Now when you make the leap from biology to sociology, the questions are so much different, that the answers basic biology can give hardly matter anymore. — ssu

The same applies in between any two levels. The leap between inanimate matter (chemistry) and living organism (biology) is also quite huge, and the questions asked are totally different.

You have a problem as you don't seem to accept that societies are part of the natural world and so are constrained by the same general ecological limits, even while being also radically free to invent new worlds if such worlds are possible. — apokrisis

Did I say that? As if I wouldn't accept that humans are part of the natural World?

And here you see the issue I'm trying to make clear for you. Economics is really as they defined it in the 19th Century: Political economy. It is political. It cannot avoid not being political. It's all about politics. If you try to assume that it isn't, that there is some Leibnizian way we talk about about it and hide this into mathematical formulas and pseudo-scientific narrative, it's simply wrong. The politics starts from how people see mainstream economics itself. Or Marxian economics. Or any other school of economic thought. The divide is just huge. You can see it well even here in discussions about economics.

Every human social system that has ever existed has found ways to balance social cohesion with individual autonomy. — apokrisis

Really? I think that history is full of examples of societies collapsing because of the unsustainability of the system and the incapability of the elite to solve the societies problems. Civil wars, upheavals, political turmoil, show that this balance hasn't been the result.

It is like the error that C.P. Snow made in his distinction when argued about two cultures, of this juxtaposition between "science" and "art". Because in his famous book The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution Snow too then presented in the end of his book the idea that "science" could help us on solving the political problems of the present. And for him it was the Cold War and only if we would apply "science" the problem would be solved. Just like the Leibnizian dream of there being a universal language for us to solve our problems and understand each other. But of course it didn't go that way either for Leibniz or for Snow. The Cold War stopped when the Soviet experiment collapsed, when people had had enough of a system nobody believed in anymore. It was a political development.

I don't have to pick a side in some religious fashion. It just becomes a hopefully pragmatic and measurable economic question. Do we bank on the dream of fusion power arriving in time, or do we fully price in the cost of burning fossil fuel? — apokrisis

It is simply not a "pragmatic and measurable economic question". It is simply a political question. And I assume you know that. What do we really do in our legislation, in our monetary policy, with our taxe rates and how we use those taxes, how we spend on R&D? Those all are political questions, which in a democracy and in a capitalist system are decided one way and in an authoritarian, central planned economy are planned in a different way. And then there's the most often case of mixed economies in between. And all of these will start from different premises, different political situations, to solve these issues and understand even the questions differently.

And since they have different premises, different World views, it's really a bit difficult to argue about universal solutions.

:ok:

What I've been told is that the universe follows some rules (the laws of nature) that are fundamentally mathematical. Physics and chemistry books, less so biology ones ( :chin: ) are chockablock with math equations. That's a big clue, no, as to the nature of the universe? It, at the very least, looks (very) mathematical.

As for you removing a Lebesque function (whatever that is), from a university basement, it's mere quibbling or word play. If it makes you happy...

The distinctions made are quite artificial. Preons collect in quark and lepton structures, behaving according to laws we can find out by isolating them or premeditating them by using the preon laws.

Quarks collect in hadron and meson structures, behaving according to new laws that are still weakly connected to quark laws. These new laws can be discovered by isolating them and examining them. Or prmeditating them from the still weakly connected quark laws.

Hadrons , protons and neutrons particularly, collect into atomic nuclei structures, behaving according to laws that can be discovered by isolating them or premeditating them from the lower level quark laws.

In combination with electrons the nuclei form atoms or starry structures. Atoms behave according to new laws which can be analyzed by isolating them or premeditating them them from the lower level structures and laws. This is somewhat harder for star structures, but a short-lived piece of neutron star has been made.

Atoms collect in molecule structures, behaving according to new laws which can be analyzed by isolating them or premeditating them them from the lower level structures aqund laws. The shape of various proteins was computed by AI neural networks to 90% accuracy.

