I really like hearing and learning from you smart guys, I hears terms and descriptions that I then have to look up to keep up. Per the engine reference, the complexity of a modern engine is something to behold but...a piston is a piston is a piston. The design and function is the same everywhere. U.S.,U.K., Japan, Korea,Russia, doesn't matter. Only the size of the bore and length of stroke changes, and the sb X los is a mathematical formula I can use to determine the cc's or liter size and thus the hp output of the engine. This makes me think that if you guys are right...then out there somewhere a yellow sun class M might be found that has or will, produce the same conditions for life as this little marble of blue that we are on.
Just two quick points for now. I've just rewatched the full new video on Youtube for the second time -- after sleep is the best time for editors to check "final" copy (this ain't final, but it's good enough for debut for now). Liking it a LOT, and it's going to help tie this thread together with at least one other one ("North Woods Adventures"). I'll post a link tonight -- But for now, I'm going to pack a lunch and get outside for an early walk under a totally, 100% azure Maine sky with zero wind and what looks like 40F. Can't wait, so I'll be quick for now. First, IMO, ain't nobody here -- including me -- any "smarter" than anyone else. It's just that some of us know more about this particular topic than others. But others know more about other topics. I can teach you how mitochodria and chloroplasts work, their structure, chemistry and evolution (both evolved from free living bacteria back in the Proterozoic eon about 1.5 bya (billion years ago) via a process now called symbiogenesis, as formalized and studied by my most influential mentor, the late Lynn Margulis, whom I've often called Charles Darwin's equal, because she helped fill in crucially important parts of evolution theory that Darwin did not -- and could not have -- know(n) about. (Mutation and natural selection are necessary but not sufficient to explain biological evolution.) So, yeah, I can teach about all that stuff, and love doing so. (That's part of my motivation for this thread; I just like discussing it.) But if I had to replace a piston in a truck -- whether a '48 Willis jeep or a 2017 F-250 -- forget it. I'd be a total idiot with a bunch of wrenches and parts that I don't know where they go. But fortunately, I know a bunch of very smart mechanics who can do that sort of thing for me, and have a conversation about biology while they work. Second, about this. "This makes me think that if you guys are right...then out there somewhere a yellow sun class M might be found that has or will, produce the same conditions for life as this little marble of blue that we are on." Elementary, my dear Watson. We'll get back to that later, but in this view of life, we are almost certainly not alone in the universe. There are easily billions -- that's with a "b" -- of planets with life on them. Look like us? Maybe, maybe not. But they're out there. Everybody's heard the expression "S*** happens." Biologically, that's a given; defecation is part of dissipation, necessary for keeping that energy gradient going that powers life. But the bumper sticker I have in mind reads differently. Life happens! Speaking of, time for a walk in the woods ...
Ok, I have read a couple articles, short ones, on self-organization. I was thinking in terms of components, while the articles were talking about self-organizing in regards to natural selection. I wasn't to natural selection yet. NS seems simple enough, the fastest, strongest, smartest, has the best chance of survival and passing those traits on to the next generation/iteration. Slow, dumb, and weak becomes food for the former, usually. Plus they seldom get the girl and the opportunity to spawn the next generation of like creatures.
