Re: MD Relations between levels

[Wim Nusselder]

Dear Dan,   I didn't get round to answering your 28/6 01:13 -0500 post yet, but your 2/7 10:15 -0500 one seems easy to answer, so I do that first: You reply to my analogy "Biological/Social/Intellectual evolution can be seen as a process by which weak Dynamic forces at a subatomic/subcellular/individual level discover stratagems for overcoming huge static inorganic/biological/social forces at a superatomic/supercellular/collective level." with a quote from Neils Bohr: "just as the quantum of action appears in the account of atomic phenomena as an element for which an explanation is neither possible nor required, the notion of life is elementary in biological science". You suggest a counter-analogy in which "the quantum of action as inorganic moral force, life as biological moral force, and celebrity ... as social moral force require no explanation nor is one possible" and suggest that "with my analogy I am "attempting to reduce the irreducible".   I agree that the weak Dynamic forces at the subatomic level can not and need not be explained at the inorganic level, that the weak Dynamic forces at the subcellular level can not and need not be explained at the biological level and that the weak Dynamic forces at the individual level can not and need not be explained at the social level. As I see it, that does not make it impossible or wrong for me to present them as explanation of processes at those levels. "Action quanta" (whatever that may be, I am not at home in modern physics) may describe the weak Dynamic forces explaining biological evolution and life. Life is an elementary, given, unexplainable phenomenon on the biological level, but it can be analysed on the inorganic level (in terms of biochemics), and has its origin (explanation) two levels lower, below the lowest static level in quantum effects. Life is not the in my analogy. What constitutes this "biological moral force", is the weak Dynamic forces at the subatomic, quantum "level" (localisable in the unpredictability of quantum effects), two levels below the biological level. Weak dynamic forces at the subcellular, inorganic level (localisable in the unpredictability of genetic mutations), two levels below the social level, are the "social moral force", not celebrity (or status).   Well, your post was less easy and more time-consuming to answer than I thought at first, so I won't go on to work out my analogy at the higher levels now. I hope you understand how it can be done. (And you may still judge it not a valuable and/or Meaningful undertaking, of course.)   With friendly greetings,   Wim Nusselder