John:

Thanks!  In Gregg's "dimensions of complexity" hierarchy the highest-level is "culture" -- which I'm suggesting is *caused* by our technological inventions (acting as forms) -- so I suspect that the topic of "physiological stress" and why it is caused now needs to be explored.

When you say "caused by the breakdown in cell-cell communication as a result of the loss of bioenergetics, which is finite" you seem to be alluding to what is called *efficient* causality -- which is the one most associated with "positive" science originating in the paradigm from the 16th/17th-century (also where "energy" was primary) -- right?

But that paradigm was "overthrown" in the 19th/20th-century (and, yes, that's why Kuhn wrote his 1962 "Scientific Revolutions" book).  Today science has no positive grasp on causality, instead substituting "probability," which comes with its own train-load of problems.  Indeed, one of the pioneering AI researchers, Judea Pearl, has been trying (without much luck) to somehow rescue a sense of "cause," since its absence is seriously getting in the way of building human-like robots . . . !!

https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.amazon.com_Book-2DWhy-2DScience-2DCause-2DEffect_dp_046509760X&d=DwIDaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=a_atcpO9RlELX5ilA4Jj-CdDwoFgkCQwEiLcWwdTXCg&s=Emly2WgLo3WjMuPtYW9EV87r_u5PhTwjCgKcq0iqYEY&e=

I've suggested (in private email) to Gregg that he invented "dimensions of complexity" (which he admits doesn't exist in "complexity science") to build his ToK for *exactly* this reason: we don't know what "causality" means anymore.  This requires us to go-back-to Aristotle's "four causes" and to sort through how they function in today's "culture."  And, to do that, we will need to use McLuhan to get there.

https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__en.wikipedia.org_wiki_Four-5Fcauses&d=DwIDaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=a_atcpO9RlELX5ilA4Jj-CdDwoFgkCQwEiLcWwdTXCg&s=-7U_EBV5O7yj1-5bSUIawFTpdgmSgwl0Tz8tNYTCX84&e=

Much work to be done . . . <g>

Mark

P.S. Some would suggest that there is a "higher-level" than culture and call it "civilization" -- as written about extensively by Arnold Toynee &al.  For what it's worth, at my Center, we have termed the top-level "spheres" to reflect the global changes caused by *electric* technologies, beginning with the Telegraph in the mid-1800s.  These "dimensions" require an appropriate *metaphysics* which is grounded in a thorough retrieval of what we once understood about causes -- all four of them.

P.P.S. In the West (as civilization or sphere), the ur-text is the Bible.  And in the East, it is the Yijing (aka "I Ching").  There is simply no way to think about this level of *organization* without a comprehensive "education" in these texts.  No, this is not needed to understand cell-cell communication but, as we know, that's not the full ToK story.  I began my study of the Bible in 1970 (at the age of 22), when I went to University of Chicago Divinity School (looking for a draft deferment), majoring in the "Old Testament."  I remember once floating in a salt-water pool in Tiberias, Israel, listening to jokes about how "Jesus got nailed on his boards," with some Jewish friends who declared that I was "more Jewish" than they were.  In fact, I'm Catholic but my children *are* Jewish.

P.P.P.S. The "secularization" that dominated our 20th-century lives is over.  Kaput!  The new *digital* paradigm in which we have already living for 20+ years could be summarized by "Less work: More religion." This is what Jurgen Habermas, yes, a Marxist, calls the "Post-secular Age."  As work shifts to the robots and people wind-up with a massive increase in their "leisure," many of them will move to lives of religious activity, including "monasteries" and a huge increase in "contemplation" -- all of which means that we are already living in a very different "culture" from the one we grew up in.  Yes, it will be a challenge for ToK to explain why that happened.

https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.amazon.com_Awareness-2DWhat-2DMissing-2DReason-2DPost-2Dsecular_dp_0745647219&d=DwIDaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=a_atcpO9RlELX5ilA4Jj-CdDwoFgkCQwEiLcWwdTXCg&s=oKSiJicoDfZ5DBi-buQPxCI8ws_F7TIZx7iOCi8mUe4&e=

Quoting JOHN TORDAY <[log in to unmask]>:

In response, I am not very familiar with scripture, so not well versed in
the Book of Revelation......a reflection of my poor education?

As for  --> What you didn't address is the biological process for
*destroying* "equipose" (i.e. "progress," "communism" &c) and its
relationship to "mutation" (and/or other processes, like cancer, for
instance) . . . !!

