Dear Ulla Marianne Mattfolk,
I very much enjoyed your essay. Thank you for reading my essay and for your gracious comments.
Discovering Schrödinger's "What is life?" (circa 1965) was a great excitement for me. I put Schrödinger at the top of the genius stack. His 'aperiodic' crystal was genius at the time. He knew maximum order was required, but not the total order of the crystal. His was the intuition, and he spurred all of the DNA pioneers, many of whom credited his 'What is life?' for their entry into the field of molecular biology.
But you say, "we often assume the ideal to be a periodic symmetric structure, so symmetry is 'fault' or 'error'."
My opinion is that all real symmetries we apply to physics today are approximate. I discuss this in comments around this contest, so do not repeat it here. For physicists, symmetry is 'easy', as it has a group representation, so if we can find elements that seem to be groupable, we can apply matrix math. And it works, even when the symmetry is broken. This is probably because the group elements can be transformed into each other, but require something other than the pure symmetry that the math relies on.
You say 'information is distortion'. Yes, when energy exceeds a system threshold it 'distorts' the system, causing a transition to a different state; the structure is 'in'-formed, and information is 'recorded'. However it is not useful information unless a code-book or context is available to interpret it. As you say "information is about something." How could information travel through space, not knowing what ultimate system will be 'in'-formed? Energy travels through space, and sometimes leaves a meaningful record. And yes, "unlearning is hard." [See my essay.]
In your essay you say "Logic longs for a unified picture, but logic may fool us." In my schema, consciousness is awareness plus volition, while intelligence is consciousness plus logic [where logic is structural.] Logic is piecemeal, local, and based on hardware: silicon logic gates, protein/DNA/RNA, axons and synaptic gaps, etc. I believe it is consciousness, above and beyond logic that longs for a unified picture, i.e., wants all of the logical pieces to coexist without contradicting each other.
If consciousness arises separately with each life form, it must be 'easy', that is simple - easy to achieve, because life forms are almost without limit. But all such 'simple' models have failed. This (and experience) tells me that consciousness is inherent in the universe and must have a field character. Many of my essays, particularly my last one, address this point: The Nature of Mind
Your bio addresses the real miracle (also supporting a consciousness field): Self-healing.
My very best regards,
Edwin Eugene Klingman