Atoms collect in solids, liquids, or gasses, behaving according to new laws which can be analyzed by isolating them or premeditating them them from the lower level structures and laws.

Molecules combine in structures that show first signs of life. The situations on planets that rotate around their axis are ideal. Planets forming around stars are mostly spinning in the same direction as the stars, so the surface has a day-and-night rythm.
These combined molecular structures behave according to new laws which can be analyzed by isolating them or premeditating them them from the lower level structures and laws.

So if we isolate people we can empirically find out about the high level laws they conform to, or premeditate these laws from the lower level structures and laws.

The social and cultural structures and the laws to which they conform can empirically be found by isolating societies. or premeditated these laws from the lower level structures and laws.

I litterally had such a function (a special function used in physics, in my hands. Made of papier maché, over one century ago, a archeounigeological treasure!

And there are more of them special functions:

the spherical harmonics (of which the Legendre polynomials are a special case), the Tchebychev polynomials, the Hermite polynomials, the Jacobi polynomials, the Laguerre polynomials, the Whittaker functions, and the parabolic cylinder functions. As with the Bessel functions, one can study their infinite series, recursion formulas, generating functions, asymptotic series, integral representations, and other properties. Attempts have been made to unify this rich topic, but not one has been completely successful

Luckily, we could use a fat blue book during examination. The book had an appropriate title: Special Functions, as was the name of the study subject.

The same applies in between any two levels. The leap between inanimate matter (chemistry) and living organism (biology) is also quite huge, and the questions asked are totally different. — Olivier5

Exactly. And everywhere you can see a link from chemistry to biology, but not in the questions. Treating biology just as "complex chemistry" doesn't make sense. You are dealing with such phenomena that simply don't make any sense to treat them as chemistry. And if we got rid of the name "biology" and put it under the name "complex chemistry", the matter wouldn't be any different.

You riddler, you! :smile: You beat the Sphinx didn't you?

That’s where the hierarchy of scale comes in. It represents an artificial division of the universe into manageable pieces. The division is made based on the usefulness of the distinctions made at each scale. As I’ve written many times, usefulness, rather than truth, is the measure by which we judge metaphysical factors. Metaphysical questions can not be answered empirically. To me, the hierarchy of scale is a metaphysical entity. By that standard, I choose the level on the hierarchy most useful in describing and understanding a particular phenomenon in a particular situation. — T Clark

Any knowledge we glean from other scales than the one we find ourselves living in are only useful in the scale we find ourselves living in. We only use states at other scales to explain the behavior of objects on the scale we live in - hence the issue of trying to integrate QM with classical physics. We are trying to use the behavior of objects at the quantum scale to explain and predict the behavior of macro-scale objects.

If use is the scale by which we judge metaphysical factors, then it seems to me that the scales would be epistemological in nature, as in existing in our minds only and not the way the world is actually divided.

When using a microscope to look at a drop of blood and viewing red blood cells, aren't we still looking at the drop of blood - just from a different view (at a smaller scale)? The world is only divided into scales when we take different views of the same thing.

Exactly. And everywhere you can see a link from chemistry to biology, but not in the questions. Treating biology just as "complex chemistry" doesn't make sense. You are dealing with such phenomena that simply don't make any sense to treat them as chemistry. — ssu

Yes, for instance reproduction, predation and parasitism, flee or fight, symbiosis or symbolism, are concepts which have no meaning whatsoever in chemistry but are central to biology, because they presuppose a living organism, that can flee or fight, eat or be eaten, reproduce or not, etc. So the emergence of these issues in scientific discourse mirrors the emergence of life itself and tries to follow it in all its unpredictable detours and meanders.

for instance reproduction, predation and parasitism, flee or fight, symbiosis or symbolism, are concepts which have no meaning whatsoever in chemistry — Olivier5

I think only symbolism has no meaning in chemistry. There is reproduction, predatism (even in physics where the W and Z bosons eat good Goldstone ghosts to becomecmassive...), parasitism, fleeing and fighting even at the chemical level. Fleeing and fighting in physics: black hole physics, electrical attraction and repulsion.