Self-organization and natural selection are -- as you may have already surmised -- different parts of the equation, and in no way synonyms. Natural selection really only occurs among biological systems -- populations of cells (esp bacteria and protists), organisms and even among ecosystems (the latter is a new view and not universally accepted, but a common view among my mentors). Self-organization on the other hand occurs not only in biological systems -- from cells to ecosystems, where its understanding has had the most profound effect (says this biologist who stopped teaching the old ways after learning of it) -- but also in physics (vortices, convection cells, etc), chemistry (notably chemical clocks like the BZ reaction), electronics (neural networks), optics (lasers), neurophysiology (living neural networks), social and political systems, corporations, organizations, cybernetics, Earth system sciences (including climatology), astronomy (stars and galaxies) and other disciplines. It is relatively new as a concept, birthed by Ilya Prigogine in the 1940's (for which he won the Nobel in 1967), but is now one of about 4 or 5 of the main principles of complexity sciences. Along with its flip side -- emergence (the whole is greater than the sum of the parts) -- it makes up probably the most important and profound new principle of science, and is at the core of NET (non-equilibrium thermodynamics). It leads to a corrected interpretation of the most famous law of science -- the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Entropy is out; gradient reduction is in. The basic gist is that when the right kind of matter is exposed to an energy gradient of the right type (that "matches" the type of matter involved), it self-organizes into immensely more complex structures with immensely complex dynamics (behavior) called dissipative structures or dissipative systems. Furthermore, the larger the energy gradient (up to a point), the more complex the dynamics become until a point of turbulence (or deterministic chaos) ensues and organization breaks down. One famous researcher** of self-organization once said that self-organization is that upon which natural selection is privileged to operate, or something to that effect. The upshot of that statement is that biological organization does NOT arise from natural selection or genetic mutation, but from self-organization. (**That research is named Stuart Kauffman; his work has now veered off the main path of NET into what I consider untenable realms; I no longer follow his work, because there are much more parsimonious models afoot than his.) Here is a reasonable introduction to self-organization. A much better description and explanation can be had in the book Into the Cool: Energy Flow, Thermodynamics and Life by Eric Schneider and Dorion Sagan (Carl Sagan's son, and a personal friend). A more concise and definitive (in terms of examples and details) treatment can be found in chapter 1 ** of the book Complexity: An Introduction by Ilya Prigogine and Gregoire Nicolis. (** Those without a strong background in partial differential equations and topology should not expect to get beyond chapter 1 of that book.)
That wiki article is making my head hurt, but I think I get the gist of it. Self organization is a concept that spans many disciplines and systems. Even within systems, there can be pockets of self organization that do so independent of the rest of the system, yet they contribute to the system. The components that are self organizing may do so as a result of random inputs from outside or inside the system. All of this is still subject to the limits imposed on the systems by outside forces such as gravity, magnetism, various physical laws, and the components don't self organize against the limits those forces impose on them. Did I get at least some of it right?
All a good summary except the word "random". Energy gradients that drive self-org are literally the opposite of random. High energy over there (stoked woodstove, sun ...) vs low energy on the other side (cold end of the room, deep space ...). Energy flows "down" the gradient, from high to low. (Think hill; gradient is a metaphor.) It's the gradient that drives self-org. Later, we'll replace the word "random" with "determnistically chaotic". Yes, fundamental difference. Even gradients can be chaotic, but not random. Turbulence is chaotic, but not random. I'll post a link another day. (But now, it's nearly 11 pm on Saturday after a super long day at work, so I'm just going to watch some Vikings.) That is correct. This is science, and physics and chemistry ground science. There's no getting around 9.8 m/s/s, the speed of light, and the 2nd law of thermodynamics. And we all acknowledge that "self-organization" is actually a bit of misnomer. Since it's the energy gradient that drives the organization, and the energy gradient originates outside the system (e.g., the sun), it's actually "other organized". But we're stuck now with the historical origin of the term. So, self-organized it is. The basic idea is this: organization happens spontaneously INSIDE the system -- the 'self' -- as a result of the gradient from outside. The main point: the organization inside the system is not imported from outside. It occurs inside the system using energy from outside. Yep. You're on the right trail.
A river runs down hill, subject to gravity and the steepness of the gradient. Along the way, the water can be turbulent as it bounces, twists, and turns as it is kept within the banks of the river (ignore floods for now), but the turbulence can be predicted on a macro scale and those predictions can be used to chart your course. Would you say that all systems in which self organization occurs, are themselves contained within other systems? Just as people are inside a family, the family is contained in a neighborhood, the neighborhood is in a township or municipality, which is part of a state, which is a part of a country, and the country is part of a planet, planet is part of solar system, solar system part of a galaxy, galaxy part of the universe, universe part of ??????? Each of the larger systems impose organizational structures and limits on the subsystems that are encompassed by them.
