Dear Professor Josephson

An interesting and thought-provoking essay especially with the analogy between biology and physics which is very different from the way biology is usually reduced to physics. I just wanted to note that one of the earliest thinkers on Physics, Aristotle, considered the universe more like an organism.

Best Wishes

Mozibur Ullah

I've just been looking at your essay. The ideas sound similar to mine but my way of introducing them may be simpler. I hope to have a coherent presentation before too long, but need to slot the pieces clearly together (which my main critic in this thread seems to be notably unable to do in the way he presents his own rival picture!).

It intrigues me to note that you mention terms like 'edge of chaos'. Please elabortae for my clarity if we can differentiate between chaos of different degrees. Also, we may follow with similar procedure to consider Order and its degrees of less and more! We conducted an experiment where we mixed random events being sensed with different lower and lower degree of regular or ordered events. Chi square test clearly indicated such a mix taking place even at extremely low mixing % of regular pulses!

    You can look up the term on the internet if you want more, but the situation essentially is that chaos refers to 'sensitivity to initial conditions', with differences between two adjacent situations increasing exponentially over time. There is a definite edge between this increase over time and stable situations where differences decrease over time. Biology seems to make use of this because being near the edge supports the possibility of favourable mutations. But you are right in saying that there are varying distances from the edge and this may also be important.

    Thanks, Brain for your pertinent response. I hope Biologista along with Physicist colleagues may investigate such border line situations experimentally in order to clarify the siyuation. My youngdr colleague researches inmicro biology and your suggestion can be persued further!

    Dear Brian,

    I made similar assumption on central role of biology and I attempted to investigate such fundamental biological fact as Homochirality. I had found that Homochirality could be used also as heuristic in Number theory ( an existence of odd perfect numbers, fundamental theorem of arithmetic and ABC conjecture ) - please see my essay " Fundamentalness of Homochirality ". I suspect that fundamentalness of biological Homochirality also could be connected with an idea of violation of symmetry in physics.

    Generally,a central role of biology is easy deduced from my Quantum Idealism ( article published in Russian Uspekhi Physics in English in 2003,12 with support of Vitaly L.Ginsburg Nobel Prizer in physics 2004). I think your idealistic attitude is also important in understanding your biosemantics.

    With the best wishes

    Michael A.Popov

    Brian,

    I like the idea of mathematics as 'something that life does' because it makes no value judgment. After all, rape is something life does, too. Makes it possible for me to separate mathematics from mathematician, and accept Bieberbach's results without imposing my own prejudice against Nazis and rape. I take it, that you mean that meaning is an objectified thing--a higher meaning than any one person can impose. After all, some deem Nazis and rape 'something that life does' and are proud of it besides. One is reminded that philosophy was once known as moral science.

    " ... something that sufficiently evolved life does because in the appropriate context so doing is of value to life." Ultimately. The jury is out on the context for 'sufficiently evolved'. And no research mathematician proves theorems because she thinks it will add value to life--though it does, in the long run. Theorem-proving is 'something that life does' and it gets the mathematician through life. Perhaps its value is just that.

    There is no doubt in my mind, though, that meaning precedes the construction of a mathematical object. I embrace your premise.

    All Best,

    Tom https://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/3124

      Hi Brian:

      I fully agree with your statement - "... there are intriguing parallels between

      the quantum and biological domains, suggesting that there may be a more fundamental level underlying both."

      I would like to draw your attention to the missing fundamental physics governing - "What causes a photon to accelerate to the speed of light?" My paper - "What is Fundamental - Is C the Speed of Light". describes the fundamental physics of antigravity missing from the widely-accepted mainstream physics and cosmology theories resolving their current inconsistencies and paradoxes. The missing physics depicts a spontaneous relativistic mass creation/dilation photon model that explains the yet unknown dark energy, inner workings of quantum mechanics, and bridges the gaps among relativity and Maxwell's theories. The model also provides field equations governing the spontaneous wave-particle complimentarity or mass-energy equivalence. The key significance or contribution of the proposed work is to enhance fundamental understanding of C, commonly known as the speed of light, and Cosmological Constant, commonly known as the dark energy.

      The manuscript not only provides comparisons against existing empirical observations but also forwards testable predictions for future falsification of the proposed model.

      I would like to invite you to read my paper and appreciate any feedback comments.

      Best Regards

      Avtar Singh

      Thanks -- I've found it on the web now, at https://brianrotman.wordpress.com/articles/toward-a-semiotics-of-mathematics/. Pretty complicated and he seems uncertain of what to conclude in the end. I've written something on a similar theme, at https://arxiv.org/abs/1307.6707.

      "We Think That We Think Clearly, But That's Only Because We Don't Think Clearly": Mathematics, Mind, and the Human World.

      It could be that the idea of semiotic scaffolding which I refer to in this essay is relevant to the issue that you raise, but it is worth more detailed analysis.

      Wow. I opened your arXiv article and fell in love at first skim. The Mathematical Experience is probably my favorite book. I had a hard time locating it on the bookshelf because the spine was so worn. Will return for an enjoyable read as soon as I am out from under an imminent deadline.

      Brian Josephson

      You asked for the relevance if Planck's constant is a property of the detecting electron. The detector creates quantization, and that does not prove quanta in light.

      A bound and moving electron interacts with the ether, and the disturbance moves with speed c to our detecting electron. Only a potential force is produced and this force becomes real after some time and interacts with the ether. This means that bound electrons can emit without loosing energy.

      Best regards from __________________ John-Erik Persson