>Thanks for the critique.
>
>You wrote:
>>"It seems we still don't agree on definitions. I think this is a relatively
>>minor point here since you say explicitly what you mean by the terms
>>you're using, i.e. the ideas are more important than the words. Anyway,
>>I think most complexologists would consider evolution to be, for the most
>>part, a self-organizing process, especially wrt the origin of novelty.
>
>Here is where the philosophy enters the picture. Without God, the novelty
must arise in and of itself. Since I believe that God designed the phase
space for iterative systems, and designed chemistry itself, I believe that
the information necessary for organization is already contained in the phase
space and was put there by God. In that case, it is not SELF organized, but
organized by an external agent - God. When the program starts at the single
dot form, it is no less complex than when it produces exquisite forms. With
this view there is no violation of the second law of thermodynamics which
Christians are always charging evolution with.
=====================================================================
Here's something funny about the "entropy argument" against evolution. If
one considers information-theoretic entropy instead of Gibbs entropy, then
one finds that evolution results in an increase not a decrease in entropy.
Contrary to what some have claimed, there is no analog to the second-law
for Shannon's entropy. So, there is no fundamental reason to say that
the Shannon entropy must be increasing, just the observation that it
does.
GM==========================================================================
> The complexity, information etc. are already there. Thus, I would view
evolution as a self-ordering process (i..e. a process that displays the
complexity already there)rather than a self-organizing process (i.e. a
process that produces its own organization).
============================================================================
The general processes of mutation, genetic drift, recombination etc.
would increase the complexity of a genome with time, wouldn't they?
GM===========================================================================
>For these reasons, I do not feel compelled to accept the definition of
complexologists. But if you prefer to call this self-organization, I have no
objection and can adjust my terminology. (I think I can adjust. My kids tell
me I am getting older and more set in my ways).
>
============================================================================
At present I would call evolution an organizing process. Here I refer
to evolution in the very broadest sense of biological change over time.
Although most complexologists would call evolution a self-organizing
process, the *self* part of this description is very difficult to
maintain at present, IMHO. I don't think I've yet seen anyone
(except for Yockey) use the word organization by itself. This seems
somewhat strange to me. While a precise definition of organization
hasn't yet been universally agreed on, it is possible to provide
an unambiguous definition that would allow one to measure, from
the structure itself, the degree of organization. Thus, organization
is something that, in principle, is determinable by direct measurement.
Saying something is self-organized is a much stronger claim.
I've been trying to collect definitions of self-organization as I
read the literature. Unfortunately, many use the term without
defining it. Here's one from one of the papers I quoted from
earlier:
Self-organization is to be understood as the spontaneous
emergence of coherence or structure without externally
applied coercion or control.
Following this definition the authors give the following footnote,
which I found very interesting:
Godfrey Vesey points out that in using language such as
'self-ordering' and 'self-organization', we are in part returning
to the Aristotelean view that teleology is internal to matter.
However, we definitely reject a teleology that proposes organisms
are shaped by adaptation to some external purpose or function,
whether it be natural selection or some omnipotent creator that is
postulated to account for it.
-- M.W. Ho and P.T. Saunders, 1986,"Evolution: Natural Selection
or Self-Organization",<Disequilibrium and Self Organization>,
C.W. Kilmister, ed., D. Reidel, 1986, pp. 231-242.
What is meant by "externally applied coercion or control" is clearer
in the following definition by Haken:
For what follows it will be useful to have a suitable definition of
self-organization at hand. We shall say that a system is self-organizing
if it acquires a spatial, temporal or functional structure without
specific interference from the outside. By "specific" we mean that
the structure or functioning is not impressed on the system, but that
the system is acted on from the outside in a nonspecific fashion. For
instance, the fluid which forms hexagons is heated from below in an
entirely uniform fashion, and it acquires its specific structure by
self-organization.
-- Hermann Haken, _Information and Self-Organization_,
Springer-Verlag, 1988, p.11.
I don't particularly like this definition since it doesn't distinguish
ordered and organized, i.e. a crystal could be considered a spatial
structure. Also, his specific example "the fluid which forms hexagons"
would be a self-ordering process.
I suppose I shouldn't complain since at least he defined the term. The
problem is that it's too broad and promotes the confusion whereby
the origin of life or the origin of novelty is considered analogous
to a fluid which forms a hexagonal structure when heated uniformly
from below. BTW, my preference would be that "functional structure"
is a bare minimum. Spatial and temporal might be part of it, but
the structure should be complex and functional.
My main point about the Haken quote has to do with the "self" part
of the definition. I believe this supports what I have previously
argued wrt initial and boundary conditions. If these must be prescribed
precisely, then the system is no-longer *self*-organizing.
Here we reach a fundamental dillema wrt to modeling. Practically
all (or maybe even all) complexity models assume that nature can
be described by repeated "decisions" based on a simple set of rules,
i.e. something like:
X(i)=F[X(i-1)]
To what extent nature can actually be described by equations of this
type is not generally known. What is known is that equations of this
form, when implemented in computer simulations, sometimes give
interesting results which are suggestive of what is observed in nature.
The problem seems to be that if a system truly is complex or chaotic,
then it becomes extremely difficult to ascertain what the underlying
set of simple rules would be. This being the case, it would be even more
difficult to determine the sensitivity of these rules to initial
conditions and thus to decide whether the observed behavior is self-
organizing or not. This takes me back to my statement above. It is
a much easier task to study a structure and determine if it meets
some definition of "organization" since one can determine this from
the structure itself. Saying the structure arises from self-organization
is a much much stronger claim.
Sorry to go on and on. I just want to make one more point at present
and then hopefully say something further about the rest of your post
later. One of the goals of applying these simple models is, of course,
to try to generalize from them to learn something about the way
complex, organizing systems work in the real world. I have mentioned
previously Conway's Game of Life (a cellular automata program), let's
see what generalization we can draw from this. It is possible to have
thingies in this game that one could consider functional. One interesting
example is the so-called "glider factory". This is a curious initial
arrangement of cells which quickly begins spitting out "gliders" at
regular intervals. Gliders are small arrangements of cells which are
constantly re-arranged (by the rules) so that they appear to glide
diagonally across the screen. So, we might say that the glider factory
has a function, to produce gliders. Gliders in turn can be set up to
achieve other functions. But did the glider factory self-organize?
Not according to Haken's definition, since setting up the factory
required a precise specification of initial conditions.
There seems to be a "fan club" [cult? :)] associated with this game.
They have contests which go something like: "try to find an initial
arrangement of cells to do __________". One example that I remember
was a cooperative arrangement between a "glider gun" and an "eater".
An "eater" is an arrangement of cells that breaks up almost any
thingie that tries to approach it. The glider gun doesn't have this
capability, so the eater is positioned in such a way as to protect
the glider gun. Again, it seems obvious enough that this cooperative
arrangement didn't organize itself, but rather that the organiztion
was specified in the initial conditions. A contest was needed to
find someone clever enough to *design* the initial conditions required
to achieve the desired functional arrangement.
So, if this is really supposed to be a model of life, then why hasn't
anyone made the generalization that functional (organized) structures
require finely tuned (designed) initial conditions?
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Brian Harper | "Do not conclude from your apprenticeship |
| that you have nothing left to learn" -- Pascal |
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