Biosemiosis and Causation: Defending Biosemiotics Through Rosen's Theoretical Biology, or, Integrating Biosemiotics and Anticipatory Systems Theory

The fracture in the emerging discipline of biosemiotics when the code biologist Marcello Barbieri claimed that Peircian biosemiotics is not genuine science raises anew the question: What is science? When it comes to radically new approaches in science, there is no simple answer to this question, because if successful, these new approaches change what is understood to be science. This is what Galileo, Darwin and Einstein did to science, and with quantum theory, opposing interpretations are not merely about what theory is right, but what is real science. Peirce's work, as he acknowledged, is really a continuation of efforts of Schelling to challenge the heritage of Newtonian science for the very good reason that the deep assumptions of Newtonian science had made sentient life, human consciousness and free will unintelligible, the condition for there being science. Pointing out the need for such a revolution in science has not succeeded as a defence of Peircian biosemiotics, however. In this paper, I will defend the scientific credentials of Peircian biosemiotics by relating it to the theoretical biology of the bio-mathematician, Robert Rosen. Rosen's relational biology, focusing on anticipatory systems and giving a place to final causes, should also be seen as a rigorous development of the Schellingian project to conceive nature in such a way that the emergence of sentient life, mind and science are intelligible. Rosen has made a very strong case for the characterization of his ideas as a real advance not only in science, but in how science should be understood, and I will argue that it is possible to provide a strong defence of Peircian biosemiotics as science through Rosen's defence of relational biology. In the process, I will show how biosemiotics can and should become a crucial component of anticipatory systems theory

Consciousness in the Universe is Scale Invariant and Implies an Event Horizon of the Human Brain

Our brain is not a "stand alone" information processing organ: it acts as a central part of our integral nervous system with recurrent information exchange with the entire organism and the cosmos. In this study, the brain is conceived to be embedded in a holographic structured field that interacts with resonant sensitive structures in the various cell types in our body. In order to explain earlier reported ultra-rapid brain responses and effective operation of the meta-stable neural system, a field-receptive mental workspace is proposed to be communicating with the brain. Our integral nervous system is seen as a dedicated neural transmission and multi-cavity network that, in a non-dual manner, interacts with the proposed supervening meta-cognitive domain. Among others, it is integrating discrete patterns of eigen-frequencies of photonic/solitonic waves, thereby continuously updating a time-symmetric global memory space of the individual. Its toroidal organization allows the coupling of gravitational, dark energy, zero-point energy field (ZPE) as well as earth magnetic fields energies and transmits wave information into brain tissue, that thereby is instrumental in high speed conscious and sub-conscious information processing. We propose that the supposed field-receptive workspace, in a mutual interaction with the whole nervous system, generates self-consciousness and is conceived as operating from a 4th spatial dimension (hyper-sphere). Its functional structure is adequately defined by the geometry of the torus, that is envisioned as a basic unit (operator) of space-time. The latter is instrumental in collecting the pattern of discrete soliton frequencies that provided an algorithm for coherent life processes, as earlier identified by us. It is postulated that consciousness in the entire universe arises through, scale invariant, nested toroidal coupling of various energy fields, that may include quantum error correction. In the brain of the human species, this takes the form of the proposed holographic workspace, that collects active information in a "brain event horizon", representing an internal and fully integral model of the self. This brain-supervening workspace is equipped to convert integrated coherent wave energies into attractor type/standing waves that guide the related cortical template to a higher coordination of reflection and action as well as network synchronicity, as required for conscious states. In relation to its scale-invariant global character, we find support for a universal information matrix, that was extensively described earlier, as a supposed implicate order as well as in a spectrum of space-time theories in current physics. The presence of a field-receptive resonant workspace, associated with, but not reducible to, our brain, may provide an interpretation framework for widely reported, but poorly understood transpersonal conscious states and algorithmic origin of life. It also points out the deep connection of mankind with the cosmos and our major responsibility for the future of our planet.</p

Overcoming the Newtonian Paradigm: The Unfinished Project of Theoretical Biology from a Schellingian Perspective

Defending Robert Rosen’s claim that in every confrontation between physics and biology it is physics that has always had to give ground, it is shown that many of the most important advances in mathematics and physics over the last two centuries have followed from Schelling’s demand for a new physics that could make the emergence of life intelligible. Consequently, while reductionism prevails in biology, many biophysicists are resolutely anti-reductionist. This history is used to identify and defend a fragmented but progressive tradition of anti-reductionist biomathematics. It is shown that the mathematicoephysico echemical morphology research program, the biosemiotics movement, and the relational biology of Rosen, although they have developed independently of each other, are built on and advance this antireductionist tradition of thought. It is suggested that understanding this history and its relationship to the broader history of post-Newtonian science could provide guidance for and justify both the integration of these strands and radically new work in post-reductionist biomathematics

New Foundation in the Sciences: Physics without sweeping infinities under the rug

It is widely known among the Frontiers of physics, that “sweeping under the rug” practice has been quite the norm rather than exception. In other words, the leading paradigms have strong tendency to be hailed as the only game in town. For example, renormalization group theory was hailed as cure in order to solve infinity problem in QED theory. For instance, a quote from Richard Feynman goes as follows: “What the three Nobel Prize winners did, in the words of Feynman, was to get rid of the infinities in the calculations. The infinities are still there, but now they can be skirted around . . . We have designed a method for sweeping them under the rug. [1] And Paul Dirac himself also wrote with similar tune: “Hence most physicists are very satisfied with the situation. They say: Quantum electrodynamics is a good theory, and we do not have to worry about it any more. I must say that I am very dissatisfied with the situation, because this so-called good theory does involve neglecting infinities which appear in its equations, neglecting them in an arbitrary way. This is just not sensible mathematics. Sensible mathematics involves neglecting a quantity when it turns out to be small—not neglecting it just because it is infinitely great and you do not want it!”[2] Similarly, dark matter and dark energy were elevated as plausible way to solve the crisis in prevalent Big Bang cosmology. That is why we choose a theme here: New Foundations in the Sciences, in order to emphasize the necessity to introduce a new set of approaches in the Sciences, be it Physics, Cosmology, Consciousness etc

SciTech News Volume 71, No. 2 (2017)

Columns and Reports From the Editor 3 Division News Science-Technology Division 5 Chemistry Division 8 Engineering Division 9 Aerospace Section of the Engineering Division 12 Architecture, Building Engineering, Construction and Design Section of the Engineering Division 14 Reviews Sci-Tech Book News Reviews 16 Advertisements IEEE