Water is a good metaphor to illustrate a gradient. Flowing water is manifesting kinetic energy, as opposed to frozen water or a reservoir which is potential. When water flows downstream -- down the physical, spatial gradient -- it is demonstrating dissipation -- from high to low concentration (until it hits another lake or the ocean). It even demonstrates self-organization in the form of laminar flow, or vortices near areas of turbulence. The only potential problem with the example of water is that the energy involved comes from the gravitational force, which constrains gradient flow spatially, from up to down, never from down to up. An even better example -- and the one I use right after illustrating with water flow in explanations -- is heat from a wood stove. Energy is not emanating from the force of gravity, but is electromagnetic -- mostly from the visible and infrared parts of the EM spectrum. Energy has no mass, so gravity doesn't affect it (much -- the effect on reasonable scales is irrelevant). Yet, it flows "downhill", from the glowing logs in the stove where energy is highest to the other side of the room where it is lowest. Just like water, heat never runs "uphill", only down, into the cool. And yes, your description of nested systems inside of nested systems inside of nested systems is spot on. Those of us who study and teach complexity must -- MUST -- constantly be aware that there is no such thing as independence: everything is both a system inside of larger systems (across several orders of magnitude in scale) and comprised of many other subset systems, which have systems, again across several orders of magnitude in scale. There is feedback not only among systems at a given scale, but up and down the scale with the ones they comprise and those that comprise them, and those connections both constrain and promote dynamics. That's why we use the term complex dynamical system, and for most natural ones, especially living ones that can roll with the punches, change with conditions, complex adaptive systems (CAS), all of which at all scales demonstrate -- or manifest -- self-organized criticality (SOC) with edge of chaos dynamics. Entire books are written about the concepts in this paragraph alone.
A couple of observations: What I did not think about when posting about systems being contained within larger systems is the adjacent systems on the same level and their interaction. While I don't have much interaction with the guy down the block, I do have interaction to some degree with my neighbor, the system adjacent to my property. Even on a larger scale, Michigan and Tennessee don't really have much in the way of effect on each other, but we almost went to war with Ohio many years ago. The interactions of adjacent systems will alter, either to enhance or degrade, the development of those interacting systems. There are red pine trees on the west side of our house, between our house and the neighbor's. Some are on our side of the property line and others are on their side. Because the prevailing winds are from the west we get a lot of needles on the roof and in the gutters. The buildup of needles on the roof have already led to repairs due to the moisture that they hold on the shingles. We would like to bring them down, but the neighbors like them there and some are on their side of the property line. Because these people are adjacent to us, they affect what we can do, while the people a few houses down don't really cause us any problems. There are developing systems that will either be enhanced or restricted by their neighbors. Back to the water example. The Colorado River has water siphoned off all along it's path down toward the ocean, to the point that it never makes it to the ocean. When a system uses resources, those resources are denied to adjacent systems, thus hindering the development of those adjacent systems.
When I asked you if you could explain "complexity or systems sciences" simply, you could or would not. So in my search for a simple definition I came across a paper written by Steven E. Phelan. It is from 2001 and is called What Is Complexity Science, Really? It is not bad. From what I gathered it can very simply be described as a way, or a set of tools to bridge the gap. As he puts it. As an example he uses "from the computer to the world wide web." So "study" of the computer is the same. The "study" of different parts and the internet would be the same. Complexity if you will is just a tool belt to look at all of it as a whole and make predictions. (Again, simplified definition)) And I would imagine Investment firms have been using this exact tool set for quite some time. What does interest me is what you meant by you no longer teach the "old way"? (Feel free to correct this with your exact words, if you feel I have changed the meaning of what you said, it is not my intent.)
