Hi Lonnie, I thank you for your interest, and by way of doing so, I would
like to respond within the content of your email, in brackets, as best I
can:

Lately I have marveled at how many things you have mentioned that
(surprisingly) bring grounded evidence of unusual assumptions I am
currently looking into. I see Margulis mentioned, and Bohr, and
endosymbiosis, and Penrose, and an open-mindedness to the idea that
consciousness is not a rare phenomenon that

[Lynn Margulis was a Professor of mine at Boston University as an
undergrad. As for your comment about being open-minded about consciousness,
it is one of many concepts in biology that has been made transparent by
seeing evolution from its origins instead of its results, as is
conventionally done, even though we all acknowledge that reasoning after
the fact is illogical; beyond that, the interrelationships between the
various tissues and organs at the cellular-molecular level led me to
consider the likelihood that consciousness-mind is part and parcel of
overall physiology holistically.....that and the process of endosymbiosis,
a popular concept in evolution theory that was never integrated with
physiology in the way that I have been able to based on developmental
principles of cell-cell signaling]

arises in some magical combination of biological pieces (yay!). I am so
happy to see these, and the niche construction makes very good sense,
especially the idea of a non-random genesis of an internal hodology that
increases the odds of biological extension for the complex. That works even
for socially constrained psychological hodologies (Kurt Lewin).

[It is heartening that you 'get' the relevance of Niche Construction in the
context of the cell-cell communication context. When I first came across
the concept of Niche Construction it seemed superficial and trivial, but
then when I thought of it in the context of cellular communication
mechanisms, and the possibility that the origins of Niche Construction were
in the endogenization process made it highly relevant, at least to me. Are
you familiar with Nicholas Christakis's 'contagion' theory (Jordan JJ, Rand
DG, Arbesman S, Fowler JH, Christakis NA. Contagion of Cooperation in
Static and Fluid Social Networks. PLoS One. 2013 Jun 19;8(6):e66199.)? I
assume that it is the human homologue of Niche Construction, and if so, it
would form the basis for understanding ecosystems at their fundament
mechanistically instead of descriptively, offering opportunity for
interesting hypothesis testing science....bridging the historic gap between
evolutionary biology and Ecology]

What better to affect than what cannot get away? It is the origin of
domestication, perhaps, in the structure and functional behavior of a cell.
It is like a superstitious favor for an overarching fear of systemic
collapse (Skinner’s work on Verbal Behavior helps here, I feel), and in
time, the phenomenal struggle becomes mistaken for the physical struggle.

[I find your comments here of great interest, but I am not familiar with
concepts of domestication other than the recently discovered role of
oxytocin in domestication biochemically/molecularly. And I am also not
familiar with Skinner's work on Verbal Behavior......I know that a lot of
value is placed on the role of language in human evolution, but I cannot
help but think that that is the net result of cell-cell communication going
all the way back to the origins of multicellular organisms.....and beyond.
So perhaps you could help me in that regard?]

May I ask some beginning questions? How do you frame the idea of cellular
protagonism? Do you think of a cell as having a lasting mental agency? I
sat in on a cell biology class and what I came away with was really a
mathematical lemma. What is the membrane? What is its endoplasm and why
does it conceive itself in conflict and in need of adaptation? Which aspect
of a prokaryotic or eukaryotic cell do you consider the centroid of its
urgency to survive? I noticed you do share that mitochondria are likely
parasitical yet partially commensal (almost a saltational evolution, which
Margulis speaks of). And one can guess that if mitochondria signal perfuse
cell death, they must not share a stake in the survival of the cell (or the
diverse complex which we see organismically, since to issue or obey a
superior order like that requires detachment from the organic complex).
Instead, mitochondria seem to occupy a hierarchical or systemic maintenance
role at the expense of their neighbors, and find extension in that (like
many parasitical concerns, especially amensal symbionts and social roles
such as villeins and tax collectors across history, and capos in Frankl’s
search for meaning).

