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Re: Fundamental problems in Physics

At 10:10 AM 12/14/04 -0500, Judith wrote:
I am perfectly willing to believe that you personally know physicists who don't subscribe to the machine metaphor as a philosophy of how the universe is, in fact I know a few myself. But if they aren't changing the basis on which physics is predicated, then nothing changes.

HP: My only point was that most physicists are no longer reductionists.
I also doubt that you understand the basis of modern physics, and why should you? It is not easy to state precisely even if you have studied it. An important point is that its models are not restricted to any type of preconceived metaphor. As an ideal physicists are looking only for that type of order in the universe that is inexorable and universal. This means nothing can violate these laws, no matter where or when or in what context or situation they are observed, or in what type of organization or system they are observed in. Any violation means its not a law. Of course the models describing these laws must also pass the Hertzian test.

Universality is often misinterpreted to claim that the laws can describe all observables and all systems. That is not the claim! The laws describe the relations among only a very small and weird set of observables. "Quantum mechanics does not describe a tea party" (Bohr). Life obeys physical laws but is not describable just by these laws. An analogy (with obvious flaws) are traffic rules. In all civilized countries their existence is universal and (ideally) inexorably obeyed. However, they tell you almost nothing about where traffic is going, why there are rush hours, or who is driving.

Judith: As he [Rosen] said in Life, Itself, "The machine metaphor isn't just a little bit wrong, it is entirely wrong and must be discarded."

HP: It is difficult to see this statement as more than an expression of irritation. I have never heard anything like this from Rosen, and it contradicts his long-standing concept of complexity as systems that require multiple models. He always accepted physical models as one useful type of model. What might save the statement would be to replace "The machine metaphor . . ." with a phrase like, "To claim that models should be only machine metaphors . . ."

In any case, this has nothing to do with the basis of modern physics models as I explained above.

HP: On the other hand, I don't know any physicist that does not believe that there exists completely general physical laws that every living system must follow in detail at all levels of complexity.

Judith: I think the physicists are wrong about sentence number one [above].

HP: As I explained to John K, what I mean by physical laws is what Rosen calls natural causes. Physicists and Rosen believe that everything follows natural causes.

Judith: Physics, as a science, is less than helpful in analyzing any system which has an organization where the organization supplies more "causality" than the parts alone do. Frankly, I see this as being true even in "simple" systems, like chemical reactions, but you can pretend it isn't and get away with it.

HP: I agree, and so do physicists. They regard chemistry as requiring different models. Nevertheless, no fundamental physical laws are violated by chemistry. In the traffic-rules analog, you might think of physical laws as the stop signs and chemical reactions as the traffic.

New topic:

HP: "The concept of Biosemiotics requires making a distinction between two categories, the material or physical world and the symbolic or semantic world. The problem is that there is no obvious way to connect the two categories. . . In fact, how material structures serve as signals, instructions, and controls is inseparable from the problem of the origin and evolution of life. Biosemiotics was established as a necessary complement to the physical-chemical reductionist approach to life that cannot make this crucial categorical distinction necessary for describing semantic information. Matter as described by physics and chemistry has no intrinsic function or semantics. By contrast, biosemiotics recognizes that life begins with function and semantics." (Pattee, J. Biosemiotics 1, in press)

Judith: Again, what the above doesn't acknowledge is the foundational issue of how these two "worlds" (material/physical and symbolic/semantic) interact to make each other possible.

HP: The above paragraph is only the first paragraph of the paper, the subject of which acknowledges: "the foundational issue of how these two "worlds" (material/physical and symbolic/semantic) interact to make each other possible."

I will send the whole paper if you wish, but I do not claim to have the whole answer!

Howard