantly, in their contextual responses to
stress.
Consequently, information sharing is the cognitive glue
that enables
seamless multicellularity among the tens of trillions of
highly
differentiated cells and microbial partners that sustain
our lives.
And further, as you note, they have unique phylogenetic
histories,
both collectively and individually.</p>
<p align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in">I do differ with
you in one
respect, which I have previously indicated. My colleagues
and I
regard all cells as sense-aware individual agents imbued
with
retrievable and deployable memory systems that engage as a
Kantian
whole in decision-making and problem-solving. Since all
cells must
measure their information internally to assess value and
valence,
they have subjective interiors, and the information that
they
self-create through that process (infoautopoiesis) is used
to sustain
each cell in its individual preferential state.
Accordingly, for us,
each cell is conscious/cognitive/sentient.</p>
<p align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in">Lastly, I think
biology has
historically viewed complexity in a highly simplistic and
hubristic
manner. We do have tools that have enabled us to elucidate
many
multicellular biomolecular pathways, and we have even
learned to
adjust some of these for our benefit as 'fine-tuning'.
However, the
complexities of the crowded, active environment within
every cell are
so great that we have no idea where to begin understanding
how they
operate. We can utilize their products and are beginning
to learn how
to steer them to our aims (e.g., Mike Levin’s work). How
much
different would biology be if we regarded the basic cell
as the
epitome of complexity and its information-processing
capabilities as
primary and the rest of multicellular life as its
elaboration?</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in">Warm regards, </p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in">Bill </p>
</div>
<br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
</div>
<div id="yahoo_quoted_0969803480" class="yahoo_quoted">
<div
style="font-family:'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;font-size:13px;color:#26282a;">
<div> On Tuesday, February 3, 2026 at 12:31:56 AM MST,
Francesco Rizzo <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:13francesco.rizzo@gmail.com"><13francesco.rizzo@gmail.com></a> wrote: </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>
<div id="yiv0152680469">
<div>
<div dir="ltr">
<p
style="margin:0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:14.2pt;line-height:normal;background:rgb(248,249,250);font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri, sans-serif;"
class="yiv0152680469MsoNormal"><span lang="EN"
style="font-size:10pt;font-family:New serif;color:rgb(31,31,31);">Dear
William,</span></p>
<pre
style="text-align:justify;text-indent:14.2pt;margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;font-size:10pt;"><span
class="yiv0152680469gmail-y2iqfc"><span lang="EN"
style="font-family:New serif;color:rgb(31,31,31);">in Ethics of Economic Values or Economics of Ethical Values (FrancoAngeli, Milan, 2004) I wrote in 115-122 pages some things that might interest you, I will excerpt a small part of it below</span></span><u><span
style="font-size:9pt;font-family:Arial, sans-serif;color:rgb(94,94,94);"></span></u></pre>
<p
style="line-height:16.5pt;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri, sans-serif;"
class="yiv0152680469MsoNormal"><span
class="yiv0152680469gmail-v9tjod"></span><span
style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:Arial, sans-serif;color:rgb(31,31,31);"><a
rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" shape="rect"
target="_blank"
href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://translate.google.it/?hl=it__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!U2dn5Vzo_KZGIpzlfsRxchA5NITvfziJXilO9m0sjiRQDH8KtaAp8J4-7rk6a35kPvIuC5MjoRJRLrhTxRcMavHWH4iI$"
style="outline:0px;color:blue;"
moz-do-not-send="true"><span
id="yiv0152680469gmail-z9PoV"><span style=""><span
style="font-family:Calibri, sans-serif;color:rgb(26,13,171);text-decoration-line:none;"></span></span></span></a></span></p>
<p
style="margin:0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:14.2pt;line-height:normal;background:rgb(248,249,250);font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri, sans-serif;"
class="yiv0152680469MsoNormal">
<span class="yiv0152680469gmail-v9tjod"><span
style="font-size:10.5pt;line-height:107%;font-family:Arial, sans-serif;color:rgb(31,31,31);"></span></span></p>
<p
style="margin:0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:14.2pt;line-height:normal;background:rgb(248,249,250);font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri, sans-serif;"
class="yiv0152680469MsoNormal"><span
style="color:rgb(31,31,31);font-family:New serif;font-size:10pt;text-indent:14.2pt;">⌠Since
1979, I have been working on a city model based
on a (not hard or deterministic, but gentle and
