Re: Why four categories of causation?

[Jerry Zhu <***>]

Hi Judith,

I answer your questions now.  Your questions are too
sweeping to know where to start. Evolution maybe a
good start since it is the central concept that
contrasts classical and modern physics and its renewed
understanding in its mechanism is the theme of life
sciences that in turn influences social sciences and
beyond.

Lamarck was the first to propose a theory of evolution
that is all living beings have evolved from earlier
simpler forms under the pressure of environment.
Therefore evolution is the explanation of direction of
change in life and its mechanism of such change.

The direction of evolution contrasts classical physics
(Copernicus, Galileo, Newton) from modern physics
(Relativity, Quantum physics, far-from-equilibrium
physics). For Newton, the world as machine created by
God with a static hierarchy ranking from God, angels,
human beings, animals and ever lower forms of life. 
The # of species is fixed and has not changed since
the day of creation. God programmed the message
molecule DNA and human beings passed it down from
generation to generation.  In the process of passing
down the message, the fate of the information follows
the dictates of information theory and common sense,
that is, the information either stay the same or
decreases but never increase.  In the beginning, the
world created by God was time symmetric, the Eden
Garden, no corruption in DNA, no death.  But God
placed the potentiality of tempo symmetric break, the
tree of life.  Since Eve's trial, the world broke the
tempo symmetry and was never the same again and had
ever being changed from order to disorder, the ever
increased sin, death, and chaos.   The information in
genetic programs is of gradual increase the further
back we go, hence the junk DNA we have today.

The running down of God created machine was proved by
the application of Newtonian mechanics to the study of
thermal phenomena ... thermodynamics. The first and
second law: energy conservation and isolated physical
system will proceed spontaneously in the direction of
every increasing disorder. According to classical
physics, the universe as a whole is going toward such
a state of maximum entropy (measure of disorder) and
will eventually grind to halt... the destruction of
the world, the last day, the coming of Jesus Christ. 

The mechanistic approach has become the general
framework for physics, astronomy, biology, psychology,
and medicine in 17th, 18th, 19th's century as outlined
by Descartes. At the same time, new discoveries and
new thinking's made limitation of Newtonian model
apparent and paved the way to scientific revolution of
the twentieth century. The first is Faraday and
Maxwell, the electric magnetic field has its own
reality and can be studied without material reference.
The second is Darwin.  The discover of evolution led
to the abandon of Cartesian conception of the world as
a machine.  Instead the universe is pictured as an
evolving and ever changing system which complex forms
emerge from simple forms.  

At the end of 19th century, Newtonian model has lost
its fundamental role of science in explaining natural
phenomenon.  During the three decades in the beginning
of 20th century, two developments in physics:
relativity and quantum theory shattered all the
principles of the Newtonian world-view. In 1970s,
Prigogine developed far-from-equilibrium physics that
states that open systems do not have to accumulate
entropy but can generate neg entropy thro absorbing
energy from the environment that lead to every
increase order and complexity.

In summary, evolution is the explanation of increasing
 order and complexity of forms at all levels of
reality: material world, unicellular organism,
multicellular organism, and society. The
interpretation of the evolution shall not be the same
at different levels of reality. The origin of message
molecules is such a topic that could be explained,
although with some commonalities, differently at
unicellular and multicellular organisms.

Laters,

Jerry

--- Judith Rosen <***> wrote:

> Hi Jerry,
> 
> I have a few comments and a couple questions:
> 
> Jerry Zhu wrote: I agree with "relational and
> organizational matters
> apply to all systems."  My opinion on this is that
> this concept belongs to quantum physics not biology.
> 
> Either you are defining things WAY differently than
> I do or we are 
> very far apart on these concepts, Jerry. On page 105
> of Life, Itself:
> Robert Rosen wrote: "The reappraisal of causality
> occasioned by the 
> advent of quantum theory has left physicists without
> consensus on what 
> causality is or on how it should be encoded into
> contemporary physical 
> formalisms. More generally, no one is today sure
> what the formalism of 
> quantum theory encodes, or even if it encodes
> anything at all; in this 
> latter view, advocated by Bohr under the rubric of
> complementarity, 
> the only thing that matters is the decoding. I
> believe it fair to say 
> that the "foundations" of quantum theory remain a
> quagmire, to a far 
> greater extent than has ever been true in physics
> before.
> 
> It would therefore be idle, as well as perhaps
> presumptuous, to enter 
> into a more detailed discussion of quantum theory
> here. My main point 
> is, however, unarguable: that the concept of state
> plays the central 
> role in its formalism, just as it did in its
> classical predecessor..."
> 
> How does your view fit in with these statements? How
> does organization 
> and relational causality derive from quantum
> physics?
> 
> J.Z. wrote: The reason it applies to all systems in
> the emergent
> hierarchy is because quantum physics is at the
> lowest
> level of evolution, the big bang that all things
> derived.
> 
> Could you elaborate on what you mean by this?
> Specifically, a 
> definition of "emergent hierarchy" would be helpful.
> A fuller 
> explanation of how you view "evolution" would also
> be helpful. And 
> does your comment about the "big bang" mean that you
> consider that 
> theory an accurate description of past events in the
> formation of our 
> universe? If so, why?
> 
> Thanks,
> Judith 
> 



                
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