Re: Fundamental problems in Physics

[Howard Pattee <***>]

Judith, Tim, Steve, John, and all,
What I am trying to get across to this group is that most physicists as 
real individuals (not as abstract "Physics" or what masquerades as physics 
taught in high school and freshman courses) do not disagree basically with 
Rosen, or us, that physical models of natural laws are inadequate to 
explain life. It is counterproductive make your fellow searchers after 
truth into opponents when they are not. For example:

Judith: Today's physics is still based on laws ("Physical Laws") that are 
not entirely "congruent" with Natural Law/s. So while I believe that all 
systems, including living systems, behave in ways consistent with natural 
laws of the universe, I do not think Physics has accurately figured out 
what most of those laws are.

HP: No physicist could have said it better. There is total agreement here. 
You go on:

Judith: I also think my father was right about the fact that Physics has 
misinterpreted a substantial number of basic attributes of the universe. 
So, words like "violate" or "evade" are inapplicable when it comes to 
"laws" that aren't really laws.

HP: Again, no physicist would dispute that we do not have the "correct" 
laws. It follows that we must be "misinterpreting" some basic attributes of 
the universe. However, it certainly does not follow that physicists 
intentionally or thoughtlessly overlooked life or "beguiled themselves" or 
"shirked their task" with "disastrous" consequences as Rosen charges.

In fact, history shows quite the contrary. Before Rosen began thinking 
about it, a number of prominent physicist, starting with Bohr ("Light and 
life" Nature, 131, 421, 1933) and Schroedinger (What Is Life, 1945) , began 
to seriously question whether life was really covered by physics. They were 
not vitalists, but they were skeptical that physics was adequate. There was 
a common feeling that something fundamental was being overlooked, and this 
feeling led physicists, like Bernal, Astbury, Bragg, Delbruck, and others 
to actually switch from studying particles to studying biology. (This group 
was the start of what is called molecular biology today.)

Gunther Stent (in Phage and the Origin of Molecular Biology) points out 
that the motivation for many of these physicists was the expectation that 
studying life might lead to the discovery of new "laws of physics." He says 
it was the hope of some that the study of life "would prove 
incomprehensible within the framework of physical knowledge."  (See review 
by John Kendrew, Scientific American 216, Mar. 1967, p. 141, and Stent, 
"That was the molecular biology that was." Science, 160, 390-395, 1968)

The literature on physics's relation to biology is too large to even 
outline. I will give you only one more quote from Rosenfeld (a close 
colleague of Bohr) with whom Rosen would have agreed.

Rosenfeld asks: Will a physico-chemical analysis of the molecular processes 
underlying biological phenomena provide a complete and exhaustive 
description of these phenomena? And he answers: The concept that 
immediately comes to mind is that of "function," the usefulness of which in 
biological investigation nobody will deny. And the idea of function, with 
its implication of finality, seems to be incompatible with the type of 
causality exhibited by a purely physical description." (Theoretical Physics 
and Biology, Marois, ed. Interscience, 1969)

Today there is still no consensus on how important and/or adequate quantum 
mechanics is for models of life. There is, however, a general feeling that 
the deepest problem is with the act of encoding or measurement that is at 
the heart of the modeling relation. All physicists agree that the process 
of measurement is not usefully describable by physical laws, whatever they 
are, because it is an epistemological problem. Pauli and Von Neumann have 
clearly stated this problem. Rosen's words are that encoding is unentailed 
by nature or the model of nature, but this is in complete agreement with 
their position.

Rosen's ideas also produce no basic disagreement with physicists over the 
necessity for multiple complementary models (irreducible to and not 
derivable from each other). This was well established in physics early in 
the last century.

The only problem left with Rosen's ideas that I can see is whether we can 
find a useful biological model that does not have what he calls 
"states."  What is or is not a state is not yet a clearly defined concept.

I agree with John K: "We need to begin with [say, Judith's or Rosen's] 
basic principles/assumptions in the Rosennean view, then work out, rather 
than endlessly battling over the results of one view vs another." It is 
just my opinion that the development of a Rosen-based biological model can 
be done better without introducing the physicist as a villain.

Howard