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Author Topic:   THE SIMPLICITY OF THE COMPLEX SYSTEMS - essay about origin of Life
miosim
Member (Idle past 5678 days)
Posts: 57
From: NH, USA
Joined: 04-07-2007


Message 1 of 9 (393833)
04-07-2007 3:37 PM


I am submitting for a discussion an idea about origin of Life and hope to receive a constructive criticism.
Thank you,
Mark Iosim
http://www.iscid.org/...rs/Iosim_ComplexSystemSimplicity.pdf
Abstract:
In this essay, the widely accepted paradigm that "The whole is more than the sum of its parts" is chalenged. It is also argued that no system properties emerge, but a cumulative effect and interaction in the system just reveals the part’s hidden properties that cause a perception of Emergence phenomena. A system acts as a “litmus paper” and a “magnifying glass” that just reveal the element’s properties not observable otherwise.
To explain the living system phenomenon, it is proposed that Consciousness is a fundamental property of MATTER. According to this hypothesis, Consciousness property is not observable in the non-living equilibrium systems. However if a system steered far enough from an equilibrium and passed the critical point, a non-equilibrium system will emerge that may reveal the property that wasn’t recognized in their elements. This property we call - LIFE.
Edited by miosim, : No reason given.
Edited by miosim, : No reason given.
Edited by miosim, : No reason given.
Edited by miosim, : Minor.
Edited by miosim, : Removed multiple linefeeds.

Replies to this message:
 Message 2 by Admin, posted 04-09-2007 9:34 AM miosim has replied

Admin
Director
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Message 2 of 9 (394021)
04-09-2007 9:34 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by miosim
04-07-2007 3:37 PM


Can you please fix the extraneous linefeeds? When it's readable I'll give it a look.

--Percy
EvC Forum Director

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by miosim, posted 04-07-2007 3:37 PM miosim has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 3 by miosim, posted 04-09-2007 7:12 PM Admin has replied

miosim
Member (Idle past 5678 days)
Posts: 57
From: NH, USA
Joined: 04-07-2007


Message 3 of 9 (394127)
04-09-2007 7:12 PM
Reply to: Message 2 by Admin
04-09-2007 9:34 AM


Percy,
I removed the extraneous linefeeds.
Mark

This message is a reply to:
 Message 2 by Admin, posted 04-09-2007 9:34 AM Admin has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 4 by Admin, posted 04-10-2007 9:55 AM miosim has replied

Admin
Director
Posts: 12998
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Message 4 of 9 (394211)
04-10-2007 9:55 AM
Reply to: Message 3 by miosim
04-09-2007 7:12 PM


I can see now that your opening post is actually two paragraphs. Paragraphs should be separated by a blank line.
In your title, "THE COMPLEX" => "COMPLEX".
In your second paragraph, "passed" => "past".
It sounds like you're actually challenging the idea of emergent properties, and more specifically, the idea of consciousness as an emergent property, but you conclude with "This property we call - LIFE", which confuses the focus once again.
We use this "Proposed Topics" forum to make sure that a topic is clear and focused, but I can't tell which of these three topics you want to discuss:
  1. Is there really any such thing as emergent properties?
  2. Is consciousness really an emergent property?
  3. Is life an emergent property?
Any of these questions alone is worthy of an entire thread. Could you narrow the focus to one of these three questions?

--Percy
EvC Forum Director

This message is a reply to:
 Message 3 by miosim, posted 04-09-2007 7:12 PM miosim has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 5 by miosim, posted 04-10-2007 11:51 PM Admin has replied
 Message 8 by miosim, posted 04-12-2007 11:09 PM Admin has not replied

miosim
Member (Idle past 5678 days)
Posts: 57
From: NH, USA
Joined: 04-07-2007


Message 5 of 9 (394389)
04-10-2007 11:51 PM
Reply to: Message 4 by Admin
04-10-2007 9:55 AM


THE SIMPLICITY OF THE COMPLEX SYSTEMS - essay
Maybe, because I am not sophisticated user, I do not understand what all these mean (...Paragraphs should be separated by a blank line... "THE COMPLEX" => "COMPLEX"...."passed" => "past"....). Are they are some sort of HTML command? Should I read some tutorial how to write a post?
Regarding focusing discussion, it can be broken into more specific subjects that will help to avoid confusion. In a day or two, I will modify the introduction section and will present it for the topics: "Is the whole more than the sum of its parts?"
Mark

