First I comment on Pedro's: >The "information overload" theme (in the evolution of social modes of >communication), is really intriguing. >Should we take it, say, in its >prima facie? I am inclined to put it into question, at least to have an >excuse and try to >unturn that pretty stone...
The question of information overload connects with my theory of senescence (1993 book Development & Evolution: Complexity and Change in Biology), which is that it results from the continual taking in of information after a system has become definitive (all material systems necessarily continue to get marked), while at the same time there is less loss of information (matter is 'sticky'). The result is that a system becomes slower to respond to perturbations, atr least because lag times increase as a result of a multiplication of channels (increased informational friction), and because some channels effect responses at cross purposes. and then Walter's: >(2) In the same way: how can arise the 'meaning' In naturalist terms or >imposed by us? I have recently concluded that meaning can be naturalized by aligning it with finality in the Aristotelian causal analysis (material/formal, efficient/final). I assert that final cause has not really been eliminated from physics and other sciences, but has been embodied in variatinal principles like the Second Law of thermodynamics, and in evolutionary theory - in Fisher's fundamental theorem of natural selection, as well as in some interpetations of the 'collapse of the wave function' in QM. STAN _______________________________________________ fis mailing list fis@listas.unizar.es http://webmail.unizar.es/mailman/listinfo/fis