If I understand your question correctly, my conceptualization of evolution
is based on cell-cell communication as the basis for development and
phylogeny mediated by soluble growth factors and their eponymous
receptors. Such interactions are known to determine the patterns of growth
and differentiation that occur during embryogenesis, culminating in
homeostasis at the time of birth, and subsequently during the life cycle of
the
the organism. Death/senescence is caused by the breakdown in cell-cell
communication as a result of the loss of bioenergetics, which is finite.
Mutations occur when the organism is under physiologic stress, causing the
production of Radical Oxygen Species due to shear stress to the walls of
the capilllaries.....such Radical Oxygen Species are known to cause gene
mutations and duplications. But it should be borne in mind that those
genetic changes are occurring within the context and confines of the
homeostatic regulation of the cell-cell interactions. The cells will
remodel themselves until a new homeostatic set point is reached,
constituting what we
think of as evolution. So if evolution is thought of as 'progress', that is
how it has transpired...perhaps you could find an explanation for communism
based on this mechanism of evolution. As for cancer based on the same
mechanism, if the cell-cell interactions cannot re-establish homeostasis,
one of the cells will proliferate to fill form a 'new' organism in order to
fulfill its mission of homeostasis within the organismic construct. I have
attached
paper of us on the topic fyi.

On Thu, Jul 5, 2018 at 5:44 AM, Mark Stahlman <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

John:

I was off kayaking (and eating lobster salad at Pop's restaurant)
yesterday, so I'll take your comments one-at-a-time (the last of which was
in a private email).

#1 "Communism" has nothing to do with "cooperation."  Instead, it was an
expression of the Protestant *evangelical* expectation of an Armageddon
that would end human biology once-and-for-all.  Marx was a hired-gun by F.
Engels (paid for by his father's factory), who was actually responsible for
all this nonsense.

Engels was raised in Barmen, Germany, where his youthful experiences were
of itinerant preachers raising the roof with "Repent the End is Near" --
whereas Marx came from Trier, where he identified with the local farmers.

"Communism" is a fundamental *rejection* of "equipose" and instead an
attempt to end this world with a "material" version of the 2nd Coming.  How
familiar are you with the Book of Revelation . . . ??

Furthermore, what we would now call "human" didn't exist until roughly
500BC (and then only in a few places), or what Karl Jaspers called the
"Axial Age."  Hunter Gatherers were the same species but not at all the
same "phenotype" that is today encountered by anyone who understood that
term.  This is the topic of Jaynes and Donald, which I will wait for Greg
to return to elaborate.

https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__en.wiki
pedia.org_wiki_Axial-5FAge&d=DwIDaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4
uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgj
O2gOz4-A&m=GHCgWRTvDK4nxxOO9mUcZOXeKqbTrkLmHYR2JQzUcdQ&s=k-1
yHhOxtVZDQg50L5F8zha5fvPEThxP1XM1qLGmLwA&e=

#2 As an "outlying thinker," you will need to learn about Leibniz.  All in
due time.

https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.ama
zon.com_Leibniz-2DIntellectual-2DMaria-2DRosa-2DAntognazza_
dp_1107627613&d=DwIDaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_
5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=
GHCgWRTvDK4nxxOO9mUcZOXeKqbTrkLmHYR2JQzUcdQ&s=aSiHYiwqsVcVrV
R5hyEV7NBzagdNR_GJoX2mOvp4VEQ&e=

#3 Without McLuhan, there is no "up-to-date" regarding technology.  Also a
topic for future elaboration.

https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.ama
zon.com_Understanding-2DMedia-2DExtensions-2DMarshall-
2DMcLuhan_dp_1584230738&d=DwIDaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4
uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgj
O2gOz4-A&m=GHCgWRTvDK4nxxOO9mUcZOXeKqbTrkLmHYR2JQzUcdQ&s=
QWaAiedWWRHK_bXLzdPPeeVtFOcVHHiFpuDwZGwgB1k&e=

--> What you didn't address is the biological process for *destroying*
"equipose" (i.e. "progress," "communism" &c) and its relationship to
"mutation" (and/or other processes, like cancer, for instance) . . . !!

Mark

Quoting JOHN TORDAY <[log in to unmask]>:

.....Oh, and no, I have not read Leibnitz, just little snippets here and

there.....to be honest, as long as the thinking is related to biology as
Lego Blocks (descriptive) it is unfortunately immaterial to my way of
thinking because it reflects the logical construct being used......I liken
 it to the difference between Newtonian Gravity theory v Einsteinian, the
former describing the attraction of bodies, the latter that gravity is due
to the distortion of space-time. Like Twain said,“The difference between
the *almost right* word and the *right* word is really a large matter.
’tis

the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”😀

On Wed, Jul 4, 2018 at 6:26 AM, JOHN TORDAY <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Mark, nice to meet a true 'son of Madison'. I only knew transients from