So the constraints don't arise out of already concrete material foundations. Constraints (or universals) only "exist" if they have proved to be of the right type to conjure a Cosmos into being out of raw possibility. That is, if they could produce the concrete material foundations needed to instantiate themselves as systems composed of those kinds of atoms/events/processes/etc.

Our cosmos has a dimensional structure, an evolutionary logic, a thermodynamic flow. We can go back to first principles and say that for anything to exist, it must be able to develop and persist. So there is already a selection for the global structure that works, that is rational, that can last long enough for us to be around to talk about it. — apokrisis

As I was reading this, I thought of something Hoffman wrote about in "Life's Ratchet." He was discussing how proteins became enzymes at random and then evolved powered by the pounding of fast moving molecules. The enzymes encouraged the formation of specific proteins. Some enzymes also developed, I guess you could say mutated, to include control mechanisms which allowed feedback loops to form. Then loops within loops within loops formed to become cell metabolism.

How does this fit into your military metaphor? You talk about constraints from above. How do the feedback loops constrain the chemistry? Are the products of the enzymes the soldiers? So chemicals evolve into structures that control how they behave.

If you just want technology, you only need to answer the questions concerning efficient and material causality. The questions about formal and final causality appear redundant - because you, as the human, are happy to contribute the design of the system and the purpose which it is intended to serve. — apokrisis

So, when you talk about design in this context, you are talking about the effects of this evolutionary process. I remember reading about controversies about Darwinian evolution. How can a mechanistic process "design" something. Saying "design by survival of the fittest" is a circular argument, because fitness is defined by what survives. That always struck me as a trivial thing to get stuck on.

Now this brings to mind other things you've written in past discussions - about semiotics and information. I'll have to go back and reread some of those. Are we talking about the same kind of thing?

Peirce developed the fully triadic view where actuality was sandwiched between top-down necessity (or constraint) and bottom-up possibility (or unconstrained potential). — apokrisis

Do you have a specific reference?

What do you make of theoretical physics, by and large an extension of math, math itself a very abstract (mental) subject/field?

I'm sure you're aware of it, but the existence of some "physical" objects like quarks and the God particle (the Higgs-Boson) were deduced from mathematical models of the particle world. That is to say, our minds seem to be in the know about objects and goings on at scales that are clearly not human (we normally can't see quarks or Higgs-Bosons). — Agent Smith

I'm skeptical of this view, but I don't know enough to give a very credible response.

On the larger point you made, I agree: each level of organization of matter & energy, as represented broadly in the sequence physics →→ chemistry →→ biology →→ psychology has its own unique, level-specific entities (particles in physics and chemistry, cells in biology, and minds in psychology) which operate under, yet again, tier-specific rules. The reductionist enterprise is a waste of time, something like that. — Agent Smith

Yes. Frustration from arguments with reductionists brought me to this subject in the first place.

Why should you represent reality into the physics-chemistry-biology-cosmology division in the first place? — EugeneW

As I indicated in my OP, I think that's a metaphysical division. It's useful, so we use it.

Really? I think that history is full of examples of societies collapsing because of the unsustainability of the system and the incapability of the elite to solve the societies problems. Civil wars, upheavals, political turmoil, show that this balance hasn't been the result. — ssu

And the history of life is full of examples of species collapsing because of the competition from invasive organisms, asteroid impacts, vulcanism, global warming, over-hunting... The evolutionary process at any level is constantly changing.

Any knowledge we glean from other scales than the one we find ourselves living in are only useful in the scale we find ourselves living in. We only use states at other scales to explain the behavior of objects on the scale we live in — Harry Hindu

I think that's true.

If use is the scale by which we judge metaphysical factors, then it seems to me that the scales would be epistemological in nature, as in existing in our minds only and not the way the world is actually divided. — Harry Hindu

I think that's true too.

Fleeing and fighting in physics: black hole physics, electrical attraction and repulsion. — EugeneW

It's fundamentally different, as no decision has to be made by an electron re. its attraction to protons.