Oh, darn! You're right! I spaced that. Got side tracked onto another juicy subtopic before I got back to it. My bad. Not shirking my responsibility, just not paying attention. Thanks for the nudge. And good on you for searching for an answer for context. OK, I'm cooking dinner now. I have some video editing to start on tonight (new footage from down in the ravine this afternoon, including a close up look at hemlock, cedar and all three species of birch), but before I sleep, I'll get back here and offer a prelim version of my definition/description of complexity sciences. Then, we'll shape it from there. I also need to clarify minor but important distinctions between these related terms: "network", "system", "complex dynamical system", and "complex adaptive system", just so we get off on the right track early with our lingo, lest we talk past one another -- which is never any fun.
Ok, as promised, near midnight, not too far from sleepy time ... .. after I spent an hour prepping photos for this post in a related thread, I'm going to post my first draft response to @Theodore's query about complexity. I composed this draft using speaking notes from a slide show that I've offered for 17 years. It's evolved a LOT since the first one; it evolves as my knowledge evolves. But this is the current version of a 3-slide summary description in a 2-hour introductory lecture to a 16-hour course that's an introduction to a 20-course program comprising around 200 hours. The description is not 100% yet and -- importantly, crucially -- is lacking images. We'll get back to those. ______ Complexity sciences — henceforth complexity — are also called system sciences or network sciences. Note that the description is not "science", but "sciences". They have not coalesced into a single science yet, but have made great strides in that direction over the last half-century. I like the term complexity because it’s more descriptive. It doesn’t mean that it's complex or difficult to understand, but that the principles help us understand complex entities ranging from certain kinds of molecules to galaxy super-clusters. The principles of complexity apply to any collection of interacting parts, which are either networks or systems (there's a subtle but important difference involving physical/chemical boundaries that the latter have that the former do not): the molecules of metabolism (networks), genes and genetics (networks), cells (complex adaptive systems), organisms (complex adaptive systems), ecosystems (networks); cities, societies and economics (networks); climate and Earth (verdict still out ...), galaxies and super-clusters (networks), and the universe itself (verdict still out ... ). The terms and principles comprise a conceptual language that explains any and all collections of interacting part regardless of scale, from quanta to galaxies. Once one understands that language and the principles behind them applied to any familiar type of network or system -- whether biological, economic or meteorological, then one understands them intuitively for all other systems studied by any discipline, whether physics, thermodynamics, optics, computational sciences, chemistry, biology, physiology, neurology, ecology, geology, atmospheric sciences, oceanography, Earth system sciences, economics, political sciences, organizational development, electronics, etc, etc. The latter fact is truly remarkable. Each of those disciplines of study have their own language. It’s often difficult for a biologist, geologist and economist to communicate knowledge to each other about their respective disciplines because their languages are so different. With complexity sciences, that barrier is substantively removed. At institutions of complexity, such as Santa Fe Institute, researchers from vastly different fields communicate using this common language. They are widely hailed as both a revolution and a renaissance. They are a scientific revolution on par with relativity theory and quantum physics. But they are a renaissance in the sense that they offer elegant, important and profound changes in our view of nature, Earth, life, organizations and societies and how they work. Yet they are more important than relativity and quantum theory because unlike those disciplines, complexity applies to virtually everything at all scales— from quanta to cosmos — and are far, far easier to understand. They are also relevant in everyday life, including health and healing, corporations and kitchens. The concepts and principles are accessible, often intuitive, even for people with no science in their background. And the associated imagery is visually stunning, and it’s all fun to study, unlike that course back in school called {insert name dreaded high school or college science class here}. A common refrain among my students for two decades has been (paraphrasing in summary), “I always knew this was how everything