Fwd: Re: meanings of model

[Howard Pattee <***>]

> Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 10:03:39
> -0800
> To: ICB Ionel <***>
> From: Howard Pattee <***>
> Subject: Re: meanings of model
>
> Ionel:
>
> Thank you for reminding me of your work. I am now aware of biological
> modelers who are concerned about computability. I also found a paper by
> Lewis Wolpert, "Development: Is the egg computable or could we
> generate an angel or a dinosaur?" in What Is Life? The Next Fifty
> Years, Speculations on the Future of Biology, Murphy and O'Neill,
> eds., Cambridge UP, 1955. Wolpert questions whether one could compute
> from the "state" of the egg what the adult organism will be,
> but gives no clear answer.
>
> What I wonder about is if (or how) formal proofs about Turing-equivalent
> computability that require infinite sets are related to computational
> limits based on so-called Computational 
> Complexity Theory where the concern is with number of steps or length of
> time to a solution with finite sets that nevertheless can explode
> exponentially.
>
> Howard
>  
> At 05:16 AM 12/21/04 -0500, you wrote:
> > Howard:
> >
> > I am responding to your 'challenge' referring to the biological
> > modelers'
> > feels and concerns about the formal aspects of computability. Your
> > message
> > contained the following statement with which I'd have to disagree on
> > a
> > factual basis:
> >
> > >>I am not aware of any biological modelers that feel limited by or
> > are
> > even concerned about the formal aspects of computability. Other
> > problems
> > seem more important...
> >
> > What am I missing? >>
> >
> > In a 1987, extensive review about biological modeling I did raise
> > such
> > concerns that you seem to think that don't, or need not, concern
> > biological
> > modelers. For the Rosen list I am providing here the web addresses for
> > this
> > published review where it could be found in PDF format:
> >
> > COMPUTER MODELS AND AUTOMATA THEORY IN BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE:
> > COMPUTER SIMULATION AND COMPUTABILITY OF BIOLOGICAL SYSTEMS
> >
> > Mathematical Modelling, Vol. 7, pp. 1513-1577,1986
> >
> > http://doc.cern.ch//archive/electronic/other/ext/ext-2004-072.pdf
> > http://cogprints.org/3718/01/COMPUTER_SIMULATIONCOMPUTABILITYBIOSYSTEMSrefne
> >
> > The references cited in my review (of other authors' work , as well
> > as
> > Robert  Rosen's) concerning the formal aspects of computability are
> > also
> > pertinent to your comment cited above. One such forml modeling paper
> > by
> > Robert Rosen is : "On Analogous Systems." BMB (1968).
> >
> > Ionel