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I do recall that somewhere in Rosen's relational diagrams there's some "chasing" going on. The fact is, however, I don't now recall the details of Rosen's argument.

Please give me a page cite, dearest sister in Christ? I'd like to revisit that very much. I think that's key to understanding of how Shannon Communication Theory "dovetails" with the Rosen theory.

Sure, I'd be glad to. The concept is introduced here (underline emphasis mine) and is discussed a few pages later:

It cannot be stressed too strongly that, in these considerations, the hardware f and the flows it induces on software are fundamentally different things; they encode entirely different aspects of the natural system they model. I have tried to make this clear by exhibiting the encoding itself in various ways; I will try one last time by rewriting [9B.6] in terms of the modeling relation itself; see section 3H above. In terms of that discussion we should think of the right-hand box (i.e., the model) as being the form shown in figure 9B.4. That is, all of the states (i.e., hardware plus software) go inside the box, as does the flow from input to output. The generation of that flow by the hardware (i.e., the black arrow) is what sits outside the box as the inferential structure, as indicated. I discuss some of the causal correlates of this picture in subsequent sections.

In any case, we have passed with some difficulty from a natural system that is a machine to a formal representation of it, of the form [9B.6], or, in abbreviated form, [9B.5]. This is what I shall call a relational model of the machine. As we see, there does not seem to be much left of the machine itself in this version of it. For instance, we see no explicit encoding of time, have no dynamics in the diagram. The diagram does, however, embody the basic polarity of the machine, the progression in time from afferent to efferent, from input to output. This will turn out to be the essential temporal feature for us, not time divided into minutes and seconds, but time encoded as a chase through a diagram.

Robert Rosen, “Life Itself”, pgs 222-223

For Lurkers: Shannon's Mathematical Theory of Communications is the foundation theory of the the field of Mathematics called "Information Theory."

Thank you so much for sharing your insights, dearest sister in Christ!

This will turn out to be the essential temporal feature for us, not time divided into minutes and seconds, but time encoded as a chase through a diagram.

In other words, in Rosen's model it is counterproductive to think of time as reducible to a series of discrete, "quantized" steps moving irreversibly from past to present to future. Instead, we are invited to think of time in terms of flow — or as Rosen puts it on pages 222–223, i.e., with respect to a class of material objects called "machines" — of time as a transducer of causal events that relate back to a formal cause, the system's "program." Which respecting the class or set of machines is essentially algorithmic in character.

At this point in the text, we have a description of "machine" — a material system in nature classified generically as a mechanism with "special" properties. As such, Rosen regards the machine description as too "impoverished" (a correlative of "special") in the causal entailment department to have much to say about material systems in nature of the class living organisms. (Pardon my redundancy there.)

The figure or diagram in Life Itself that so entrances me is the one that appears on page 251 as [10C.6].

Though conditioned on an "if," it has a certain beauty to it....

Thanks so much for getting back to me with the page cite! I was looking for the "chasing" reference in later chapters, forgetting that in context it referred to Rosen's discussion of machines.

In any case, the Shannon model would seems to apply to whatever case we're looking at. That is, whether from the standpoint is of the machine (e.g., "chasing", as defined by a program or algorithm) or of biological systems (relentlessly non-algorithmic "life"), "efficient cause looking to impress material cause because that's what formal cause specifies and final cause requires" is the rule applying to both. And to inorganic nature also.

I fear these issues are tiresome for most readers, dearest sister in Christ. But I have to say no thinker has excited me more than Robert Rosen since my "discovery" of Eric Voegelen in 1985. :^)

And thus he joins my "pantheon of truly great ones"....

Just to say I think it's time for me to "put a sock in in." :^)

Thank you as ever, dearest sister in Christ, for all your help and able guidance!