Re: Abiogenesis

Some real scientists' take on emergence and reductionsism:

1) "In The End of Science: Facing the Limits of Science in the
Twilight of the Scientific Age (24), John Horgan argued that science
was in a sense a victim of its own success: that all the really
interesting and soluble problems have already been solved and all that
remained was to fill in the boring details. The book hit a nerve, and
the storm of controversy that followed has contributed to the “culture
wars” that were raging through the 90’s. One of the most eloquent
responses was given by Robert Laughlin, a Stanford University theorist
who shared a Nobel Prize in 1998 for discoveries in condensed-matter
physics, and David Pines, a theorist at the University of Illinois and
Los Alamos National Laboratory. In an article provocatively entitled
“The Theory of Everything,” published in the January 4, 2000 issue of
the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they responded
that “Horgan’s book might more properly have been called The End of
Reductionism, for it is actually a call to face the truth that in most
respects the reductionist ideal has reached its limits as a guiding
principle (…) The end of reductionism is, however, not the end of
science, or even the end of theoretical physics (…) The central task
of theoretical physics in our time is no longer to write down the
ultimate equations but rather to catalogue and understand emergent
behavior in its many guises, including potentially life
itself.” (http://www.metanexus.net/conferences/pdf/conference2006/
Jargodski.pdf)

Note the phrase: "...face the truth that in most respects the
reductionist ideal has reached its limits as a guiding principle " .
And he *is* a physicist and you are not. Hmmm!

2) "As one ascends the levels of organizational complexity, from
inanimate matter to multicellular organisms, one clear trend is the
growing freedom from physical limitations. Just a few examples will
suffice. Living organisms locally violate the trend toward increasing
entropy by maintaining themselves as islands of order. Warm-blooded
animals, such as mammals and birds, maintain a constant body
temperature regardless of the temperature of the surroundings. We
differ from animals in our relative freedom from the tyranny of
instinct. With our technology –balloons, airplanes, and rockets – we
easily transcend the limitations of the law of gravity without
violating it. The Meissner effect, the spontaneous levitation of a
small piece of superconductor placed above the pole of a magnet, is
another example of what one might appropriately call a physical
miracle. As Robert Laughlin expresses it, “the tendency of nature to
form a hierarchical society of physical laws is much more than an
academic debating point. (…) It renders the most fundamental laws,
whatever they are, irrelevant and protects us from being tyrannized by
them” (Laughlin, Robert B. and Pines, David. “The theory of
everything,” Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 97, Issue 1, 28-31, January 4,
2000.)."
(http://www.metanexus.net/conferences/pdf/conference2006/
Jargodski.pdf) (

Hmmm. Seems like the higher levels are causally efficacious!


3) As mentioned above, "Robert Laughlin, solid state physicist and
Nobel laureate, argues strenuously against the full efficacy of
reductionism in A Different Universe. The physicists who hold out for
a firm reductionism are, like Weinberg himself, largely high energy
particle physicists, seeking that final theory — say string theory."

and

"In short, many, but not all physicists, are giving up on the adequacy
of reductionism alone as a scientific principle to explain the
properties of the world. In its stead a new scientific world view is
just starting to come into view: Emergence." (http://www.edge.org/
3rd_culture/kauffman06/kauffman06_index.html)

The referenced article by Kauffman details life and agency natural
selection and consciousness as ontologically emergent, for example:

"In short, Darwin's natural selection is a new law operating on the
level of self reproducing entities with heritable variation,
regardless of the physical underpinning. In contrast to Weinberg's
claim, here the explanatory arrows point upward from molecules to the
evolution of living systems of molecules via natural
selection." (http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/kauffman06/
kauffman06_index.html)


4) Philip Anderson said: "

the ability to reduce everything to simple fundamental laws … implies
the ability to start from those laws and reconstruct the universe. …
At each level of complexity entirely new properties appear. …
Psychology is not applied biology, nor is biology applied chemistry. …
[T]he whole becomes … very different from the sum of its parts.

Nearly 30 years earlier, Erwin Schrödinger made a similar point [2].

"[L]iving matter, while not eluding the 'laws of physics' … is likely
to involve 'other laws …,' hitherto unknown, which … will form just as
integral a part of [its] science.

and:

"Rendel’s Game-of-Life Turing machine is a level of abstraction
implemented using the Game of Life rules. Game-of-Life Turing machines
are also epiphenomenal. But once it’s determined that a Turing Machine
can be implemented as a Game-of-Life level of abstraction, the laws of
computability theory apply. And computability theory is not derivable
from the Game of Life rules. Thus while not eluding the Game of Life
rules, new properties appear at the Turing machine level of abstraction
—just as Anderson and Schrödinger said.

Furthermore, conclusions about Turing machines can be extended to
conclusions about the Game of Life. Because the halting problem is
unsolvable, it is unsolvable whether an arbitrary Game of Life
configuration will ever reach a stable state. Call this “downward
entailment”—not quite downward causation, but close.
"

and further: "reducing away a level of abstraction produces a
reductionist blind spot. No equations over the domain of Game-of-Life
grid cells can describe the computation performed by a Game-of-Life
Turing machine unless the equations themselves model a Turing machine.
The laws that characterize the regularities at a level of abstraction
become meaningless when the abstractions are defined away.
"
(Communications of the ACM. Reductionism, emergence, levels of
abstractions, and generalized evolution. Russ Abbott Computer Science,
California State University, Los Angeles)

Hmmm; stripping away the abstractions (or the approximations) via
reduction becomes a meaningless endeavor.



5) "When reflecting on the conceptual usage of the term "emergence,"
Deamer said that the emergence of life from non-life should be
considered a rigorous case of ontological emergence (or strong
emergence), in which something truly novel did come into the universe.
Life cannot be explained reductively by physics alone and thus should
not be considered a case of mere epistemological (or descriptive, or
weak) emergence. " (http://www.esalenctr.org/display/confpage.cfm?
confid=18&pageid=133&pgtype=1)

6"To help clarify some of the muddle over the term "emergence," Evan
Thompson mentioned an article by Michael Silberstein ("The Search for
Ontological Emergence," Philosophical Quarterly, 1999), in which
Silberstein claims that ontological emergence entails an irreducible
relational holism. An ontologically emergent phenomenon cannot be
analyzed into "element A and B" and the extrinsic relationships
between them. Instead, in ontological emergence, A and B are definable
only by virtue of the fact that they are related to each other, and
the relations that define the system are not analyzable in terms of
the intrinsic properties of the constituent parts. Silberstein cites
quantum entanglement as the strongest example, because the wholeness
of the entangled system cannot be analyzed reductively to the separate
electrons without violating Einstein’s special theory of relativity.
(If entanglement is reductively explained by the forces transmitted
between parts, then a signal moving faster than the speed of light
must carry the information between the parts.) If we preserve special
relativity, then there must be an irreducible relational holism at the
quantum level (what philosophers call "mereological emergence").
" (http://www.esalenctr.org/display/confpage.cfm?
confid=18&pageid=133&pgtype=1)

6)"Kauffman turned to his theory concerning the collective
autocatalysis of life. The core idea Kauffman has developed over
several years of research is that the ratio of total molecular
reactions to total molecules will increase over time, eventually
leading to the spontaneous formation of giant webs of molecular
reactions (reaction graphs). This collective auto-catalytic set is
called a first-order phase transition. According to Kauffman, it is an
example of strong or ontological emergence: a collective phenomenon (a
chemical reaction graph) emerges from a random chemical soup. (To
date, this collective auto-catalytic emergent effect has been
demonstrated in sequences of proteins by Reza Ghadiri.) " (http://
www.esalenctr.org/display/confpage.cfm?confid=18&pageid=133&pgtype=1)

7)" Kauffman concluded by citing a few examples that highlight the
failure of strong reductionism. First, he claimed that it is
impossible to pre-specify the entire list of possible chemical systems
derivable or evolve-able from the chemistry of the early earth. The
evolution of new chemical species is another example of symmetry
breaking. Kauffman speculates in his book Investigations (Oxford,
2000) that there is a chemical "adjacent possible" (or space of new
possibilities) into which the earth’s chemistry has consistently
expanded. The inability to pre-specify all possible chemistries could
be a mathematical statement (a version of Gödel’s theorem) or an
empirical statement based on observation of the history of life on our
planet.

Second, Kauffman stated that as new environments arose in the history
of the earth, new functions became possible in those environments—and
there was, and is, no way to know all those possible functions until
they arise. All new functions are environment-specific. For example,
at some point in the history of squirrels a baby squirrel was born
with flabby skin. One day that flabby squirrel spontaneously realized
a new function: the ability to use the extra skin to fly from branch
to branch. A new function emerged that could not have been pre-
specified. In short, Kauffman suggested that our evolving biosphere
seems to be inherently creative, and the limits of this creativity are
unknown in advance. This means that everything in the universe cannot
be explained reductively by physics alone. Nor, Phil Clayton added, do
all functions exist in some disembodied Platonic space of latent
potentials.

Terrence Deacon commented that a key question to address is whether
there is a definitive way to describe all pre-adaptations (called
"exaptations" by Stephen J. Gould) in advance. Most (or all?)
explanation of a function is post hoc, happening after it has been
recognized as a function. Deacon emphasized that function is always
about a relationship to what it is not: a function is always
constituted by its relationship to things in the environment. There
are no functions in isolation. (See Deacon’s "third-order
dispositions" for more on this.)

Kauffman said that if we cannot pre-specify all possible functions,
then the universe and biosphere are non-algorithmic. The biosphere
keeps evolving through the use of unanticipated pre-adaptations/
exaptations. The epistemological strategy of reductionism to the laws
of physics simply does not work to describe such robust biological
creativity.

Telmo Pievani pointed out a further extension of Kauffman’s argument.
He suggested that the adjacent possible may be even larger than
Kauffman thinks because if we take into account all the effects of
every function, then there is an infinite possibility space of those
effects. Along with the propagation of new functions, there is a
continuous propagation of their effects as well. These too are not
derivable algorithmically. " (http://www.esalenctr.org/display/
confpage.cfm?confid=18&pageid=133&pgtype=1)

8) "This paper first shows that the importance attached to the micro-
level rests on notions of scientific explanation that are
philosophically problematic. Then, drawing on the theory of emergence
and combining it with a scientific realist stance on the ontological
status of causal entities, this paper argues that there are good
grounds for rejecting empiricist and reductionist arguments in favor
of those which take full account of emergent properties in the
international system." in Reductionism, Emergence, and Explanation in
International Relations Theory, (http://www.allacademic.com/meta/
p_mla_apa_research_citation/2/5/2/7/2/p252728_index.html)



9) "Paul Humphreys also rejects the general suitability of the formal
relation of supervenience of basal conditions to emergent features,
and instead favors a metaphysical relation he terms “fusion”:
“[Emergent properties] result from an essential interaction [i.e.
fusion] between their constituent properties, an interaction that is
nomologically necessary for the existence of the emergent property.”
Fused entities lose certain of their causal powers and cease to exist
as separate entities, and the emergents generated by fusion are
characterized by novel causal powers. Humphreys emphasizes that fusion
is a “real physical operation, not a mathematical or logical operation
on predicative representations of properties.”

To explain the dynamics of fusion, Humphreys makes use of the notion
of levels:

There is a hierarchy of levels of properties L0, L1, …, Ln, … of
which at least one distinct level is associated with the subject
matter of each special science, and Lj cannot be reduced to Li, for
any i < j.
He also assumes a Kimian event ontology, where events are property
instantiations at a time. Events, so understood, are the relata of
causation. (When Humphreys speaks of “property instances,” we take it
that he is referring to Kimian events, not tropes.) Humphreys formally
represents events as follows: Pmi(x ri) denotes an i-level entity
(i.e., xr) instantiating an i-level property (i.e., Pm), for i > 0.
Properties and entities are indexed to the first level at which they
are instanced. Now let “*” denote the fusion operator. If Pmi(x ri)
(t1) and Pni(x si)(t1) are i-level events (i.e., the event of x r's
exemplifying Pm at t1, etc.), then the fusion of these two events,
[Pmi(x ri)(t1)*P ni(xs i)(t1)], produces an i+1-level event, [Pmi*P ni]
[(xri)+(x si)](t2), which can also be denoted as Pli+1[(xri)+(x si)]
(t2). The fusion operation is not necessarily causal, but it is a
diachronic, dynamic process.[8]