This message is a reply to:
 Message 4 by Admin, posted 04-10-2007 9:55 AM Admin has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 6 by Admin, posted 04-11-2007 9:03 AM miosim has replied

Admin
Director
Posts: 12998
From: EvC Forum
Joined: 06-14-2002
Member Rating: 2.3


Message 6 of 9 (394412)
04-11-2007 9:03 AM
Reply to: Message 5 by miosim
04-10-2007 11:51 PM


Re: THE SIMPLICITY OF THE COMPLEX SYSTEMS - essay
miosim writes:
Maybe, because I am not sophisticated user, I do not understand what all these mean (...Paragraphs should be separated by a blank line... "THE COMPLEX" => "COMPLEX"...."passed" => "past"....). Are they are some sort of HTML command? Should I read some tutorial how to write a post?
No, just do the best you can. Since you're beginning your participation here at EvC Forum by starting a thread instead of contributing to existing threads, I have no baseline upon which to judge your thread proposal. Are you rushed and short of time? Is English a foreign language to you? Are you unfamiliar with computers? I don't know any of these things. If your proposal represents a best effort, then it's fine as far as grammar and spelling.
But let me clarify anyway. In the written word and in books, magazines and newspapers, a new paragraph is usually indicated by indentation. Indentation isn't readily available in the on-line world, and so paragraphs are instead indicated by a preceding blank line. This is also very common in technical papers.
"THE COMPLEX" => "COMPLEX" refers to a grammatical error in your title. "Complex systems" is plural, so you wouldn't normally use "the" with it, though there could be contexts in which it makes sense. But I think it would read funny to most English speakers. The "THE COMPLEX" => "COMPLEX" was just shorthand for telling you to change "THE COMPLEX" in your title to just be "COMPLEX".
About "passed" => "past", looking at the sentence again I can see that it can be parsed two different ways, so ignore that one. "Passed" could be a second verb for "system" (i.e., "The system steered and passed..."), in which case "passed" is correct. But if "passed" is part of the verb modifier beginning with "far enough" then it should instead be "past."

--Percy
EvC Forum Director

This message is a reply to:
 Message 5 by miosim, posted 04-10-2007 11:51 PM miosim has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 7 by miosim, posted 04-11-2007 4:56 PM Admin has not replied

miosim
Member (Idle past 5678 days)
Posts: 57
From: NH, USA
Joined: 04-07-2007


Message 7 of 9 (394468)
04-11-2007 4:56 PM
Reply to: Message 6 by Admin
04-11-2007 9:03 AM


Re: THE SIMPLICITY OF THE COMPLEX SYSTEMS - essay
Percy,
Thank you for explanations. I am OK with computer, but English is indeed my second language. However I do not want to have excuse for unclear communication.
Thank you,
Mark

This message is a reply to:
 Message 6 by Admin, posted 04-11-2007 9:03 AM Admin has not replied

miosim
Member (Idle past 5678 days)
Posts: 57
From: NH, USA
Joined: 04-07-2007


Message 8 of 9 (394737)
04-12-2007 11:09 PM
Reply to: Message 4 by Admin
04-10-2007 9:55 AM


