Re: [Fis] Sustainability through multilevel research:

[Pedro C. Marijuan]

Dear FISers,

I agree with Loet's views (for once! :-) ).  The energy flow supporting 
the biosphere and society as a whole have not much explanatory power 
regarding the bonding complexity of contemporary societies. Of course, 
it is an interesting exercise, particularly concerning the limits of 
sustainability, but we have had so much thermodynamic inflation that it 
is very difficult adding anything relevant. Irrespective of its 
sophistication, the energetic realm can hardly substitute for the 
informational realm.
About the intriguing interrelationship between kinship and nonkinsip 
modalities of human bonding, a very interesting view was drafted by 
Francis Fukuyama (1995), centered on "trust". He was distinguishing 
between "familial" centered societies and "high trust" societies. In 
European terms (exaggerating), it is the dichotomy between the 
Mediterranean societal culture and the Anglosaxon culture. It is not a 
black and white narrative, as each polarity has advantages and 
disadvantages (think on wine & Mediterranean food!), and actually today 
each country and each culture has some terrible mix of everything, but 
it is interesting just to see how the two kinds of bonding may interact 
within a complex society.  I also penned a few ideas about the matter in 
my recent "How the Living is in the world"  (DOI information: 
10.1016/j.pbiomolbio.2015.07.002.) I am copying below a paragraph (maybe 
a little bit long--excuses). /


This coarse reflection on the dynamics of successive “informational 
entities” helps us make sense of fundamentals of social evolution. The 
transition to a new social order, more or less ‘revolutionary’, tends to 
be produced by new information channels and communication practices that 
support the emergence of new ways to organize the structures of social 
self-production. Thus, the development of social complexity appears as 
irreversibly linked to a chain of historical inventions for 
communication and knowledge generation: numbers, writing, alphabet, 
codices, universities, printing press, books, steam engines, means of 
communication, computers, Internet, etc. (Stonier, 1990; Hobart and 
Schiffman, 1998). This succession of fundamental inventions has 
dramatically altered the “infostructure” of modern societies, and 
subsequently the informational formula for being in the world has been 
applied with multiple variants along that complexity runaway: with 
plenty of room generated by the new information tools, not at the bottom 
but at the supra-individual top. We should not forget that the momentous 
Scientific Revolution was preceded by what has been called the silent 
“corporate revolution” (Huff, 2011), which opened the way for collective 
organizations legally autonomous in European cities during XIII and XIV 
centuries: universities, parliaments, counsels, municipalities, 
professional colleges, guilds, mercantile associations, charities, 
schools, etc. It was this Medieval awakening in the cities of Western 
Europe what made possible the later hyperinflation of autonomous 
collective organizations, –“information based”– growing exponentially 
and propelling all the further complexity of modern societies./


All the best--Pedro

Loet Leydesdorff wrote:


Dear colleagues,

 

I don’t consider it as fruitful to recycle the argument that society 
were to be modeled as a meta-biology. The biological explanation can 
perhaps explain behavior of individuals and institutions; but social 
coordination more generally involves also the dynamics of 
expectations. These are much more abstract although conditioned by the 
historical layer. For example, one cannot expect to explain the /trias 
politica/ or the rule of law biologically. These cultural constructs 
regulate our behavior from above, whereas the biological supports 
existence and living from below. The historical follows the axis of 
time, whereas the codification (albeit historical in the 
instantiations) also restructures and potentially intervenes and 
reorganizes social relations from the perspective of hindsight.


 

In analogy to codifications such as the juridical ones, scientific 
knowledge provides the code for technological intervention. This type 
of knowledge is human-specific; perhaps, we are also able to build 
machines that mimick it. This technological evolution is going on for 
centuries. If I look up from my screen, I look into the gardens which 
have a typical Dutch polder vegetation. The polder was made in the 
17^th century and replaced the natural ecology of marsh land and 
lakes. The order of the explanation was thus inverted: the constructed 
structures (instead of the constructing agencies) increasingly carry 
the system. The constructs don’t have to be material; see my example 
of the rule of law. It is not a religion, but a dynamics of 
expectations. Replacing it with a biology misses the point.


