In layman’s terms, explain Williams’ Autopoietic Model, part v.
Oh indeed, what a fascinating crittur Level (v) is!!! How to explain it? In layman’s terms no less!
Okay, I’ll try the best I can as I see the problem. Though many scientists in so many ways have started paying attention to Level (v), it remains problematical. For it would seem to point beyond all naturalistic explanation. The reason as already mentioned is that information is not “naturalistic,” in the sense of being caused within the “classical domain” of the physical world as we humans commonly experience it (i.e., in terms of three spatial dimensions, and one of time). The problem is, it’s clear biological processes are “informed” processes. So where does the information “come from?” Possible origins might include e.g., a universal vacuum field, harmonics, geometry. But it seems the more immediate problem is how is it communicated to the natural world? That, to me, is the prime focus of ID research.
Figure 3 proposes that Level (v) — inversely-causal or meta-information — “mediates” the contents of a universal biological vacuum field. This is a speculative proposal — and it’s been speculative ever since Sir Isaac Newton first articulated it, over three centuries ago. And in so doing, became the first anticipator of modern field theory in the history of science.
Newton, putting it as simply as possible, evidently thought such a “field” was necessary. And he called its “interface” with the natural world, sensorium Dei.
In the contemporary literature, Newton is often described as an agnostic thinker at best. But nothing could be further from the truth. Newton was a deeply religious man, who believed, not only in God Creator, the Immensitas — who, as creator works towards an intelligent purpose by means of an act of will (for which reason the universe is understandable by intelligent humans in the first place) — but also in God Pantocrator, literally “ruler of the universe” — that is, “the Lord of Life, eternally with His creatures” — one and the same God unifying the creative and sustaining principles of the universe. Meaning: God is not only creator, but also constantly involved in the affairs of the natural world, from its “beyond,” via the sensorium Dei…. (Of course, Christians then and now regard Newton as a heretic; for he eschewed the Trinity — principally on Occam’s Razor grounds.)
Newton’s own mechanics persuaded him that God must act in the world. For he evidently believed that his laws of motion implied the generation of conditions of increasing disorder in the world, such that God would have to intervene periodically to rectify it in order to save it and keep it going.
And so Newton derived the idea of “infinite, undivided Space” as a kind of “repository” for the Immensitas — a universal, extra-cosmic field, or possibly a “timelike” fifth dimension (“timelike” in the sense of having a time dimension that cannot be derived from serial, linear time as human beings normally experience time — that is, as a flow irreversibly moving past to present to future) beyond the four of normal human sense experience. This “timelike” dimension is that in which the supernatural and the natural have on-going communications and thus synergistic relations; and this is what maintains the natural world as a going concern, sustaining it in its evolution toward God’s teleological goal for man and nature.
We’ll call this Newton’s Myth. BTW, I do not disparage the word “myth” here….
But others may do so. Maybe it will help to update the “myth” in terms of work now being done on such profound biological problems. For example, in “The Physics of Collective Consciousness,” Attila Grandpierre — whose cosmological speculation is rooted in quantum field theory, quantum electrodynamics (QED), and information theory — gives an excellent description of what we mean by “inversely-causal information”:
“The evolution of consciousness — as the evolution of the Universe shows us — actually is in contrast to the presently accepted evolutionary theories, which want to build up the whole from the parts. In reality, evolution started from the whole and progressively differentiated into parts, from the timeless-spaceless form (e.g., the ‘implicate order,’ or ‘pre-space’ of David Bohm and John A. Wheeler), through galaxies, through the development of the Solar System and the Earth, the appearance of the biosphere and mankind, until the development of smaller and smaller subsystems of consciousness, until the human individual. ‘Cosmologies of wholeness’ are emerging (see Ernst Laszlo, 1993…). All of the cosmic evolution formed sub-systems within systems. Evolution begins with ‘systems,’ ‘elements’ develop only later on. Every system emerges as a subsystem of a larger, inclusive system. The organization of the sub-system is made by the creator system, and the organization factor acts from within…. This fact assumes that the creator system is in a certain way transformed into the to-be-created subsystem, the ‘whole’ transformed to the ‘part.’ This global-local transformation is a necessary condition of the generation of the new system.” — Attila Grandpierre, “The Physics of Collective Consciousness.” World Futures: The Journal of General Evolution, 48(1–4).Lest anyone object, it seems very clear to me that the ability to process biological information has something to do with “the evolution of consciousness” within Grandpierre’s meaning. Further, Grandpierre’s remarks suggest something like the “form” of the Mandelbrot set to me…. If we can imagine the "creator set" as residing in a universal biological vacuum field, and able to communicate with biological beings, that might help to shed light on some thorny biological problems....
In closing, it seems to me that biological information cannot be a strictly “physical” phenomenon. As Grandpierre points out,
The central thesis of physicalism proclaims the causal closure of the physical. Ashby’s Law (Ashby, 1962) and Kahre’s Law of Diminishing Information (Kahre, 2002) stated that physical systems cannot produce more information at their output than was present at their input. This means that for physical systems, complexity jumps are simply not possible. Therefore the fact that we observe complexity up-jumps here on Earth strongly indicates the presence of life.Don't know if this sheds any light on your problems, randog. But thank you so very much for asking the "most telling" question!The comparison of machines and living organisms can shed light on the nature of biological organization. Once the machine is constructed, its algorithmic complexity is fixed. Even in machines programmed with “learning abilities,” only phenomenal data can be involved, and such data cannot increase algorithmic complexity. In contrast, biological organization is able to increase not only algorithmic, but also genetic complexity, as shown by the blossoming of complexity in plants, animals, and in evolution generally. — Attila Grandpierre, “Fundamental Complexity Measures of Life,” in Divine Action or Natural Selection , Ed. J. Seckbach. World Scientific, 2008, pp. 569–615.