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Re: Fundamental problems in Physics

I like Howard's concluding paragraph. At the same time, I, too, wrestle with the notion of "state". Most of my modeling work has presumed "episodes" which encode snapshots (in graphs) that include actors, relations, and states. It is difficult to step outside that mindset.

Jack

Howard Pattee wrote:

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