Abstract
Chapter 2 describes the systems of basic science that would best fit to support the immense complexity of the mental universe. It presents some information on various systems that could qualify for the task and focuses on the model most likely able to offer ruling support to the nonlinear emergent phenomena that constitute and organize the entire biological domain, from the classical level of reality to the subatomic realm of quantum science and to the complex interactions with sociocultural collective systems.
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Notes
- 1.
This is a large but still a finite number. “Because the number of neurons in the neocortex is 1010 and a typical cell assembly might involve (say) 104 neurons, some mistakenly suppose that the number of possible assemblies is only 106 (John Eccles made this mistake). Confusion arises because one neuron can participate in more than one assembly” (Scott, personal communication).
- 2.
“One way to see this is that two people with the same 1010 assemblies would still have them organized (or interrelated) differently. Upon seeing the color red, one person might think of an apple, another a sunset, another his lover’s dress, and so on” (Scott, personal communication). Such reorganization of neural connectivity is ongoing also in the same brain, with every thought or experience we have.
- 3.
- 4.
The number of particles (mass) of the universe is about 1080. The age of the universe (20 billion years) in units of picoseconds (10−12 seconds) is about 1030. Their product is roughly equal to 10110.
- 5.
Interestingly, Kauffman follows very closely the same type of reasoning to describe the limited value science has to pose upon transcriptional genetics in explaining evolution. “Humans have about 2500 transcription-factor genes. The number of possible combinations of activities of these genes is 22500 or about 10750. There are only an estimated 1080 particles in the known universe, which means that the number of possible states of our regulating genes is immensely larger than the number of particles in the universe. If we add in our structural genes, there are 225000 or about 107500 states. The universe is about 1017 seconds old. It takes a few minutes to an hour for genes to turn on or off. Even if we were a thousand times as old as the universe, there is not time enough for our regulatory network to “visit” even a tiny fraction of its possible states. And remember, we are still assuming genes are as simple as light bulbs, with no states but “on” or “off.” … Furthermore, cell types are clearly distinct from one another and stable, often for long periods. Thus each cell type must somehow represent a very confined set of these unimaginably many possible states. And these confined patterns must somehow be clearly distinct from one another.” (P 107 ff)
- 6.
In other words, at the structural level 10 followed by eighty zeros particles are sufficient to build the entire physical universe. At the functional level, the brain could count on 10 followed by one million zeros neural circuits, to build mental dynamics. The mental universe is hyper-astronomically greater, larger, than the physical universe.
- 7.
M. Tegmark (2000) reached a similar conclusion.
- 8.
For an overview of the role that nonlinear dynamics may play in trying to understand “the collective dynamics of billions of interconnected neurons in the brain” see also Glanz (1997).
- 9.
The same broad conclusions are supported by S. A. Kauffman (2008), although with a different perception of causality. He discusses his theory of collectively autocatalytic sets as an example of a “fully emergent, spontaneous self-organization and its potential role, with natural selection, in evolution… It shows that for a wide variety of molecular species, reaction types, and catalytic distributions, given a sufficient diversity of molecular species, autocatalytic sets will spontaneously emerge.” By the interaction of what he calls the “initial actual” (the initial state of a chemical reaction network) with “the adjacent possible” (unexpected new outcomes) new combinations will emerge: new actuals, out of which new adjacent possibles will come into existence, and so on, expressions of what he calls “the creativity of the universe” (2008, pp 59 ff.). Parenthetically, Damasio mentions this theory in passing: “In a variation of this theme, catalytic RNAs would do double duty, replicate and do the chemistry” (2018, p. 38)
- 10.
Nagel (2012), p. 8.
- 11.
One is reminded of Ms. Tangerine’s search for what makes an artwork, in the ceaselessly creative fantasy world of T. Pratchett (2001):
The frame that once had been (the painting of) Wagon Stuck in River was leaning against a wall in front of her. It was empty. The bare canvas was neatly rolled beside it. In front of the frame, carefully heaped in order of size, were piles of pigments. Several dozen Auditors were breaking these down into their component molecules. “Still nothing?” she said, striding along the line. “No, Miss Tangerine. Only known molecules and atoms so far.” said an Auditor, its voice shaking slightly. “Well, find me where Art is … is it something to do with the proportions? The balance of molecules? The basic geometry?” “We are continuing to look … .” “Go on with it!” (p. 262).
- 12.
I do not know how these programs are transcribed from one generation to the next, unless one agrees with Terry Pratchett (2001, p. 72). “Some genetics are passed on via the soul.” Biologist Richard Dawkins (1989) introduced the term memes to indicate “a new replicator, a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation” (p. 192). These replicators deal with elements of human culture and “propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation. Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions ….” (p. 192). He also states that “memes should be regarded as living structures, not just metaphorically but technically” (p. 192) and reports how neuroscientist Juan Delius of the University of Konstanz published a detailed picture of what the neuronal hardware of a meme might look like (p. 323).
- 13.
The term indicates the inner representations of the opposite sex and the values attached to such components of the self.
- 14.
I admit my own vagueness about this term. A thought is both a set of electrochemical processes and specific synaptic arrangements and a mental event: Voltaire defines it as “an image that paints itself upon my brain” and I will leave it at that. The existence of thought is not under discussion here, so the language chosen to define the phenomenon is of relative importance at this point.
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Sanguineti, V.R. (2022). An “Ideographic,” Suprapersonal Language of Rules and Universal Symbols: Alwyn Scott and Nonlinear Dynamics. In: The Rosetta Stone of the Human Mind. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86415-6_2
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