Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
science, and the principle of matter-symbol complementarity (PMSC), championed
by H. Pattee (1982, 1995, 1996), may be viewed as another important manifestation
of PIEC. According to PMSC (later re-named as
the von Neumann-Pattee principle
of matter-sign complementarity
(Ji 1999b)), all self-reproducing systems have two
complementary aspects - (1)
physical law-governed material/energetic aspect
and
(2)
the evolutionary rule-governed informational (or symbolic) aspect.
According
to Pattee, open-ended evolution is possible if and only if evolving systems have
both these two complementary aspects (Pattee 1995; Umerez 2001).
2.3.3 Complementarian Logic
In order to capture the essential characteristics of Bohr's
complementarity
, the
author formulated what is referred to as “complementarian logic” in Ji (1995)
that comprises three logical elements:
1.
Exclusivity
. A and B are mutually exclusive in the sense that A and B cannot be
measured/observed/thought about simultaneously within a given context. For
example, light under most experimental conditions exhibit wave or particle
properties, depending on the measuring apparatus employed, but it is impossible
to measure these properties simultaneously under a given measuring environ-
ment. Even the Airy experiment (Herbert 1987, pp. 60-64) may not be an
exception although the Airy pattern shows both the particle property (as the
dots) and the wave property (as the concentric circles) on the same record, since
they were not recorded simultaneously. That is, dots appear first and then the
concentric waves appear gradually over time when enough dots accumulate on
the screen. Thus, the particle property and wave property of light were not
measured/recorded
simultaneously
, thereby satisfying the exclusivity criterion.
It is also interesting to note that, on the
formal
level (Murdoch 1987,
pp. 34-36), particle and wave properties are not exclusive in the sense that
they are related to each other through the de Broglie equation,
l ¼
h
=
mv
(2.37)
where
l
is the wavelength associated with a particle of mass m moving
with velocity v, and h is the Planck constant. Therefore, at least on the formal
level (in contrast to the real or physical level), the wave and particle properties of
light are derivable from each other just as energy and matter are derivable from
each other based on E
mc
2
. However, whether this mutual derivability on
the formal level can be physically realized depends on the availability of the
mechanisms (and environment) to implement such an interconversion. In the
case of the energy-matter equivalence, there exist physical mechanisms by
which energy and matter can be interconverted as in chemical reactions or
nuclear reactions. However, it is not certain whether particles can be converted
¼
