Global Dynamics Processes: the Connecting Pattern from KaliYuga to Tao

the immanent Mind of Tao

2011-10-07T16:00:00.002+02:00

The cybernetic epistemology ... would suggest a new approach. The individual mind is immanent but not only in the body. It is immanent also in pathways and messages outside the body; and there is a larger Mind of which the individual mind is only a sub-system. This larger Mind is comparable to God and is perhaps what some people mean by "God," but it is still immanent in the total interconnected social system and planetary ecology.
Freudian psychology expanded the concept of mind in-wards to include the whole communication system within the body—the autonomic, the habitual, and the vast range of unconscious process. What I am saying expands mind out-wards. And both of these changes reduce the scope of the conscious self. A certain humility becomes appropriate, tempered by the dignity or joy of being part of something much bigger. A part — if you will— of God.
If you put God outside and set him vis-à-vis his creation and if you have the idea that you are created in his image, you will logically and naturally see yourself as outside and against the things around you. And as you arrogate all mind to yourself, you will see the world around you as mindless and therefore not entitled to moral or ethical consideration. The environment will seem to be yours to exploit. Your survival unit will be you and your folks or conspecifics against the environment of other social units, other races and the brutes and vegetables.
If this is your estimate of your relation to nature and you have an advanced technology, your likelihood of survival will be that of a snowball in hell. You will die either of the toxic by-products of your own hate, or, simply, of over-population and overgrazing. The raw materials of the world are finite.

"Form, Substance, and Difference", January 9, 1970

Honor to Tao: Alan Mathison Turing

2011-08-04T16:06:00.005+02:00

A Blue Plaque marking Turing's home at Wilmslow, Cheshire, UK

Alan Turing was not only one of brightest mathematicians of the 900s and a genuine pioneer in the field of computer science, but also a hero of World War II for his decisive contribution to crack the Enigma code.
Enigma was an electro-mechanical machine used in several versions by the Wehrmacht and Kriegsmarine, the german military navy, to cipher and decipher their messages.

Since the enormous importance to succeed in cracking the code produced by Enigma the english Government Communications Headquarters founded in 1939 at Bletchley Park a centre for uncoding war messages, particularly for the cryptanalysis of the Enigma in Hut 8, which was led by Turing for a certain time.

Turing joined the Bletchley Park centre at the beginning of the war, working mainly on the naval version of, developing a number of techniques of analysis and deciphering, using a refined version of a computing machine called the "Bombe" already used in the past with success by the Polish Cipher Bureau which, at the outbreak of war, passed the results to english. The techniques which developed are named Banburismus for the Enigma machine and Turingery (or Turing's Method) for the Lorenz machine. Since 1941 the Enigma decoding projectil was known as Ultra and shared with the Allies. Turing contributed decisively to break the Enigma machine code of the navy version, resulting in a turning point for the Atlantic naval war.

In 1945 Turing was awarded the OBE for his wartime services, though his work remained secret for many years.

In 1952 Turing reported to the police for a break into his house by an his friend's accomplice. During the investigation he admitted to be homosexual and acknowledged a sexual relationship with that friend, saying "What's wrong?".
Homosexual acts were illegal at that time in the respectable, repressive and homophobic U.K. and Turing was charged with gross indecency under Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, the same crime for which Oscar Wilde had been convicted more then fifty years earlier.
Turing was given a choice between imprisonment or probation conditional on his agreement to undergo chemical castration, which he accepted.

Turing was a playful figure, he invented a way to play chess called "turn around the house": when a player moved he ran around the house, if the other player had still to move, he could make a further move.

Even in the implementation of his suicide Turing did not miss to get an humor's touch: as in the Snow White fairy tale, one of his favourite, on June 8, 1954 he injected cyanide poisoning into an apple and ate it.

The story of the treatment to which Alan Turing was subjected is one of the most infamous in British history.

Only on September 10, 2009, acknowledging an internet e-petition started by John Graham-Cumming, the former prime minister Gordon Brown released on the official site a public and personal statement, apologising and describing Turing's homophobic treatment as "appaling":

Text of Gordon Brown's statement on Alan Turing

Prime Minister: 2009 has been a year of deep reflection – a chance for Britain, as a nation, to commemorate the profound debts we owe to those who came before. ... So I am both pleased and proud that, thanks to a coalition of computer scientists, historians and LGBT activists, we have this year a chance to mark and celebrate another contribution to Britain’s fight against the darkness of dictatorship; that of code-breaker Alan Turing.

Turing was a quite brilliant mathematician, most famous for his work on breaking the German Enigma codes. It is no exaggeration to say that, without his outstanding contribution, the history of World War Two could well have been very different. He truly was one of those individuals we can point to whose unique contribution helped to turn the tide of war. The debt of gratitude he is owed makes it all the more horrifying, therefore, that he was treated so inhumanely. In 1952, he was convicted of ‘gross indecency’ – in effect, tried for being gay. His sentence – and he was faced with the miserable choice of this or prison - was chemical castration by a series of injections of female hormones. He took his own life just two years later.

Thousands of people have come together to demand justice for Alan Turing and recognition of the appalling way he was treated. While Turing was dealt with under the law of the time and we can't put the clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him. Alan and the many thousands of other gay men who were convicted as he was convicted under homophobic laws were treated terribly. Over the years millions more lived in fear of conviction.

