From: Robin Wood <robinwood@genesys.co.uk>
To: "'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Subject: Wave/particle duality- Bohm
Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 19:32:43 +0100
Hey- wave particle duality and Heisenberg! Its just an intuition, but
what if David Bohm was right? What is all this "memestuff" is enfolded
in an implicate order? Is there another "meme dimension"? Plus the one
we now have of recombination and emergence in complex adaptive
systems?
That is pretty mind blowing stuff- what do we do with it?
Dr Robin Wood
-----Original Message-----
From: perpcorn@dca.net [SMTP:perpcorn@dca.net]
Sent: 11 June 1997 22:40
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Subject: Mario: Analog Feedback and Ringing
>Dave Pape wrote:
>
>Timothy:
>> >1.) The idea that cells are the true self-replicators is
empirical. If
>> >you put cells in the proper medium, you get more of them.
>
>> >Cells turn out to be the smallest units that self-replicate.
>>
>> >Cells, however, do appear to be some kind of complicated emergent
from the
>> >Earth's organic chemistry, at least at one period long ago.
>>
>
>> Okay... I think there's theories out there [oh good /citations/,
Dave!]
>> about DNA precursors being things like... nucleotide chains linking
on
>> crystalline clay molecules, and other complicated but
non-biological
>> chemical reactions, all of which have this property of
autocatalysis.
>> Meaning that >= 1 of the products of the reaction set catalyses...
its own
>> production.
>
>Well, indeed there are such theories. They are a nice illustration
of
>our obsession for DNA and gene centered life. Some people look at
it
>the other way around and say that DNA only came in later, after
cells
>(which had no nucleotides whatsoever) had developed. I am already
quite
>convinced (from observable analogies between how culture is evolving
and
>early biology) that this is indeed the case. If you take the point
of
>view of information it it obvious that there was first processing
>(enzymatic and cellular activity) and then code (RNA and DNA).
>Similarly, in culture there were first perceptions and behaviours,
which
>could later be encoded in words, not the other way around.
TP: I tend very much to agree.
>
>> I'd say that such systems are like the audio feedback system I
described.
>> There's a self-referential system, from which an apparently
self-replicating
>> emergent... erm... emerges [sorry- not enough synonyms. Was trying
to avoid
>> saying "skanks forth" :)]. It's the feedback thing that's the
apparent
>> self-replicator... only it's actually a very tight self-reference
in the
>>SYSTEM.
>>
>> And I'm thinking that if cells require a medium, that's like saying
they're
>> a thing, more of which is produced by self-reference in an
autocatalytic
>> system composed of /the medium plus the cells/.
>>
>> Thus, current chemistry, including biological chemistry, would
/still/ be
>> the working of the autocatalytic chemical system that was
bootstrapping
>> before DNA, and cells, were on the scene. Cells are STILL an
emergent of
>> autocatalytic (read self-referential) chemical processes.
>
>Yes (but only biological chemistry). As I said, biology (life) could
be
>considered as a single giant chemical process which took off some 4
>billion years ago when some chemical reactions hooked into each
other.
>
TP: The oneness of the universe all over again. ;-)
There is a parallel in quantum mechanics (QM), from David Bohm as I
remember (it's the library in the head again, Mario!). He proposed
that in
theory one could write one single HUGE Schrodinger equation for
everything
that exists, and QM would now lead us to say that everything depends
essentially on everything else. I have always liked this idea.
I might point out that *Platonic* memes -- by which I mean those memes
that
some people on this list are proposing exist as unobservables, and yet
are
Real in the Platonic or idealist sense -- are distinctly entities
from
classical and not quantum physics. In fact, such memes have a 19th
century
feel about them, for they offer an ontological certainty that
disappeared
in physics around 1925.
The QM version of memetics would be interesting -- if you "observe" a
meme,
that is, "think" it, then the meme changes. This viewpoint implies
that
the meme *cannot* exist independently of the thinker, and that neither
is
in control.
I don't know how Mario feels about such things, but I suspect that QM
needs
to be considered seriously by memeticists.
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===============================================================
This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit