Re: the sum of the parts

On 21 Jan 2006 06:45:25 -0800, in talk.origins , "Nick Keighley"
<nick_keighley_nospam@xxxxxxxxxxx> in
<1137854725.176365.152640@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>Hi,
>
>I'm a little behind with my New Scientist reading (I'm in a club, it's
>everyone *else* that is slow :-) ). So I've only just read "The Sum of
>The Parts" from 2005-03-05. For those who subscribe to New Scientist
>the artical may be found at
>
>www.newscientist.com/channel/fundamentals/mg18524891.000.html
>
>Unfortunatly this is subscription only.
>
>So this is my summary of the artical. All errors are mine.
>
><SUMMARY>
>There are complex systems that appear to be more than the sum of their
>parts. The question discussed in the artical is if such behaviour can
>be derived from the basic laws of phyics applied to the basic
>components or whether it represents the manifestation of something
>genuinely new.
>
>Reductionism explains everything using "bottom level physics". Take the
>
>origin of life if you could factor everything in about the prebiotic
>soup and assuming you have a big enough computer you could in principal
>predict life from the laws of atomic physics, claim the reductionists.
>
>But there are limits to the amount of computation that can be done.
>
>A handful of scientists are claiming that some some complex systems can
>
>only be understood in terms of additional laws or organising pricipals.
>
>Laplace's Demon is an imaginary entity that given the initial starting
>point of the universe could compute its entire history. "This startling
>
>conclusion remains an unstated act of faith among many scientists" [!?]
>
>"and underpins the case for reductionism".
>
>This assumes the demon has unlimited computational power. Computation
>is limited by Heisnburg's Uncertainty principal. A bit flip needs a
>minimum period of time depending on the energy involved. There is also
>the fundamental limitation of the speed of light which resticts the
>rate that information can be moved about. Thermodynamics treats entropy
>
>as the converse of information. This means a physical system cannot
>store more information than is allowed by its total entropy.
>
>Suppose the entire universe had been used as the computer. It can only
>run for 13.5 Gy. Apparently the demon can only have processed 1e120
>bits. No calculation can exceed this limit.
>
>This limit disproves the claim by reductionists that higher organising
>pricipals do not exist. If the low level laws cannot completly
>determine the future state of some system then there are gaps at which
>higher order principals can operate.
>
>Living organisms exceed this computational limit. Consider a small
>protein molecule of about 100 amino acids. That's 1e130 then add in the
>
>shapes of the molecules that's 1e200. Far exceeding the computational
>limit. There must be HOPs.
>
><END SUMMARY>
>
>The limits on computation are by Rolf Landauer and Seth Lloyd.
>The arical is by Paul Davies of The Australian Centre for Astrobiology
>at
>Macquarie University, Sidney
>
>
>So any comments?

Yes, there is a fundamental flaw in the reasoning. Information is not
a property of the Universe, information is only *about* something, it
is a property of our descriptions of things. Things do what they do,
no matter how much information it takes to describe any aspect of
that. AFAWCT photons do not need any QM formula to do what they do,
they just do it. QM et. al. are our models. You could say that
"existence" is that higher (I would love to know how he justifies
"higher") organizing principle. (Of course existence is not a
principle or a property, but that is sort of my point anyway.)


--
Matt Silberstein

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