Re: Quantum Physics, Measurements and Robert's Functional Dynamics Concept

[Ionel <***>]

Dear Judith:

You have some important questions that I will try to address.

I will address first the important question of adequate representation of
biological systems. Hierarchical Organization, at different levels of
complexity is one of the fundamental properties of evolved organismic
structures be they biological or societal. Nicolas Rashevsky, Robert and
myself, included believed that any proper representation of organismic
structures must include this multi-level hierarchical organization. To
start with Rashevsky introduced organsimic sets of zeroth order to
represent genes, their  activities, products, relationships, etc, ; then he
proposed cell to be represented by organismic sets of first order, and so
on? Robert chose to represent biological systems as categories of sets and
mappings between sets in his seminal paper in BMB in 1958. My contribution
came next , and was to represent  each level of the biological organization
by a new category level: 1-category for the zeroth order organismic set
or ?primordial? (M,R)- system, 2-category for live cells? the first
order ?organismic sets?, and so on? to the nth-level categories, or
supercategories. I published the first construction of this type in BMB in
1980 as ?Natural Transformations of Organismic Structures.?, and this met
with Robert?s approval.  This multi-level construction represents also the
built-in emergence properties of the higher biological organisms related to
hierarchical organization.  Our machines are not built in this cellular
mode, although one might argue that houses and buildings made of bricks are
thus built, and that does not make them either alive or complex. (Your
argument about the mule: well the mule doesn?t self-reproduce, but the
mules cells do self-reproduce, so that?s not a complete argument. ).
However, if we were to build new structures out of live cells, and design
them so that they survive and self-reproduce they will be ?new? living
organisms, most probably ?chimeras? in the sense that Robert discusses them
in his ?Essays??  Their hierarchical structure could be quite different
from that of existing organisms and its destruction will not necessarily
result in the death of every single cell. They will not necessarily be less
stable either; an example of such a situation that does often occur is the
cases of various types of cancers, that are resulting in the loss of
severallevel of higher organization in cells inside the tumor,  with n ?the
highest organization level in the malignant tumor being reduced most likely
to n=2, instead of 5<n<10 for the human organism. The consequences can be
and are often lethal for the host organism. A corollary is therefore, that
the lowest n is for an organism, the less likely that such an organism
would be to develop malignant cancers. Sharks are thought not to be
afflicted with cancers, and the reason maybe ?apart from molecular specific
configurations of sharks?their much earlier position on the evolution tree
and degree of n they entail.  According to this criterion nematodes?worms--
are very unlikely to develop cancer! When it comes to human societies,
please note that the organization level zero is the human being, and the
hierarchy representation starts with a new m=0, instead n>=5 for the human
beings. The m-levels of societal organization are therefore quite different
from those of a biological organism, and the ?degeneration? to low n , as
in cancer with n=2, does not seem to happen in societies, or at least I am
not aware of a cancer-like situation in human societies (it would be just
terrible!).

I will attempt to address the other questions separately, or directly.

Regards, Ionel

RE: On Mon, 31 May 2004 12:04:22 -0400, Judith Rosen
<***> wrote:

>I have a few comments inserted below:
>
>>. "The new point that we introduced was the
>> significant, hierarchical/organizational 'structure' that (M,R)-systems
>> must have in order to be able to function as described, and also showed
in
>> detail how they can be constructed using certain canonical functors
>> (Yoneda) and natural transformations. That is, we brought up and
published
>> the fact that unlike automata or sequential machines, (M,R)-systems
>> have to be represented
>> by structures of a 'higher algebraic dimension'--or a
>> supercategory-- (in current algebraic terminology), and not as simple
>> 1-categories, in order to be able to both self-repair and self-
reproduce."


The phrase "have to be represented" refers to modeling. In other words, you
>are saying that you believe that your "supercategories" are a better tool
>for modeling organisms than the tools used for modeling "automata", is that
>correct? In that case, there is no argument here. The fact that the
>discussion is about modeling has not always been apparent (at least, to
me).
>However, in modeling, there is always a mental view of what is being
>modeled, and part of that mental view gets built in to the models. It's
>inevitable. The tricky thing, for my father, was to begin at the beginning,
>without the preconceived assumptions that science has accumulated, and look
>at the systems to be modeled with (hopefully!) clearer vision. >


>Judith>>