What do you think?
I think its to much reading for a Saturday afternoon
What is an organism? Sounds like the question he is really asking is why is life or the life force different from a machine. Its an odd question to me.
A strong "proof" that the human body and human spirit are two different things.. as I speculate..
The human body can and does cease to operate often..
The spirit does not..
I liked it. But I'm not sure I would call the Earth an organism. Anyway, the argument is pretty good and it led me to these ....
THE PHYSICS AND MATHEMATICS OF THE SECOND LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS
Caratheodory's Principle and the Existence of Global Integrating Factors Abstract. A proof is given of a theorem on the integrability of Pfaffian forms which is used in Caratheodory's approach to thermodynamics. It is pointed out that Caratheodory's original proof of the existence of entropy and of absolute temperature is incomplete, since it fails to take into account the local nature of this theorem. By combining the theorem with the results of BTJCHDAHL and GBEVE on the existence of continuous empirical entropy functions, it is shown that the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics imply the existence of a globally defined differentiable empirical entropy function for every simple thermodynamic system. This result supplies the missing step in Caratheodory's argument and makes a separate proof of the principle of increase of entropy unnecessary.
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An advantage of this approach is that no separate proof of the principle of increase of entropy is required [3], since the true entropy is a strictly increasing function of the empirical entropy obtained here.
In section 2 we demonstrate the existence of a continuous (global) empirical entropy σ by methods similar to those of BUCHDAHL and GKEVE [6], but without assuming the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The First and Second Laws are introduced in section 3 together with certain supplementary smoothness assumptions, and it is shown that a differentiable local empirical entropy can be defined in the neighbourhood of each point of M. The construction of a differentiable global empirical entropy s is finally accomplished in section 4.
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Since g is a strictly increasing function it follows that the C°° map s = go a of M onto {(0, oo), <$} is a C°° global empirical entropy on M. Moreover s has no critical points, i. e. ds never vanishes. For s may be expressed on each set V of the open covering i^ of M as a strictly increasing C°° function of the corresponding C°° local empirical entropy sv, and dsyis everywhere non-zero on V. It follows from (E) that ψ = λds, where λ is an everywhere non-vanishing C°° function on M whose reciprocal is thus a global integrating factor for ψ.
Some of the characters in the paper are not rendered correctly above so you must read the paper to see what they are, and I hope I did't screw up anybody's arrow 3 because of the bad rendering.
As an "aside", Rosen hits a few "sore" points, namely, "meaning" and "information" which involve arrows 3, 2, and 4.
Truly organisms are not the sum their parts.
And therefore mathematical models (reductionism) cannot be built to simulate what is observed.
A complex system falls outside the formalism called the Newtonian Paradigm. That is not to say that complex systems cannot be seen as machines for limited kinds of analysis. This is, in fact, what traditional science does. Using Rosen’s general characteristics to separate the two kinds of objects, we see that complex systems contain semantic aspects which cannot be reduced to syntax. Therefore they are not simulatable even though, when viewed as machines, the machine model is simulatable. They have no largest model from which all other models can be derived. This is simply because complex systems, by their very nature, require multiple distinct ways of interacting with them to capture their qualities. Their models are now distinct. Analytic models, which are expressed mathematically as direct products of quotient spaces are no longer equivalent to synthetic models which are built up from disjoint pieces as direct sums. Using this formulation, every synthetic model is an analytic model, but there are analytic models which are not synthetic models. In other words, these analytic models are not reducible to disjoint sets of parts. This is a most profound distinction and requires some elaboration, for in it lies the essence of the failure of reductionism. In the machine, each model analytic or synthetic, is formulated in terms of the material parts of the system. Thus any model will be reducible and can be reconstructed from its parts.
This is not the case in a complex system. There are certain key models which are formulated in an entirely different way. These models are made up of functional components which do not map to the material parts in any one-to-one manner. The functional component itself is totally dependent on the context of the whole system and has no meaning outside that context. This is why reducing the system to its material parts loses information irreversibly. This is a cornerstone to the overall discovery Rosen made. It captures a real difference between complexity and reductionism which no other approach seems to have been able to formulate. This distinction makes it impossible to confuse computer models with complex systems. It also explains how there can be real “objective” aspects of a complex system that are to be considered along with the material parts, but which have a totally different character....
A previous article raised a similar point in retrospect, that the biological cell developed maintenance and repair functions before it could have been aware of - or anticipated - the need for them.
As MHGinTN mentioned earlier, the phenomenon points to a non-linear temporal element. Or as hosepipe mentioned earlier, the existence of spirit independent of flesh.
Bottom line, even at the lowest levels, life itself cannot be reduced to parts which can be mathematically summed and modeled to simulate actual life. The whole is not equal to the sum of the parts.
Stanley Jaki noted that although Newton was a Christian, he wasn’t Christian enough to not ‘worship’ the laws he had discovered, thereby unwittingly paving the way for philosophical monism to eventually drape itself in the banner of ‘science.’
Monism being like a coin, one side is materialism, the other pantheism. The Pharoahs, Epicurus, Weishaupt, Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, & Stalin were materialists. The Roisicrucians, Fabianists, Nietzsche, and Hitler were pantheists.
Materialism denies the spiritual and says everything is the product of nature or matter, which is why materialists find they must deny not only man’s soul, but mind, ideas, memory, reason, conscience, etc., for all are of the immaterial (metaphysical) realm. But then, so are theories, numbers, and much else of primary importance to the doing of science. Deny the reality of mind, and you’ve denied the reality of science. The author of the posted article is cautiously pointing to this truth.
Pantheism of the Idealist type denies matter and says everything is but a manifestation of spirit.
For a long time now, many materialists have been quietly moving laterally from materialism to pantheism (Cosmic Humanism, Postmodernism, New Age). Why? Because they are spiritually starved and seek a source for mind.
Betty asked: Do we have a potential “paradigm shift” on our hands here?
Yes, we do. It’s the flip-side of materialism coming at us full speed. And the Cosmic Humanists are ‘channeling’ the spirit realm. Even Gorbachev has succumbed to the dark Lord Maitreya. Barbara Marx Hubbard, powerful UN insider, has a spirit-guide who tells her we must ‘forgive Lucifer...our brother.”
If we thought materialism was bizarre, we’ve seen nothing yet.