worked; I just didn’t have the language for it.” Major principles include the following. Each is worth of a 1 - 2 hour lecture/slide show for introduction, and an advanced class for deeper understanding. I offer both. Note: a full treatment and understanding of complexity requires ALL of these elements. Most programs and authors do not include all, and often only a few. Networks, systems, complex dynamical systems & complex adaptive systems (CAS) Links, feedback & non-linearity (<that's the technical stuff< for hard-core math nerds with graduate degrees in mathematics, but I can explain non-linearity way more simply and easily, even to people with little or no math background using astoundingly engaging and powerful imagery. ) Attractors (dynamic states), critical thresholds (‘tipping points”) & phase transitions (think ice to water or water to vapor, but behavior changes in complex dynamical systems Self-organized criticality (Per Bak) aka the edge of chaos Characteristics: fractals and power laws Vs deterministic chaos and sensitive dependence (‘butterfly effect’) Non-equilibrium thermodynamics (NET) and self-organization Energy gradients & fluxes —> self-organization Update 2nd law of thermodynamics — entropy (old) v gradient dissipation and time irreversibility Autopoiesis: a new perspective on metabolism and homeostasis as CAS (I can find no accurate online summary; give me a few hours and I can explain it easily and clearly) Emergence (the whole is greater than the sum of the parts; related to the immense unpredictability resulting from an uncountable number of effects from links between parts) & emergent properties (characteristics of a system that are not fully understood from properties of the parts but consistent with them. Computational systems (Stephen Wolfram's New Kind of Science) including cellular automata, Turing machines, substitution systems, etc; major principle: simple rules can have immensely complex consequences.
^ That was a lot of mental activity.^ Maybe we need musical interlude. I feel OK posting this here, given that this forum is mostly filled w/ crazy people. Even at Tuesday, 1:53 am.
<smiles> Interesting that you bump. I was thinking of this thread this morning, knowing I want to get back to it. It's 9 pm on a Friday night, I've had a long, productive day in the studio (new video equipment arrived yesterday and today -- a Blue Nessie mic that's beyond my expectation, and found my nice vid cam in storage -- and I'm pretty spent now. Watching some Vikings (season 4) after a dinner of ribeye, cheese, butter (slathered on the steak), tomato and pickle with scotch. But all of those foods and drink are products of biology, so hopefully, that will appease for the evening. I'll be back ...
Ok, one night later: Saturday night. After 9 pm on another long, but productive day, so mostly beyond rational thought, after a dinner of left over ribeye, sausage, fried eggs and some sides. Now, I just want to watch season 4 Vikings. (Next, followed by early bed after an early morning.) But I'm just going to put this here as a suggested next topic: muscle. What is it (biologically, chemically, evolutionarily)? I'm 66 now, and noticing that fast twitch fibers (used for sprinting, among other things) need some conditioning -- so that when I'm running across a busy high way I can avoid becoming a greasy spot on the highway. So I did a search and found this. http://www.fitday.com/fitness-articles/fitness/how-to-accelerate-fast-twitch-muscle-development.html Good place to start. From there, we'll deal with slow and fast twitch fibers, actin, myosin, troponin, tropomyosin, ATP, mitochondria (citric acid cycle and chemiosmosis), collagen, myofibrils, sarcomeres, gnomes, elves, dwarves ... Oh, wait, those last three are from fiction. Scratch those. Muscle function is better than fiction. As fascinating at Lord of the Rings, but real, inside you. About 17 years ago, I taught this stuff in college A&P for med students. I'm rusty now, but need to review it for my own health ... and some fun. Good start for reference. I'll get back here by sometime next week. If not, ping me: I've got a lot of professional irons heating in my fire necessary to earn a better living this year, and buy some stuff -- like a new video cam, top and bottom hammock quilts, an ATV, a SxS shotgun, a .223/5.56 mm bolt rifle, a boat ticket to Scotland, and a few other things. For now? Floki vacations in Paris.
Five days later, I've been exercising in the spring thaw. My muscles -- actin and myosin, especially -- are happy. What if we took a major turn here, and talked about geology? I mean, geology and biology are related. Neither exist in current form w/o the other. I suggest that we start here. I'll tie rocks and muscle together later. For now, think about the salts and minerals necessary for muscle contraction and where they come from. Me? I'll have another scotch.