flexible) interactive multi-temporal-dimensional-</span><span
style="color:rgb(31,31,31);font-family:New serif;font-size:10pt;text-indent:14.2pt;">media-linguistic-criteria
matrix. I have written about this several times in
this book. Naturally and
culturally, I have employed and calibrated the
same model-algorithm for the
company analysis. Here – also to pay homage to
Pedro C. Marijuán, an exquisite
and sensitive person (not only in a human sense)
whom I met at an international
conference of physicists, biologists, chemists,
etc., which took place in
Acireale from 17 to 22 September on the topic of
Energy and information transfer
in biological systems, so dear to me as if I had
chosen it (too) – I would like
to launch the hypothesis that it could also be
useful to better understand and
“measure” (in the sense of evaluating) the
functional-structural nature-culture
or </span>de-cipher-ation<span
style="color:rgb(31,31,31);font-family:New serif;font-size:10pt;text-indent:14.2pt;">
of a cell, indeed of every cell that in a given
spatio-temporal situation resembles and/or
dissimilars (differs from) all the
others.</span></p>
<p
style="margin:0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:14.2pt;line-height:normal;background:rgb(248,249,250);font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri, sans-serif;"
class="yiv0152680469MsoNormal"><span lang="EN"
style="font-size:10pt;font-family:New serif;color:rgb(31,31,31);">Every
cell is a uni-duality or a uni-multiplicity, an
I-in-oi or an I-in-I, that is, from a
functional-structural perspective, a cell
in itself and an element in the whole of O that is
a tissue, an organ, a living
being, just as a man is at the same time a man in
itself and an element in the
sense of the unitary-unicative comm(-n-io)ne or in
the anagrammatic
communitarian-communicative I. Everything that is,
in some way, unrepeatable,
unique, and absolutely individual and
"individualizing" is
ap-perceived through unique and unrepeatable
moments or living beings.
Individuality, apparently hidden and veiled by the
fundamental elements of
atoms and cells, “emerges” as the universe and its
actors (men and women,
animals and plants) evolve, strengthening and
improving their capacity for
trans-inform-ation or ad-aptation and ex-aptation.</span><span
style="font-size:10pt;font-family:New serif;color:rgb(31,31,31);"></span></p>
<p
style="margin:0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:14.2pt;line-height:normal;background:rgb(248,249,250);font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri, sans-serif;"
class="yiv0152680469MsoNormal"><span lang="EN"
style="font-size:10pt;font-family:New serif;color:rgb(31,31,31);">The
uniqueness or unrepeatability of individuals and
their personalities (of humans, animals, and
plants) permeates and is permeated
by that complex, intertwined, convulsive, and
chaotic set of similar and
dissimilar phenomena, of similar and different
things, that are natural and
social systems. Every being is unique, specific,
and atypical, regardless of
whether they are humans, animals, or plants.
Besides having in common the fact
that they are made up of the same-different cells
and equal-unequal atoms, and
being different because humans have consciousness
and other living beings do
not (?), they all have their own unique,
mysterious, phylo-onto-genetic history⌡.</span></p>
<p
style="margin:0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:14.2pt;line-height:normal;background:rgb(248,249,250);font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri, sans-serif;"
class="yiv0152680469MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:10pt;font-family:New serif;color:rgb(31,31,31);"> </span></p>
<p
style="margin:0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:14.2pt;line-height:normal;background:rgb(248,249,250);font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri, sans-serif;"
class="yiv0152680469MsoNormal"><span lang="EN"
style="font-size:10pt;font-family:New serif;color:rgb(31,31,31);">
</span></p>
<pre
style="text-align:justify;text-indent:14.2pt;margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;font-size:10pt;"><span
style="font-family:New serif;color:rgb(122,122,122);"> </span></pre>
<p
style="margin:0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:14.2pt;line-height:normal;background:rgb(248,249,250);font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri, sans-serif;"
class="yiv0152680469MsoNormal"><span lang="EN"
style="font-size:10pt;font-family:New serif;color:rgb(31,31,31);"><br
clear="none">
</span></p>
<p
style="margin:0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:14.2pt;line-height:normal;background:rgb(248,249,250);font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri, sans-serif;"
class="yiv0152680469MsoNormal"><span lang="EN"
style="font-size:10pt;font-family:New serif;color:rgb(31,31,31);">Dear
William,</span></p>
<p
style="margin:0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:14.2pt;line-height:normal;background:rgb(248,249,250);font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri, sans-serif;"
