Note: this topic is from . Thanks djf.
Posted on 07/19/2009 7:46:56 PM PDT by djf
LOL and so do I!
On the other hand, its late development might have been too much "philosophy of science" for our scientist correspondents to find interesting or worth their time. And so the conversation just naturally peters out....
My late ruminations on these issues have been inspired by Bohr, Schrödinger, and especially Robert Rosen, the mathematician/theoretical biologist who founded what has become known as relational biology. [He passed away at age 64 in 1998.] So as a kind of "swan song," I thought it might be fun to post what Rosen's daughter, Judith, had to say about her father's work. Elsewhere she declared that Rosen did not publish completely on the work he was doing. Here's what Judith had to say, in a private communication subsequently made public:
Robert Rosen never said that we can't make a machine that repairs itself or that reproduces itself. He simply said that those machines are not and cannot be alive. The entailment structure underlying the behavior of any self-repairing/replicating machine is entirely different from that of living organisms. The difference between such simulations of life and actual living systems has to do with what entails the repair capability — and with the simultaneous presence of the capability of metabolism — and with what entails IT as well. [Ed. Note: such entailments are what is meant by "final causes."]Pretty provocative statement, IMHO!!! Personally, I would find it interesting to "chat it up."Bear in mind that RR defines "machine" in a very particular way. So by that definition, we will never create a living "machine" — however, that does not mean that he felt it was impossible to create living systems. He told me himself that he was pretty sure he could do it. In that event, what has been created is not "a machine" — regardless of what it is made out of. It's an organism.
The organization of a machine, by definition, is not complex; it's what he referred to as "simple" (regardless of how complicated it might be — this is the difference between his definition of complexity and complicatedness). In contrast, the organization of any living organism is extremely complex. Complexity, as a "measure" of organizational type, is not about size or about structural intricacy, it's about the nature of the organization itself and what that multiplicity of relational interaction, cohesion, and dimension can generate in terms of material and temporal effects, etc. It's not important what the material aspects are, where living systems are concerned. It's about all the interactive relational stuff giving rise to effects and behaviors that none of those material parts would/could ever be capable of on their own. That's why it is often said that a complex system is "more than the sum of its parts". How else can it be explained that we can fully measure the material ingredients of any living organism we choose, and yet no matter how we try to combine those ingredients, the result is not a living organism?
Please invite whomever has asked this question to contact me if there are further questions, all right? I'd be surprised if there aren't, and I'd very much like to talk over why these things are so."
But if chirping crickets rule, then so be it.
Thank you ever so much, dearest sister in Christ, for writing!
It makes me sad that we don't have a rigorous opponent to flesh this out. Considering his expertise in artificial intelligence and mathematics per se, tortoise would have been a great correspondent on this very claim by Rosen.
Doctor Stochastic would have had a lot to say, too, no doubt - and RadioAstronomer and RightWingProfessor. Sigh... I miss them all.
Emphasis mine on the poison pill to parrot biological life (its entailing of semantics:)
Thank you oh so very much for all of your wonderful insights, dearest sister in Christ!
Oh, and so do I, dearest sister in Christ! The emphasis here being on rigorous.
For some strange reason, they left in a "huff." And I've been truly missing them ever since. For they would have been the "go-to" guys on questions precisely of this nature.
Well, may the Lord bless them, wherever they are nowadays.
Thank you ever so much for writing, dearest A-G!
Which, unfortunately for them, relieves them of the heavy work of identifying and questioning scientific assumptions -- work that was so fruitful for the likes of Einstein, and Bohr. It is only by such questioning that great discoveries are made; all too often (and I count myself in this), we remain comfortably within "what is known." We sometimes do this even when it is clear that we need not; or indeed should not.
I haven't seen Physicist around for a long time, but as far as I know he's still a Freeper.
What being alive is... could be a totally spiritual question..
Could be that “the flesh” is organic machinery...
Even if the flesh can re-produce it can still be machinery..
What alive is... would still be a valid question..
Since an atom is not little balls revolving around other little balls, an allusion.. “Life” could also be a non allusion.. being spiritual.. and not fleshly at all..
Heaven and Hell appear to be populated by spiritual beings..
Not fleshly ones.. that need gender, grooming, food, bathrooms, medicine, clothing, mirrors, razors, makeup, etc, etc, etc..
Note: this topic is from . Thanks djf.
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