TG: I agree that
functional organization cannot be equated, and probably not even
mapped, to structure. That is the "structure-function complementarity" that he
mentions in the paper and which I base my conjecture on. This is why I say it
"would be very difficult to describe in strictly structural terms". (It may well
be impossible, but I don't want to exclude a priori such a possibility.)
TG: I
think my conjecture certainly ventures into an area where the mathematics and
the physics are unclear. If functional organization is a real property of
organisms, but one that cannot be mapped directly to structure; and if
such organization involves physical constraints, then it is unclear to me
how one can map those constraints to the usual descriptions in
physics. This may involve 'new physics' (in the sense of: novel modes of
description and maybe new observables).
TG:
Holonomic constraints ('rigidity' is a typical holonomic constraints) is
clearly present in structural organization, such as the skeletal
components. In terms of an organism's functional organization that
I was concerned with, I am imagining that the constraints are largely, or
all, non-holonomic, such that the functional organization could be
maximally constrained so that it remains invariant, even when all dynamics are
removed (i.e., the cell frozen). The interesting thing to me is that the
(M,R)-system is a model of an invariant functional organization, and therefore I
further conjecture whether realizing an (M,R)-system involves realizing a
maximally constrained functional organization?
Regards,
Tim
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