class="yiv0152680469MsoNormal"><span lang="EN"
style="font-size:10pt;font-family:New serif;color:rgb(31,31,31);">in <i>Etica
dei valori economici o economia dei valori
etici</i> (FrancoAngeli, Milano, 2004) ho
scritto in 115-122 pagine alcune cose
che potrebbero interessarti, ne stralcio una
piccola seguente parte:</span></p>
<pre
style="text-align:justify;text-indent:14.2pt;margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;font-size:10pt;"><b><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:New serif;"> </span></b></pre>
<p
style="margin:0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:14.2pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri, sans-serif;"><span
style="font-size:10pt;font-family:New serif;">⌠Dal
1979 lavoro ad un modello di città basato su una
(non dura o deterministica, ma
dolce e flessibile) matrice inter-attiva
multi-temporale-dimensionale-mediale-linguistica-criteriale. Di questo
ho
scritto più volte nel presente libro. Naturalmente
e culturalmente lo stesso
modello-algoritmo ho impiegato e tarato per
l’analisi dell’azienda. Qui – anche
per fare un omaggio a Pedro C. Marijuán, persona
squisita e sensibile (non solo
in senso umano) che ho conosciuto in un convegno
internazionale di fisici,
biologici, chimici, etc., che s’è svolto ad
Acireale dal 17 al 22 settembre sul
tema Energy and information transfer in biological
systems, a me tanto caro
come se l’avessi scelto (anch’) io – desidero
lanciare l’ipotesi che esso possa
essere utile anche a comprendere e “misurare”(nel
senso di valutare) meglio la
natura-cultura funzional-strutturale o
de-cifr-azione di una cellula, anzi di
ogni cellula che in una data situazione
spazio-temporale somiglia e/o
dissomiglia (differisce d)a tutte le altre. </span></p>
<p
style="margin:0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:14.2pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri, sans-serif;"><span
style="font-size:10pt;font-family:New serif;">Ogni
cellula è un’uni-dualità o un’uni-molteplicità, un
io-n-oi o un io-n-io, cioè è
in una prospettiva funzional-strutturale una
cellula a sé e un elemento
nell’insieme di o che è un tessuto, un organo, un
essere vivente, come un uomo
è allo stesso tempo un uomo a sé e un elemento nel
senso del(la) comu(-n-io)ne
unitario(a)-unicativo(a) o nell’anagrammatico io
comunitario-comunicativo.
Tutto ciò che è, in un certo qual modo,
ir-ripetibile, unico e assolutamente
individuale e “individualizzante” si fa
ap-percepire attraverso momenti o
viventi unici e ir-ripetibili. L’individualità,
apparentemente nascosta e
velata dagli elementi fondamentali degli atomi e
delle cellule, va “emergendo”
man mano che l’universo ed i suoi attori (uomini e
donne, animali e piante) si
evolvono, rafforzando e migliorando la loro
capacità di tras-inform-azione o
ad-attamento e ex-attamento. </span></p>
<p
style="margin:0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:14.2pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri, sans-serif;"><span
style="font-size:10pt;font-family:New serif;">L’unicità
o ir-ripetibilità individual-personale (di uomini,
animali, piante) attraversa
ed è attraversata da quell’insieme, complesso,
intrecciato, convulso e caotico
di fenomeni simili e dissimili e di cose
somiglianti e differenti che sono i
sistemi naturali e sociali. Ogni essere è una o ha
la sua univoca, specifica e
atipica impronta ecologica a prescindere che si
tratti di uomini, animali o
piante, che oltre ad avere in comune il fatto che
sono costituiti dalle
stesse-differenti cellule e dagli uguali-disuguali
atomi e ad essere differenti
perché gli uomini hanno la coscienza e gli altri
esseri viventi no (?), hanno
tutti una loro e unica, misteriosa, storia
filo-onto-genetica⌡.</span></p>
<p
style="margin:0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:14.2pt;line-height:normal;"><font
face="Times New Roman, serif"><span
style="font-size:13.3333px;">Francesco</span></font></p>
</div>
<br clear="none">
<div class="yiv0152680469gmail_quote">
<div dir="ltr" class="yiv0152680469gmail_attr">Il
giorno lun 2 feb 2026 alle ore 17:21 William Miller
<<a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer"
shape="rect" ymailto="mailto:wbmiller1@cox.net"
target="_blank" href="mailto:wbmiller1@cox.net"
moz-do-not-send="true"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">wbmiller1@cox.net</a>>
ha scritto:<br clear="none">
</div>
<blockquote
style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex;"
class="yiv0152680469gmail_quote">
<div id="yiv0152680469yqt72001"
class="yiv0152680469yqt8089772181">
<div>
<div
style="font-family:new times, serif;font-size:16px;">
<div dir="ltr">
<div>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in;">Dear All, </p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in;"><br
clear="none">
</p>
<p align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom:0in;">I
have followed this
fascinating thread with great interest.