Is the whole more than the sum of its parts?
In respond to your suggestion for more focussed discussion I would like to start the topics:
IS THE WHOLE MORE THAN THE SUM OF ITS PARTS?
I have always been intrigued by the fact that such a mysteriously complex system, as a living cell, consists of components - organelles and macromolecules - which behavior have been routinely explained in term of chemistry and physics. My curiosity eventually led me to a hypothesis about emergence of Life, but unfortunately, this hypothesis undermines the widely accepted Holistic paradigm often referred as "The whole is more than the sum of its parts." In this discussion I would like to explain why I have problem with this paradigm.
There are two major radically different approaches to explain living systems - Reductionism and Holism.
According to Reductionism, all properties and the complexity of the system could be derived from studying its parts and their interactions. Reductionism accepts that in many cases it was not currently possible for science to make such deduction and predictions - this shortcoming is a reflection of the state of the art in science. For example, it took thousands of years to reduce the enormous variety and complexity of motions and dynamics around us, to the simple Newtonian mechanics.
During the first half of the 20th century the shift in paradigm occurred. Reductionism, as was concluded, is a limited methodological tool applicable to the simple systems only, but to solve the complex phenomena, like Life, the new Holistic approach is more adequate. Holism declares that the essential properties of a system as a whole could not be explained using properties of its elements, because "The whole is more than the sum of its parts.” According to this paradigm, some systems, especially Biological, are so COMPLEX that their behavior are EMERGENT and cannot be deduced from the properties of the elements alone.
British emergentists of the late-nineteenth century worked out a comprehensive emergentist picture using classical examples from basic chemistry: “When chemical ingredients are mixed together the resultant compounds (Whole) has a property that cannot be found in the original ingredients”. However the underlying chemical reactions in these examples are completely reducible to basic chemistry and physics and nothing unexplained emerges in this case. So, why an explanation of chemical reactions need an Emergence semantic is a mystery to me. Emergence, as scientific category, in my opinion, is appropriate only to designate unexpected and unexplained phenomenon of the system development. However, after being explained, this phenomenon should loose status of Emergence.
Within Holism, Emergence is treated as an objective scientific category, and numerous but unsuccessful attempts were made to scientifically define and even measure it. However, as I see it, Emergence is just a reflection of a subjective human perception. For example, if we ask habitants of some town, that had undergone a significant transformation, to describe these changes, the description depends on whom you ask: one who just came back after being absent many years will describe the changes in term of sudden transformation and emergence, but one who lives there all the time will describe it in term of gradual development.
I have a similar problem with the enormously popular science of Complex Systems that also treats Complexity as an objective and measurable category. For a long time, the numerous attempts to define Complexity were made, but without noticeable result. As with Emergence, the main problem with Complexity is its subjectivity, because it reflects our insufficient knowledge and inability to comprehend observed phenomena or a problem. Therefore Complexity should not be used as an absolute scientific category, but relative to observer only. For example, what is more complex: to build a house, surgically remove an appendix, or solve a linear differential equation? The answer depends on whom you ask - Carpenter, Surgeon, or Mathematician.
My growing suspicion of Holism led me to reexamine evidences supporting this paradigm. However instead of credible evidences, I found the numerous examples that just demonstrate a lock of critical thinking.
For example, according to Holism, “Emergence is associated with dynamic systems whose behavior cannot be predicted from knowledge about the parts IN ISOLATION.” However, it is important to understand that an ISOLATED part will not exhibit any properties at all. When we refer to an experiment on an isolated part, it is actually not isolated. Instead, the part is placed in the controlled environment and is subjected to specific interaction that reveals the property specific to this interaction. A problem arises when the part has a property we do not know about, so we never intentionally subject the part to specific interaction that could reveal this property. If within a natural system this part participates in an interaction that reveals this property, we often claim that this system exhibits new properties emergence.
A good example that demonstrates the properties that are observable only during interaction is electrical charge. We know that an electron possesses an electrical charge, but we cannot observe this property unless the electron interacts with another charged particle. We do not declare that the charge property of the electron emerges during interaction with another charged particle. Instead we know that the electron always posses the charge (whether we observe it or not) and reveals this property only while interacting with another charged particle.
There is, however, a unique case, where the system property indeed could not be predicted from examining its part - this case is the Universal Gravity phenomenon. The gravitational force is the property of elementary particles but it cannot be directly observed, because it is extremely small: for an electron it is equal to 10E-39 of electrical forces. However, this property being accumulated into the macro system starts to play a dominant role in Space. I think that the gravitation force of a macro system could be the best evidence in favor of Emergence phenomenon, and the systems theorists loose their best opportunity by not including it in the foundation of the system theory. Putting aside an irony, the lesson of this example is that by describing properties of a system through the properties of its parts, it is critical to not overlook a property having a very low level of intensity. In general, we never should claim complete knowledge of a part, because we cannot subject it to all possible experimental conditions or observe it in all natural systems.