Michigan State and University of Chicago in my brief post-doctoral
stint. I
worked with Jack Gorski, the biochemist who discovered the estrogen
receptor.......my work on the effect of cortisol on lung development was
buoyed by such science for the next 20 years. Madison was an interesting
transition from my MSc/PhD in Experimental Medicine, taught by the
discoverers of cortisol, aldosterone and prolactin, and Hans Selye, the
clinician-scientist who coined the term 'stress' while at McGill, a
bastion
of Eurocentnrism, back to the US en route to Harvard (from which I was
thrown out after 15 years of hard labor), which may explain my own
worldview academically, which is quite eclectic, but in a very different
way from yours. I have spent 50+ years doing the science of the
establishment, chasing my tail studying physiologic mechanisms and
chasing
my intellectual tail, always in the hope of 'linearizing' the story by
latching on to a tale that would take me from the superficial and mundane
to the fundamental......what else would I have expected, given that a
simple molecule like cortisol could flip a switch and save life at its
inception- the implementation of cortisol for prevention of the death of
preterm infants was profoundly inspiring, to this day. But as I had said,
it made no 'logical' sense that hormones would or should have anything to
do with lungs....but now it makes all the sense in the world; I just
hadda
turn the whole process around 180 degrees, at least for my own 'sanity'.

So to your question about the biological relevance of Communism, I start
with the premise that multicellular organisms evolved through metabolic
cooperativity, so 'from each according to their abilities, to each
according to their needs' makes sense as an operational principle. I
think
that all fell apart in the transition from Hunter Gatherers to
agriculture
and ownership of land, acting as a driver for human avarice and greed
instead of cooperativity. There is a biological underpinning to that in
the
transition from hunting/gathering to agriculture due to the ready source
of
food year round increasing subcutaneous fat, producing the hormone
leptin,
which promotes the 'arborization' of the brain, the formation of
ever-increasing numbers of synapses. That mechanism usurped the gut-brain
mechanism by which food would distend the gut, increasing leptin and
ghrelin production by the gut, affecting brain development along a
different trajectory from the steady infusion of leptin provided by the
fat
depot. There are those who say that the dominance of the CNS over the gut
brain has been our undoing, and I think that's correct in that the CNS
mechanism tends to lend itself to neuroticisms that the gut-brain doesn't
due to the abstractions of the CNS vs the pragmatism of the gut, if you
get
my drift. Along these lines, there was an interesting paper (Cochran G,
Hardy J, Harpending H. Natural history of Ashkenazi intelligence. J
Biosoc
Sci. 2006 Sep;38(5):659-93) the hypothesis of which was that Ashkenazi
Jews
have higher IQs, but an excess of neurodegenerative diseases, and that
this
is an example of balancing selection, too much of a good thing being a
bad
thing, myelinization of neurons increasing IQ but too much leading to
pathology.

But I digress. Not to 'chest beat' too much on my part, but I find it
energizing in my 8th decade to think that a) maybe we got it wrong, and
b)
how can we 'fix' it, given what we're doing to ourselves and our planet.
As
I had said previously, my sense is that what I have stumbled onto is the
realization that what we think of as evolution are all
epiphenomena........the so-called complexity of life is actually a
by-product of the core mission of life, to maintain and sustain its
originating ability to remain at equipoise, like the Red Queen, which
sounds counterintuitive because we are using the wrong intuition. BTW, my
idea that Quantum Mechanics is highly relevant to biology, but hasn't
been
integrated with it for lack of the right perspective, i.e. that the
Cosmos
and biology emerged from the same Singularity/Big Bang, so that's the way
in which Pauli, Heisenberg, non-localization, coherence have to be viewed
biologically......then it works, at least in my simplistic way of
understanding those two domains. And that sits at the core of the problem
in the sense that our system of logic is founded on the way in which we
understand how and why we exist; given that, if we got it backwards, of
course we would have inherent problems in our personal comportment and
that
of the societies that we constitute. We're still stuck with Descartes
(witness Hameroff and Penrose fixated on microtubules in the brain, when
there are microtubules in the viscera too!) and Michaelangelo's Vitruvian
Man when we should be devising ways of reintegrating our big brains in a
more holistically win-win way. Have you read Jeremy Rifkin's "The
Empathic
Civilization". In it he makes this same plea, if only.....

Again, hubris and braggadocio aside, what I have offered is a step-wise,
scientifically-based means of devconvoluting our own evolution in a way
that is 'testable and refutable', linking physics and biology together
mechanistically for the first time. That relationship is buildable- I
have
suggested merging the Elemental Periodic Table with a Periodic Table of
Biology to form an algorithm for all of the natural sciences....what a
dynamic search engine that would be. I just have to figure out how to
mathematically express evolution....Work in Progress. But of course I am
curious as to how all of this 'fits' with what makes the hair on the back
of *your* neck stand up? Because CRISPER and AI aren't our salvation,

they're just more of the same ambiguity/deception paradigm as far as I am
concerned......John

On Wed, Jul 4, 2018 at 2:15 AM, Mark Stahlman <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

John:

This is *all* very exciting -- as in skin-tingly, even more than
head-shaking (and, yes, mine was going up-down, not side-to-side) . . .
<g>

I grew up in Madison, where both of my parents were on the UW faculty.
Madison West then undergraduate 1966-70, followed by a brief stint at
UofChicago Divinity School (for a rare deferment, when only "ministers"
escaped the draft lottery), then back to Madison for a year in a PhD
program in Molecular Biology, which was aborted by the collapse of
NSF-funding post-Vietnam.  Then I moved to NYC in 1972 and started an
early
mini-computer software company (while playing "revolutionary" and
studying
Renaissance history &c) -- which was the basis of my later career on
Wall
Street &c.