The key feature of a fused event [Pmi*P ni][(xri) + (xsi)](t2) is that
it is a unified whole, in the sense that its causal effects cannot be
correctly represented in terms of the separate causal effects of its
constituents. Moreover, within the fusion the original property
instances Pmi(x ri)(t1) and Pni(x si)(t1) no longer exist as separate
entities and they do not have all their i-level causal powers
available for use at the i+1-level. (But note that the objects
themselves will often retain their separate identities, e.g., [(xri) +
(xsi)] in the example of fusion above.) Properties that undergo fusion
do not realize the i+1 property instance, as supervenient, realized
properties would be co-present with subvenient properties. Rather, in
the course of fusion the basal conditions become the i+1 property
instance. For this reason, supervenience cannot obtain, as the basal
conditions do not co-exist with the emergent feature
" (Humphreys, Paul (1996). “Aspects of Emergence,” Philosophical
Topics, 24(1), pp. 53-70.
Humphreys, Paul (1997a). “How Properties Emerge,” Philosophy of
Science, 64, pp. 1-17.
Humphreys, Paul (1997b). “Emergence, Not Supervenience,” Philosophy of
Science, 64, pp. S337-S345.)


10) "The concept of downward causation poses an alternative to
reductionism within philosophy. This view is developed and explored by
Peter Bøgh Andersen, Claus Emmeche, Niels Ole Finnemann, and Peder
Voetmann Christiansen, among others. These philosophers explore ways
in which one can talk about phenomena at a larger-scale level of
organization exerting causal influence on a smaller-scale level, and
find that some, but not all proposed types of downward causation are
compatible with science. In particular, they find that constraint is
one way in which downward causation can operate. The notion of
causality as constraint has also been explored as a way to shed light
on scientific concepts such as self-organization, natural selection,
adaptation, and control" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductionism)

11) Phenomena such as emergence and work within the field of complex
systems theory pose limits to reductionism. Stuart Kauffman is one of
the advocates of this viewpoint.[11] Emergence is strongly related to
nonlinearity.[12] The limits of the application of reductionism become
especially evident at levels of organization with higher amounts of
complexity, including culture, neural networks, ecosystems, and other
systems formed from assemblies of large numbers of interacting
components. Symmetry breaking is an example of an emergent phenomenon.
Nobel laureate P.W.Anderson used this idea in his famous paper in
Science in 1972, 'More is different'[13] to expose some of the
limitations of reductionism. The limitation of reductionism was
explained as follows. The sciences can be arranged roughly linearly in
a hierarchy as particle physics, many body physics, chemistry,
molecular biology, cellular biology, ..., physiology, psychology and
social sciences. The elementary entities of one science obeys the laws
of the science that precedes it in the above hierarchy. But, this does
not imply that one science is just an applied version of the science
that precedes it. Quoting from the article, "At each stage, entirely
new laws, concepts and generalizations are necessary, requiring
inspiration and creativity to just as great a degree as in the
previous one. Psychology is not applied biology nor is biology applied
chemistry." ((http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductionism))

12) "Disciplines such as cybernetics and systems theory strongly
embrace a non-reductionist view of science, sometimes going as far as
explaining phenomena at a given level of hierarchy in terms of
phenomena at a higher level, in a sense, the opposite of a
reductionist approach" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductionism)


13) A Baker's Dozen: "From the perspective of nonlinear science, it is
argued that one may
accept physicalism and reject substance dualism without being forced
into
reductionism. This permits a property dualism under which biological
and mental
phenomena may emerge from intricate positive feedback networks,
involving
many levels of both the biological and cognitive hierarchies." (Alwyn
Scott
Reductionism Revisited) (http://personal.riverusers.com/~rover/
RedRev.pdf)


Sorry Don/Curt/Tim, but your anti-emergence arguments stand on
intellectual quicksand; there is no bottom to reduce to and the pseudo-
bottom that now exists cannot predict (indicative of the explanatory
prowess of a theory) any of the many emergent phenomena called to your
attention, your naive hand-waving notwithstanding. And since you
claim chemistry and biology are mere abstractions, you have a causal
efficacy issue aas well
Emergence (strong emergence) depends in part on novel relations that
arise *not just between parts, *which reductionism attemtps to capture
but does not do so adequately), but also and importantly, * between
the whole's processes and charateristics and the parts* (e.g.,
constraints and ordering parameters.)

I wonder if any of you are interested in learning or will mouth
dogmatic nonsense and bull*** in reply as you are all wont to do.



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