 


Best,

Loet

 

Re: [Fis] Sustainability through multilevel research: The Lifel, Deep Society Build-A-Thon - 1

[Robert E. Ulanowicz]

Dear Nikhil,

As regards ecosystems, some 20% or so of bound energy is retained via
cycling, but the primary function of cycling as conservator is with
limiting elements. Often 70+% of necessary elements are retained via
cycling within the system. This becomes very evident when one regards
coral reefs, where nutrients within the reef are far richer than in the
desert ocean that surrounds them.

The best,
Bob

> At level 1 (molecular self-organiztion)- solar energy is stored in the
> high-energy reduced molecules. Do you see a possibility that living
> systems could store energy in cycles involving less stable species at the
> two other levels (level 2, and 3) as well? (When I speak of stored energy,
> I am referring to stored-energy as introduced by Mclare, and discussed by
> Ulanowicz and Ho [Sustainable Systems as Organisms?, BioSystems 82 (2005)
> 39–51].


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Re: [Fis] Sustainability through multilevel research: The Lifel, Deep Society Build-A-Thon - 1

[Nikhil Joshi]

Dear Guy and FIS colleagues,
Thank you for your comments and the copy of your article. Your views on the 
roots of biological systems and their evolution in dissipate systems are very 
interesting. Your paper reminds me of a paper by Virgo and Froese on how simple 
dissipative structures can demonstrate many of the characteristics associated 
with living systems, and the work of Jeremy England at MIT.

Given your research focus and expertise in looking at living systems as 
dissipative systems, I would appreciate your views and assistance in 
understanding the energetics involved in the common multilevel organisational 
pattern (CMOP) (presented in the paper II of the kick-off mail).

At first glance, it appears that different levels in self-organization in 
living systems  a core dynamic in living systems is comprised of a cycle 
between a class of more-stable species (coupled-composite species) and a class 
of less-stable species (decoupled-composite species), see paper II in the 
kick-off mail.
hence:
Level 1: Molecular self-organization, involves a cycle between oxidised 
molecules (more stable) and reduced molecules (less stable) in molecular 
self-organization in  photosynthesis and cellular metabolism [Morowitz and 
smith]. 

Level 2: Cellular self-orgnaization, involves a cycle between autotrophic 
species (more stable) and heterotrophic species (less stable) in ecosystems 
[Stability of species types as defined by- Yodzis and Innes Yodzis, P.; Innes, 
S. Body Size and Consumer-Resource Dynamics. Am. Nat. 1992, 139, 1151].

Level 3: Social self-self-organization, involves a cycle between kinship-based 
social groups (more stable) and non-kinship-based social groups (less stable) 
[Stability of species types as suggested in Paper II, based on an extension of 
work of Robin Dunbar and others]. 

At level 1 (molecular self-organiztion)- solar energy is stored in the  
high-energy reduced molecules. Do you see a possibility that living systems 
could store energy in cycles involving less stable species at the two other 
levels (level 2, and 3) as well? (When I speak of stored energy, I am referring 
to stored-energy as introduced by Mclare, and discussed by Ulanowicz and Ho 
[Sustainable Systems as Organisms?, BioSystems 82 (2005) 39–51]. 

These are early thoughts and your views are much appreciated. 
Many Thanks,
Warm regards,

Nikhil Joshi




> On 01-Dec-2015, at 10:27 pm, Guy A Hoelzer  > wrote:
> 
> Hi All,
> 
> I have been following this thread with interest as much as time permits.  I 
> think multilevel approaches to understanding information flow is an important 
> one.  I also think the structure of natural systems exhibits both 
> hierarchical and heterarchical features.  The hierarchies we formally 
> recognize can be extremely useful, but they are rarely exclusive of 
> alternatives.  Here is a link to a paper Mark Tessera and I published a 
> couple of years ago arguing for one particular hierarchy of multilevel 
> emergence in physical systems connecting lower level physical systems to 
> biological systems:
> 
> Tessara, M., and G. A. Hoelzer.  2013.  On the thermodynamics of multilevel 
> evolution.  Biosystems 113:  140–143.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Guy
> 
> Guy Hoelzer, Associate Professor
> Department of Biology
> University of Nevada Reno
> 
> Phone:  775-784-4860
> Fax:  775-784-1302
> hoel...@unr.edu 

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