[So my reply here requires that I get up on my soap box both to hold forth
and also to look back to the origins of life, as best we can figure based
on experimental evidence. The data from the origins of life literature
indicate that the oceans were formed by snowball-like asteroids that also
contained polycyclic hydrocarbons (lipid, fat). When lipids are suspended
in water they spontaneously form micelles or protocells, which may have
been the first cells on earth. Moreover, when such protocells were warmed
by the Sun, and then cooled at night they were able to maintain their form
because lipids exhibit hysteresis, or 'molecular memory'. I think that was
the origin of the memory needed for evolution.....the nucleotides (DNA,
RNA) came later. More to the point, by forming such structures the
protocells generated a molecular 'ambiguity' by partitioning the negative
entropy (free energy) within the protocell (based on Schrodinger, What is
Life?) from the external positive entropy in the environment. If you now
were to ask how and why that occurred, my current thinking is that it is
due to the Singularity of the Big Bang.....how so you might ask. Life is
conventionally described as self-referential and self-organizing. The
genesis of those characteristics is due to the recoil of the Big Bang,
every action having an equal and opposite reaction (Newton's 3rd Law of
Motion), the 'reaction' being the self-referential self-organizational
characteristics of life forms, which must circumvent the 2nd Law of
Thermodynamics, existing far from equilibrium, unlike non-living things.
That self-referential self-organized system is characterized by negative
entropy, 'fueled' by the bioenergy generated by chemiosmosis, and
monitored/controlled by homeostasis, or what I have termed The First
Principles of Physiology. That construct facilitates the ability of living
organisms to collect epigenetic 'marks' from their environment, informing
the organism of changes in its surroundings, and passing those epigenetic
marks to its progeny in order to adapt.....that is very different from
Darwinian evolution, which as you know is all about the parents selecting
one another and reproducing, which is the description of what actually
transpires at a cell-molecular level beyond sight. So there is the idea of
the cellular protagonist, acting as an active agent for collecting
information in order for the organism to either change or remain at
equipoise. And yes, the cell is conscious, the level of which is a function
of its needs within its niche, but is always acting as an agent in service
to the survival of the organism. I hope that my scenario answered your
questions about the membrane and endoplasm, and why the cell conceives of
itself in 'conflict' with the environment, which is always in flux. As to
what is the 'centroid' of the urge to survive, I think its the homeostastic
principle, which btw is homologous with the relationship between the
electron and the proton in an atom- its that fundamental. As for the
homology between mitochondria and bacteria, my guess is that there was a
symbiotic relationship between the bacterium and the eukaryote that over
the course of time became the mitochondrion through replacement of the
bacterial metabolic contribution by enzymes proprietary to the host. This
is like Norman Horowitz's explanation for metabolic evolution (Horowitz NH.
On the Evolution of Biochemical Syntheses. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1945
Jun;31(6):153-7.). Maybe you could elaborate on the homology/analogy with
social systems?]


In set theory, something that puzzles me is “the manifold” (and it is so
much like a cellular membrane in a living system). When we see something as
a closed set, we must determine what circumscribes it; but whatever
circumscribes it must differ from what circumscription yields to our
understanding. So, the Order (and its appreciable variability as some
coefficient of its uniform invariability) we see as separate from the
“conscious” (conatus-like?) energy of the system – we seem to ignore the
living aspect of a manifold or a containing membrane for its own sake (this
course was at Adelaide, online). Nature does not create (non-living)
structure, apparently, and one can as easily see the membrane as the
protagonist rather than the unconscious skin of that urgent agency... while
an eerie and ardent localizability drive seems to mandate a separation of
“anatomy” from “physiology”, or organ membrane from organ contents/function.

[I haven't dealt with Set Theory since high school/college, so you'll have
to help me with this aspect. When I have explained by 'theory of
everything' in the past the mathematicians have universally alluded to it,
so there is resonance there, but I cannot appreciate it....yet. I do think
that the membrane is the 'protagonist' in the scenario of life because it
partitions life from non-life, and we wrote a whole book on the concept of
the cell membrane as the 'author' of all physiologic traits (see attached).
I don't know if that rebuts your comments about anatomy/physiology or organ
membrane/organ contents/function or not?]

Cell biologists explain that the membrane is not here for the endoplasm,
its Golgi apparatus, reticulum, or any other systemically viewed
sub-object. The idea of a constant membrane or manifold or container or
axis of change, then, detracts from the complete idea of the systemic
urgency which variability is irreducible to any anatomy, and brings us an
estranged dichotomy… made of part-wise perspectives and their enduring
agent (meta-perspective) - to explain the belief in an irreducible
invariance and inseparability while witnessing continuing variability and
separability of expression. Darwin called it "an insensible series..." such
that no two observations are quite identical, so we reduce them to a
species-like or variety-like similitude to avoid the impinging discomfiture
of continuing differences.