It's fundamentally different, as no decision has to be made by an electron re. its attraction to protons. — Olivier5

That makes it even easier to flee or fight!

LOL. The 'flee or fight' system provides a capacity to decide quickly ie to chose between two alternatives for how to deal with a potential foe. If there is no choice being made, as in the case of a particle, there is no notion of 'flee or fight'. Just repulsion or attraction, and no choice between fighting and fleeing. Those things have nothing to do with repulsion and attraction. Or do you fight a foe because you are secretly attracted to him?

It's all about politics. If you try to assume that it isn't, that there is some Leibnizian way we talk about about it and hide this into mathematical formulas and pseudo-scientific narrative, it's simply wrong. — ssu

Where would I have said that? You are off at a tangent.

Really? I think that history is full of examples of societies collapsing because of the unsustainability of the system and the incapability of the elite to solve the societies problems. — ssu

But what caused the collapse and led to the unsustainability? Clearly I would look to the balancing act that any sociologist or anthropologist understands - the necessary tension between the individual and the group.

And that tension is hierarchy theory in a nutshell. The need to balance local degrees of freedom and global habits of constraint.

So human organisation - in any form - has the same balancing act. And any natural organisation - of any form - also performs the same balancing act.

That is the thesis here ... if you want to focus on something worth discussing.

And since they have different premises, different World views, it's really a bit difficult to argue about universal solutions. — ssu

You haven't understood a word.

The distinctions made are quite artificial. Preons collect in quark and lepton structures, behaving according to laws we can find out by isolating them or premeditating them by using the preon laws. — EugeneW

What are preons made of?

So human organisation - in any form - has the same balancing act. And any natural organisation - of any form - also performs the same balancing act.

That is the thesis here ... if you want to focus on something worth discussing. — apokrisis

Correct me if I am wrong, but General Systems Theory covers this concept in detail, does it not? This structural analysis that we're discussing is present in all systems, which the universe is characterized by in arrangement.

"General systems theory at a simple level can be defined as: elements, which are in exchange, and which are bounded. These components constitute a "system", which functions or operates within a field or an environment. Elements can be virtually anything you wish to label as such, the exchanges are any relationships that exist between elements, and the boundary is what you can see, hear, feel, or sense that separates "system" from the background or environment."

https://wsarch.ucr.edu/archive/papers/gregory/gensysTh.html

How does this fit into your military metaphor? You talk about constraints from above. How do the feedback loops constrain the chemistry? — T Clark

Enzymes regulate the rate of a reaction. So the soldiers are like all the chemicals ready to get going. Then their sergeant - as a higher level of constraint - gives the stop/go signals. The soldiers are released until they are halted again.

Hierarchy theory is all about feedback and cybernetic control. Feedback loops are a hierarchy theory concept.

Now this brings to mind other things you've written in past discussions - about semiotics and information. I'll have to go back and reread some of those. Are we talking about the same kind of thing? — T Clark

Yep. Semiotics is about the use of symbols and models to regulate a system. So it is the extra bit that marks the cut between physics and biology. It is indeed the bit that you can't find within physics.

Geometry and charge. Without mass.

Correct me if I am wrong, but General Systems Theory covers this concept in detail, does it not? — Garrett Travers

Yep. Hierarchy theory gets reinvented once a generation at least. :up:

Yep. Hierarchy theory gets reinvented once a generation at least. — apokrisis

GST was founded in 1933.

Geometry and charge. Without mass. — EugeneW

So ... just symmetry.

Sounds kinda mathy.

Sounds kinda mathy. — apokrisis

Isn't math our tool for mapping this stuff? Wouldn't it make sense if the framework we developed to measure physical phenomena looked like itself when applied to that phenomena?

So ... just symmetry. — apokrisis

Why just symmetry?

GST was founded in 1933. — Garrett Travers

Sure. And Aleksandr Bogdanov published his Tektology just before, Cybernetics came along just after.