Pedro's comment on getting to
the 'root' of the reason for art and the
appreciation of beauty has
motivated me to comment now, rather than
previously, since the prior
thrust of the discussion has focused on
our human sensibilities, and
my work is about cells. However, any
discernment of a 'root' of an
aesthetic impulse must eventually
include consideration of how cells
operate, since we are all cellular
constructs. I hope you will find
this alternative take on the matter
interesting and not off-topic.</p>
<p align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom:0in;">I
have published about the
empirically verified behaviors of all
cells. Those observations and
experiments confirm that cells operate
within a compact narrative of
consistent behaviors since their origin
as their means of dealing
with their obligatory context of the
ambiguity of biological
information (previously presented with
Mike Levin).</p>
<p align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom:0in;">All
cells are intelligent
and engaged in measuring ambiguous
environmental cues as
infocomputation for (value) and valence
(subjective experiences at
scale ). I defend that cells have
experiences at scale because all
cells have defined homeorhetic
preferences that they maintain but
also adjust in context as differential
rates of dynamic flux. Kant
had intuited that all learning derives
from experiences and cells are
certainly learning systems.</p>
<p align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom:0in;">Cells
consistently display
six behavioral attributes:
collaboration, cooperation,
co-dependence, generally mutualizing
competition, respect for the
self-integrity of
other cells, and they consistently abide
by the principle that each
is served best by serving others. The
proof is seamless
multicellularity, enabling you to read
this now. None of this is
conjectural and is easily observable.
Indeed, cancer is destructive
since it does not follow those rules
with normative cells, only with
like-kind cancer cells (as a different
form of selfhood).</p>
<p align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom:0in;">Notably,
cells act in these
patterns because this is how they form
their sense of the world,
i.e., glean at their scale some
understanding of the status of their
interior versus the external
environment, essential to maintaining
their preferential states and naturally
implicit to their survival.
This is how they form their grasp of
reality, from which all
problem-solving must issue. After all,
cells are not programmed
robots: they are decision-making and
problem-solving agents.</p>
<p align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom:0in;">I
would offer that the
deepest root of art is an expression of
our cellular selves as a
search to find answers to our yearning
questions and doubts about
reality, on the one hand, and as an
explicit expression of a state of
preference in context on the other.
These two cellular imperatives
merge as our expression of art and
govern our need to create it. This
also explains why some art is beautiful
to some and execrable to
others, and some art is seen as
illuminating to one individual and
ridiculous to another. It is always an
individual, subjective
assessment that reflects an exclusive
interior state.</p>
<p align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom:0in;">Our
consciousness consists
of doubts and preferences. As I often
say, 'being is doubt', and I
now offer that 'life is preferences'.
Art is each individual's
idiosyncratic attempt to resolve
personal doubts, expressively
illustrate its effect on the artist, and
satisfy a preferential
state. Furthermore, since art is shared
with others almost without
exception, it is a communal activity,
conforming with the innate
cellular root behavior of 'you serve
yourself best by serving
others'.</p>
<p align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom:0in;">We
are cellular beings, and
all of evolution is a narrative of the
continuous exaptation of
unicellular traits channeled and
repurposed at successive scales . In
each instance, it serves to enhance the
deployment of information to
problem-solve in our unending struggle
to grasp external reality.
These exaptations are tools of
continuous cellular natural learning,
which requires an unending exploration
the environment through
alternative paths. Art is one means by
which this deeply rooted
impulse, so essential to life, is
satisfied.</p>
<p align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom:0in;">After
all, isn't this
exactly what we are currently engaged in
within this forum and is it
not its own form of Art?</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in;">Best, </p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in;">Bill </p>
</div>
<br clear="none">
</div>
<br clear="none">
Fis mailing list<br clear="none">
<a shape="rect"
ymailto="mailto:Fis@listas.unizar.es"
href="mailto:Fis@listas.unizar.es"
moz-do-not-send="true"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">Fis@listas.unizar.es</a><br
clear="none">
<a shape="rect"
href="http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis</a><br
clear="none">
----------<br clear="none">
INFORMACIÓN SOBRE PROTECCIÓN DE DATOS DE
CARÁCTER PERSONAL<br clear="none">
<br clear="none">
Ud. recibe este correo por pertenecer a una
lista de correo gestionada por la Universidad
de Zaragoza.<br clear="none">
Puede encontrar toda la información sobre como
tratamos sus datos en el siguiente enlace: <a
shape="rect"
href="https://sicuz.unizar.es/informacion-sobre-proteccion-de-datos-de-caracter-personal-en-listas"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://sicuz.unizar.es/informacion-sobre-proteccion-de-datos-de-caracter-personal-en-listas</a><br
clear="none">
Recuerde que si está suscrito a una lista
voluntaria Ud. puede darse de baja desde la
propia aplicación en el momento en que lo
desee.<br clear="none">
<a shape="rect" href="http://listas.unizar.es"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">http://listas.unizar.es</a><br
clear="none">
----------<br clear="none">
</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<p><br>
</p>
</body>
</html>