"Genetics" seemed to me to be barking-up-the-wrong-tree with its
over-emphasis on DNA (and "information," trying to equate life to
computation) -- which meant I was looking for epi-genetics before that
was
quite a thing yet.  Marshall McLuhan, as it turns out, is *all* about
psycho-technological environments and our "adaptation" to them
(although,
for various reasons, he never elaborated a "psychology," which is what
we
are now doing at the Center, with Aristotle's help.)

I suspect that what you mean by "consciousness" -- say at the
cellular-level -- is what Aristotle meant by the "soul" (aka
*entelechy*)
and what Leibniz meant by "monad."  Have you had a chance to look at
Leibniz in this way?

Throughout, this "being-at-work-staying-itself" (as Joe Sachs translates
it), is in conflict with the urge to dissolve that "individuality" (i.e.
Freud's "oceanic feeling" and the various "mysticisms") by trying to
"be-something-else-destroying-yourself" which, in theological terms, is
called *gnosticism* (aka "self-deification.")  Btw, this was Plato's
"World
Soul" and it was directly in conflict with Aristotle (yes, his most
famous
student), much as Spinoza's *pantheism* was in conflict with Leibniz.

This anti-balance, get-me-outta-here, clean-things-up urge (shown in
Voltaire's satire of Leibniz's best-of-all-possible-worlds) -- giving
rise
to English "Puritanism," and thus the USA-as-proto-Eden (being
celebrated
today, as it was in Joni Mitchell's "Woodstock" lyric, "We gotta get
back
to the Garden"), as well as "Communism" (via F. Engels and his German
"puritanism"), speaking of ironies -- likely also has a "biological"
explanation, which I'd be very curious to hear your thoughts about
(perhaps
linked to "mutation") . . . !!

Mark

P.S. Eventually, we'll also have to drag the Chinese into all this and,
in particular, Daoism and the Yijing -- since, in the world today,
theirs
is a much more dynamic (and coherent) "sphere" than the West, in which
the
*balance* we are describing is institutionalized in the Communist Party
of
China (once again, noting the irony involved) -- all of which developed
under *very* different psycho-technological conditions, with a writing
system (i.e. the key to human self-aware "consciousness") radically
unlike
our alphabetic one.

P.P.S All of this is what some call "outlying thinking" (without a
"home"
since the 13th-century).  I remember one day when I was participating
in a
National Academy of Science meeting when the chairman described me to
the
group as a "very unusual scholar" (and, no, I wasn't invited back).
Aristotle was Greek but he wasn't Athenian -- which meant that he had to
leave twice, his Lyceum school was outside the city-walls and in 307BC
his
followers were banished, taking up in Rhodes and then largely
disappearing.  Likewise, Leibniz was almost completely expunged after
his
death, then mocked by Voltaire (on behalf of Newton &al) and slandered
by
Bertrand Russell.  There is something psycho-technological about trying
to
"expel" the approach we are taking -- raising questions, as Spengler
would
put it about "Man and Technics" as well as the current drive to "merge"
humanity with the robots (aka, Ray Kurzweil &al's hoped-for
"Singularity.")


Quoting JOHN TORDAY <[log in to unmask]>:

Hi Lonny, interesting comment about what I assume you mean is the
ability

of individuals to 'fit' with their environment, cultural and
otherwise. I
think that becomes particularly relevant in the context of the cell as
the
first Niche Construction (see attached), or how the organism integrates
with its environment as a function of its internal 'resources'
.......or
not. I am thinking of identical twins, for example, whom we know don't
share the same epigenomes. Deconvoluting all of that would surely help
us
better understand what makes us 'tick'. John

On Tue, Jul 3, 2018 at 7:24 PM, Lonny Meinecke <
[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

Hi John and Mark,

I am following your discussion with interest... thank you both for
this
thread. I like the term endogenization. A curious thing about each
individual carrying the environment around inside, is that the common
world
is unlikely to be the same as each private version. These often seem
substitutes for the external, when that unaffectable commons becomes
untenable (or inaccessible) to the creatures that must somehow dwell
in
it
anyway.
--Lonny

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