Re: Time, and as complex

[Dan Fiscus <***>]

Howard,

Interesting issues. It seems to me that if anyone is to
wiggle free of time, it will have to be done twice - once
for time's linear aspect and again for time's cyclical
aspect. The linear mode to me is more strongly
associated with entropic tendencies and radiation
outward, the cyclic is more linked to gravitation and
attraction inward - what Fantappie called the syntropic
tendency in complement to entropy.

Two terms I don't know the origin for (maybe Greek or
Roman god/esses, maybe new age, don't know) are
Kyros time (the cyclic or non-linear) and Chronos time
(linear, "normal" time). Some google food, if nothing
else. Others are The Clock of the Long Now - Stewart
Brand project; and Andy Goldsworthy's movie, Rivers
and Tides: Working with Time.

Re: this latter, it is very promising to me for coming
breakthroughs re: understanding of time as complex
(requires more than one model) - Goldsworthy is an
artist, and Leonard Shlain has a great idea that thru
history artists always or often "get", see, invent, have
pre-science of, big new ideas ahead of the physicists
and scientists (see Shlain's book Art and Physics -
Parallel Visions in Space, Time and Light).

Some thoughts...

Dan

Howard Pattee wrote:
> Judith,
>
> Time is an eternal mystery and therefore a good topic for discussion. 
> Your father and I often speculated about it, often over after-dinner 
> brandy. One's concept of time affects one's world view and consequently 
> how we think of time influences our models of the world. Mathematicians 
> and physicists usually differ on the significance of time, and I think 
> this is really the only basic difference in Rosen's and my approaches to 
> biology. I want to stress that these are complementary views. We 
> understood and accepted each others views very well. Both are necessary 
> even though they may appear paradoxical.
>
> To back up, you asked why I referred to time as one dimensional. I 
> answered it was because time can be represented in a model by a scalar 
> number. You replied, "that's not a very accurate representation of what 
> I perceive about reality." Of course, that is true for all of us. 
> "Numbers on a line" is not the way we perceive time, but that is one way 
> we represent time in physical models.
>
> If you read pages 50 et seq. of AS, Rosen makes this distinction in 
> detail. Perceived time and measured time are quite different. [Chapter 4 
> is all about continuous and discrete encodings of time, but it is 
> technical.] Both processes are much more complex than our instincts lead 
> us to believe. He also explains that a clock neither perceives time or 
> measures time, but only  generates labels for other observables that we 
> measure.
>
> It is only reasonable that the mind of the working mathematician is not 
> concerned with time or rates since nothing he does with his images or 
> symbols depends on time or rate. Experimental physics is all about rate 
> equations, so time is on physicist's minds. Except one apparent paradox 
> is that physics is looking ultimately for relations between temporal 
> events that are timeless. That is, the laws of Nature do not change in 
> time. For example, the Conservation of Energy would not be a law if this 
> were not the case. In this sense the laws of physics form an entirely 
> timeless relational science.
>
> Put in my own words, as briefly as possible, Rosen wanted to create 
> relational models of living systems that were timeless as are physical 
> laws. To do this it would be necessary to generalize the laws of physics 
> to include life, leaving physical laws as special cases. As Rosen 
> recognized, living systems are open and evolving systems so they can 
> have no material or energy conservation laws. This means that the 
> conventional simple physical observables of organisms cannot be put into 
> timeless relations. Therefore, to achieve a relational biology Rosen 
> abstracted away time (as represented in physics by the rate-dependent 
> dynamics of temporal state transitions) and focused his models on the 
> rate-independent functional or informational entailments that 
> characterize life.
>
> Left over comments:
> Judith: Why do you say that there is no way to measure the importance of 
> semantic information?
>
> HP: I meant there is no good universal measure. As you say below, every 
> organism has its own measures of importance.
>
> Judith: That's semantic information specific to each species, and it 
> gets even more specific with various varieties within species-- and 
> we've figured a lot of that out, too. In a sense, the semantics are what 
> are encoded into the "internal predictive models" my father spoke of in 
> Anticipatory System Theory.
>
> HP: Exactly so.
>
> Howard