Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
In Fig.
2.8
, M has been referred to as “renormalization,” namely, the regrouping
of material entities to form a new entity that exhibits properties not possessed by its
precursors. The process of emergence, 14.16, appears to be repeated in nature (or
occurs recursively) at least at eight distinct levels as shown in Table
14.7
.
The content of Table
14.7
evidently reveals qualitative symmetry. It is suggested
that Table
14.7
is symmetric with respect to Process 14.16 in the sense that Process
14.16 remains
invariant
when applied to various fields, from physics to chemistry
to biology to sociology to cosmology. If we can apply Noether's theorem (Agarwal
1977; Ramond 1981; Ryder 1985) (according to which a symmetry of mathematical
equations embodying physical theories always implies the existence of a
conserved
quantity
) to the apparent symmetry revealed in Table
14.7
, it may be concluded that
there exists a
conserved quantity
whose identity is unknown. What can it be? One
possibility is that this conserved quantity is
Gnergy
, the complementary union of
information
and
energy
that has been postulated to underlie all self-organizing
preceded the Big Bang such as the “pre-Bing Bang” activity predicted by
Gurzadyan and Penrose (2010). If this conjecture turns out to be true, Gnergy
may be considered to represent the
ultimate symmetry
of our Universe perhaps
subsuming the supersymmetry that unifies fermions and bosons (Han 1999).
The term “emergence” is more widely used in physics (especially in condensed
matter physics and statistical mechanics) than in biology, while the use of the term
“evolution” is almost exclusively confined to biology (except perhaps in the Big
Bang cosmology). One prominent example of a mutually antagonistic use of these
two terms is provided by R. Laughlin's statement quoted below from his topic,
A Different Universe: Reinventing Physics from the Bottom Down
(Laughlin 2005).
He accepts
emergence
but rejects all
evolutionary explanations
in biology:
, I think a good case can be made that science has now moved from an Age of Reduction-
ism to an Age of Emergence, a time when the search for ultimate causes of things shifts from
the behavior of parts to the behavior of the collective
...
. The transition to the Age of
Emergence brings to an end the myth of the absolute power of mathematics
...
(pp. 208-209)
...
, which Charles Darwin originally conceived as a great
theory, has lately come to function more as an antitheory, called upon to cover up
embarrassing experimental shortcomings and legitimize findings that are at best question-
able and at worst not even wrong. Your protein defies the laws of mass action? Evolution
did it! Your complicated mess of chemical reactions turn into chicken? Evolution! The
human brain works on logical principles no computer can emulate? Evolution is the cause!
...
(pp. 168-169)
Emergence
and
evolution
may not be as alien to each other as have been depicted
above. On the contrary, they may be inseparably connected to each other in a
complex manner as indicated in Statement 14.17:
Evolution is synonymous with Property X emerging from Precursor Y through Mechanism Z.
(14.18)
Evolution by natural selection,
...
Statement 14.17 can be represented diagrammatically as shown in Fig.
14.2
,
utilizing, again, the Peircean triadic template that appears in Fig.
14.1
(see also
Sect.
6.2.11
).