[This is a seemingly 'heavy' question if I am reading it correctly. I have
come to the conclusion that the dualities and dichotomies that were
generated by the explosive disruption of the Big Bang are resolved by
balanced chemical reactions and by life forms. Because life originates in
ambiguity, it can resolve dualities and dichotomies by internalizing them
and generating energy from matter......is that what you are alluding to? If
not, please help me to understand what you are driving at]

Thank you for your time and help John!

[And thank you Lonnie for your interest and questions]

On Wed, Jul 4, 2018 at 11:35 AM, Lonny Meinecke <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

> Thank you so much John for taking time out to respond and sharing your
> theory with me. I know I have sort of “lurked” here, and mainly because it
> is amazing to just take things in that you all so easily express. So I look
> into what many of you share and grow quietly, I guess (or hope I am growing
> at least).
>
> Lately I have marveled at how many things you have mentioned that
> (surprisingly) bring grounded evidence of unusual assumptions I am
> currently looking into. I see Margulis mentioned, and Bohr, and
> endosymbiosis, and Penrose, and an open-mindedness to the idea that
> consciousness is not a rare phenomenon that arises in some magical
> combination of biological pieces (yay!). I am so happy to see these, and
> the niche construction makes very good sense, especially the idea of a
> non-random genesis of an internal hodology that increases the odds of
> biological extension for the complex. That works even for socially
> constrained psychological hodologies (Kurt Lewin). What better to affect
> than what cannot get away? It is the origin of domestication, perhaps, in
> the structure and functional behavior of a cell. It is like a superstitious
> favor for an overarching fear of systemic collapse (Skinner’s work on
> Verbal Behavior helps here, I feel), and in time, the phenomenal struggle
> becomes mistaken for the physical struggle.
>
> May I ask some beginning questions? How do you frame the idea of cellular
> protagonism? Do you think of a cell as having a lasting mental agency? I
> sat in on a cell biology class and what I came away with was really a
> mathematical lemma. What is the membrane? What is its endoplasm and why
> does it conceive itself in conflict and in need of adaptation? Which aspect
> of a prokaryotic or eukaryotic cell do you consider the centroid of its
> urgency to survive? I noticed you do share that mitochondria are likely
> parasitical yet partially commensal (almost a saltational evolution, which
> Margulis speaks of). And one can guess that if mitochondria signal perfuse
> cell death, they must not share a stake in the survival of the cell (or the
> diverse complex which we see organismically, since to issue or obey a
> superior order like that requires detachment from the organic complex).
> Instead, mitochondria seem to occupy a hierarchical or systemic maintenance
> role at the expense of their neighbors, and find extension in that (like
> many parasitical concerns, especially amensal symbionts and social roles
> such as villeins and tax collectors across history, and capos in Frankl’s
> search for meaning).
>
> In set theory, something that puzzles me is “the manifold” (and it is so
> much like a cellular membrane in a living system). When we see something as
> a closed set, we must determine what circumscribes it; but whatever
> circumscribes it must differ from what circumscription yields to our
> understanding. So, the Order (and its appreciable variability as some
> coefficient of its uniform invariability) we see as separate from the
> “conscious” (conatus-like?) energy of the system – we seem to ignore the
> living aspect of a manifold or a containing membrane for its own sake (this
> course was at Adelaide, online). Nature does not create (non-living)
> structure, apparently, and one can as easily see the membrane as the
> protagonist rather than the unconscious skin of that urgent agency... while
> an eerie and ardent localizability drive seems to mandate a separation of
> “anatomy” from “physiology”, or organ membrane from organ contents/function.
>
> Cell biologists explain that the membrane is not here for the endoplasm,
> its Golgi apparatus, reticulum, or any other systemically viewed
> sub-object. The idea of a constant membrane or manifold or container or
> axis of change, then, detracts from the complete idea of the systemic
> urgency which variability is irreducible to any anatomy, and brings us an
> estranged dichotomy… made of part-wise perspectives and their enduring
> agent (meta-perspective) - to explain the belief in an irreducible
> invariance and inseparability while witnessing continuing variability and
> separability of expression. Darwin called it "an insensible series..." such
> that no two observations are quite identical, so we reduce them to a
> species-like or variety-like similitude to avoid the impinging discomfiture
> of continuing differences.
>
> Thank you for your time and help John!
> --Lonny
>
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