Cell in biology

[John M <***>]

Dear Judith,

thanks for your time and care to write so
comprehensively. I have some replies and remarks
and hope to make my post 'palatable after the fact'.
Firstly: I never built up the resilience to watch
Saturday Night Live. I tried many times and 
ran away from it. (Same with foot- and baseball
matches). 

You are absolutely right about my 'misunderstanding
the discussion at hand' - I have not read it in its
development. My computer was on and off for 2 months
now and I lost my e-mail 
client, then used another one, I tried MS, Mozilla,
Yahoo, sometimes I got several hundred 
posts (from several lists) at a time, and though
'saved' them, I simply could not invest the 
energy to sort them topically not to mention read them
along.  I read Jerry's cell-text with 
your post quoted and in the heat of the combined
heat-excitement (mental and physical) I
happily responded. It was inconsiderate from me.
JR: "I have never been hold hostage by  the "cell"
model. " I find it as a useful approach 
to study details of the advancing cognitive inventory
in the 'biological sciences' as it goes 
today. You seemed to me to be involved in that topic,
which is not my field. I missed the 
previous discussions on senescence which was a well
discussed topic earlier on the 'other' 
complex sci list. Not in RR's views. As I recall (lost
and of course no backup) I posted so 
2-3 months ago about death as part of the
'life-process' in transformation - rather than an 
annihilating, the change in essential components of a
'working' complexity (organism) and 
so eliminating the function, what we call life, of the
original - unchanged - complex. Aging 
IMO is change altering components, similarly induced
by changes from the ambiance and 
consequent responses from the complex proper. I would
not call them 'irreversible', since 
nothing in the continuously changing world IS
reversible, only in select models can we find 
elements that within (that same) model can go back and
forth.  You used the words in your description of RR's
concerning views:
"...the behavior of the actual contexts that the
models are supposedly referring to."

As for "self" and "non-self" I consider it
psychological. I try to generalize the concepts to 
applicability 'without borders' in which the
'internal' is part of the 'external total' and any 
impact that changes the internal is an effect with
response from the 'organization" proper.
So far we cannot claim a complete list of what kind of
incoming(?) effects there may be.
We in our (human?) thinking developed a feeling of "I"
which differentiates from "not I". 
I have not talked to dogs, fish, amoeba, how they feel
about this. Similarly the so called 
in-animates (photons, galaxies) - which in my wording
are conscious (= acknowledge and 
respond to information - all at their own modes) 
differentiate between 'self' and 'non self' 
- we just call it differently. In 'single cell
organisms' vs 'body cells' we just drew the 
boundaries differently in constructing the
(scientific) model. "Self" of a model?...

Judith, I hope to settle my computer-programs and
restore the continuity of reading the 
listposts, when I may contribute more 'to the point'
reflections. 

Thanks for your patience

John M
***


Hi John,
 
It's hot here, too.
I have to tell you that, in my opinion, you have
misunderstood just about everything I've said,
relating to the discussion at hand.  I have never been
hold hostage by  the "cell" model. Nor have I (unlike
you, I might add) drawn any "final conclusions". I
don't know if you've ever watched any of the original
Saturday Night Live shows, but... you're doing the
equivalent of going on and on about "violins on
television". However, to make something productive out
of your rant:
 
The discussion is about senescence, or aging--AND
death... which are both hallmarks of living systems.
The discussion is, further, about whether or not these
phenomena are generated at the cellular level even in
a multicellular organism. It's clear that single
celled organisms experience the same two phenomena,
and that individual cells in multicellular organisms
exhibit similar patterns, as well. The questions Jerry
has been asking have to do, it seems to me, with
whether or not the progression of senescence at the
level of individual cells might be a useful model for
comparison and investigation of the same progression
at the organismal level, and vice versa.
 
Senescence is a subject that Robert Rosen did quite a
bit of work in, over his career. Since aging and death
are part of life and living, these phenomena are very
much the province of biology. He had very definite
opinions about the causal basis of it: It has to do
with the nature of Anticipation and anticipatory
system control. In his view, senescence is a
consequence of the interaction between the "internal
predictive models" and the behavior of the actual
contexts that the models are supposedly referring to.
Specifically-- they begin to bifurcate from one
another, as he put it. The contexts which are
represented in such internal models have not been
studied by very many people but logic suggests that
they must, at the very least, include the internal
"self" context and the external (non-self)
"environmental" context as well as aspects of how the
two interact with each other over cycles of time.
 
My interpretation of how Robert Rosen's work may apply
to Jerry's question is this: If we agree that each
cell in a multicellular organism must have the same
set of contextual models, then the "self" model (even
at the cellular level) is going to be that of a
multicellular organism. In other words, individual
body cells would not have the same "self" behavioral
entailments as single-celled organisms would. I'm not
sure how this would impact the use of a body cell's
patterns as a model for the patterns of the whole
organism, but I tend to think that it would be better
to construct such a model based on single-celled
organisms and their aging/death patterns. At least in
that case, the "self" context would be analogous.
 
Incidentally, it is worth noting that all organisms
seem to have more than their own individuality encoded
as "self"-- there's clearly a species aspect to the
definition of "self." This is more visible in organism
species which are dependent on sexual reproduction
because each gender clearly has the other encoded into
it as well. What this means is that if a species has
two genders, any individual organism isn't really
"whole".
 
Judith