Another typical “evidence” that laid a foundation of the Emergence paradigm I found in the book “The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems” by Capra Fritjof. The following segment was used to illustrate this concept: “The taste of sugar as a system phenomena could not be found in the carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms that constitute sugar components." In this example the whole was limited to sugar only and the very crucial element of the system is missing - SOMEONE who tastes the sugar and constitutes the sugar taste property.
The majority of examples, the system approach based on, omits the invisible SOMEONE who designed, tests, observes or designates the processes. Without this SOMEONE, the system properties as taste of sugar would not exist at all. Omitting the creator or user of the system is the far most common mistake in the system approach. For example, a complex computer is built of the simple semiconductor components and it seems that the “computational intelligence” of the computer is a new emerging phenomenon, because it cannot be found in its parts. However, the complexity of the computer is also due to Property (complexity) of HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, which was not seen while we were observing the computer. This HUMAN INTELLIGENCE is also one of the system’s component and his/her properties determine the Complexity of the semiconductor components, the complex wiring of logic components, and sophisticated algorithms. In other word, there are no emerging properties in this example and the properties of a computer (Whole) could be reduced to the properties of its elements that include the creators of this computer.
It seems that irresistible attractiveness of the Holistic paradigm causes many reducible to underlining rules phenomena, like Cellular Automaton (CA), to be included into the list of Irreducibly Complex and Emergence phenomena. It is often claimed that CA exhibits symptoms of Emergence phenomenon, because CA may generate a complex, unpredictable pattern that cannot be determined without performing actual computations. If this type of unpredictability is a symptom of Emergence phenomena, any natural number A, resulted from B + C, also belongs to emergence phenomenon, because A is unpredictable without performing an actual calculation!!! While observing the complex pattern of CA, it is important to remember that it results not of a simple rule only, but of applying a very complex tool also - a computer (or human intelligence, if modeling/calculation is performed manually) to reveal the result. Therefore, the complexity of the observable pattern includes also a complexity of a computational process and eventually a human intelligence, not visible while we observe the CA pattern.
Another classic example of Emergence phenomenon is an ant colony. “Despite the limited repertoire of the individual agents - the ants - the colony exhibits a remarkable flexibility in probing and exploiting its surroundings. Somehow the simple laws of the agents generate an emergent behavior far beyond their individual capacities”.
My problem with this example is - what do we know about ant’s individual capacity? What was done to reveal ant’s complexity? Did we examine an assumption that complexity of ant colony is due to accumulated complexity of the individual ants, the same way as the enormous sophistication of the Human civilization is due to a limited intelligence of Human-Beings. By the way, a Human would hardly demonstrate any intelligence, if He or She would be studied and treated the same way as we study bugs in a jar. To reveal an intelligence of any creature we need to create a special circumstance - an intelligent type of interaction that occurs in the social system.
The phenomenon of self-organizing bifurcation dissipative systems and their spatial resemblance with living systems challenges our imagination. These phenomena are widely used as an example of Irreducible Complexity and Emergence. These systems are studied very extensively, however regardless Holistic terminology, these phenomena have being explained (reduced) to the underlying processes of chemistry of non-linear thermodynamics.
I am challenging the Holistic paradigm, not only because of lock of compelling evidences. My biggest concern is that this paradigm, if incorrect, will focus Life sciences in the wrong direction delaying the answer to the ultimate question - What is Life? Over the past hundred of years, holistic approach has produced a large body of theories; however, I did not notice its impact into understanding a living system phenomenon. Instead Holism fills a void between Dead Mater and Life with a metaphysical concept of Emergence and vague terminology.
To summarize my main point I am concluding that: No new system properties emerge, but interactions in the system just reveal the part’s hidden properties. A system acts as a “magnifying glass” and a “litmus paper” that reveals properties of the parts not observable otherwise. This means that a nature of complex things could be reduced* to the nature of sums of simpler or more fundamental things and therefore a WHOLE IS EQUAL TO THE SUM OF ITS PARTS.
*Do not mix it up with the narrow interpretation of Reductionism that reduces to the well KNOWN laws of the Physics and Chemistry”. I will return to this point in future discussions.
Mark Iosim
P.S. I know that I am a lousy communicator, and not only because English is my second language. If you find some questionable words or expressions that make my point unclear, please let me know.
Edited by miosim, : No reason given.
Edited by miosim, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 4 by Admin, posted 04-10-2007 9:55 AM Admin has not replied

Admin
Director
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Message 9 of 9 (394950)
04-14-2007 7:02 AM


Thread THE SIMPLICITY OF THE COMPLEX SYSTEMS - essay about origin of Life in [forum=-5] created from Message 8 of this thread.

--Percy
EvC Forum Director

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