I am proud that those days are gone and that in the last 12 years this government has done so much to make life fairer and more equal for our LGBT community. This recognition of Alan’s status as one of Britain’s most famous victims of homophobia is another step towards equality and long overdue.

But even more than that, Alan deserves recognition for his contribution to humankind. For those of us born after 1945, into a Europe which is united, democratic and at peace, it is hard to imagine that our continent was once the theatre of mankind’s darkest hour. It is difficult to believe that in living memory, people could become so consumed by hate – by anti-Semitism, by homophobia, by xenophobia and other murderous prejudices – that the gas chambers and crematoria became a piece of the European landscape as surely as the galleries and universities and concert halls which had marked out the European civilisation for hundreds of years. It is thanks to men and women who were totally committed to fighting fascism, people like Alan Turing, that the horrors of the Holocaust and of total war are part of Europe’s history and not Europe’s present.

So on behalf of the British Government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan’s work I am very proud to say: we’re sorry, you deserved so much better.

Alan Turing memorial statue in Sackville Park, Manchester

Since 1966 by ACM - Association for Computing Machinery a Turing award has been given annualy to honor his memory. It is widely considered as the computing world's highest honour in the fields of computer science, intelligent systems and artificial intelligence.

Statue of Turing by Stephen Kettle at Bletchley Park

The Alan Turing Home Page

A. M. Turing Award

The Turing Digital Archive

the end of (english) Tao

2011-06-13T10:36:00.005+02:00

The effort to carry on two parallel twins blogs (one in italian and this one in english) has exceeded the time and energies of the author.

If any reader is interested in topics/posts available only in the italian version please leave a comment on the blog or contact at the specified e-mail or use the available (poor) translation gadget tool.

Tao Revolver

2011-06-13T10:25:00.000+02:00

out of Tao into Tao

2011-05-16T14:34:00.003+02:00

the Te of Tao

2011-05-16T13:09:00.000+02:00

- 16 -

Empty your mind of all thoughts.
Let your heart be at peace.
Watch the turmoil of beings,
but contemplate their return.

Each separate being in the universe
returns to the common source.
Returning to the source is serenity.

If you don't realize the source,
you stumble in confusion and sorrow.
When you realize where you come from,
you naturally become tolerant,
disinterested, amused,
kindhearted as a grandmother,
dignified as a king.
Immersed in the wonder of the Tao,
you can deal with whatever life brings you,
and when death comes, you are ready.

De la causa, principio et uno of Tao

2011-05-11T15:41:00.001+02:00

« Thus, it is a universe, infinite, immobile, one is the absolute possibility, one the act, one the form or soul, one the body or matter, one the thing, one the entity, one the most and the excellent; which must not be understood, and therefore infinite and endless, and therefore infinite and limitless and consequently still; this does not move locally, because has no thing beside himself where to carry, since that is all; is not generated because is nothing that he can be derived or expected, given all that has being; is imperishable because there is no another thing to change, since he is everything, can not diminish or increase, since it is infinite, that you can not add, so is that you can not subtract, to what the infinite has not proportionate share »

(Giordano Bruno, De la causa, principio et uno, 1584)

Schizophrenia (2 of Swords)

2011-05-10T14:55:00.000+02:00

The person on this card brings a new twist to the old idea of "getting stuck between a rock and a hard place"! But we are in precisely this sort of situation when we get stuck in the indecisive and dualistic aspect of the mind. Should I let my arms go and fall head-first, or let my legs go and fall feet-first? Should I go here or there? Should I say yes or no? And whatever decision we make, we will always wonder if we should have decided the other way. The only way out of this dilemma is, unfortunately, to let go of both at once. You can't work your way out of this one by solving it, making lists of pros and cons, or in any way working it out with your mind. Better to follow your heart, if you can find it. If you can't find it, just jump--your heart will start beating so fast there will be no mistake about where it is!

Man is split. Schizophrenia is a normal condition of man--at least now. It may not have been so in the primitive world, but centuries of conditioning, civilization, culture and religion have made man a crowd--divided, split, contradictory.... But because this split is against his nature, deep down somewhere hidden the unity still survives. Because the soul of man is one, all the conditionings at the most destroy the periphery of the man. But the center remains untouched--that's how man continues to live. But his life has become a hell. The whole effort of Zen is how to drop this schizophrenia, how to drop this split personality, how to drop the divided mind of man, how to become undivided, integrated, centered, crystallized. The way you are, you cannot say that you are. You don't have a being. You are a marketplace--many voices. If you want to say 'yes', immediately the 'no' is there. You cannot even utter a simple word 'yes' with totality.... In this way happiness is not possible; unhappiness is a natural consequence of a split personality.

a perfect Tao for bananafish

2011-05-10T14:22:00.002+02:00

THERE WERE ninety-seven New York advertising men in the hotel, and, the way they were monopolizing the long-distance lines, the girl in 507 had to wait from noon till almost two-thirty to get her call through. She used the time, though. She read an article in a women's pocket-size magazine, called "Sex Is Fun-or Hell." She washed her comb and brush. She took the spot out of the skirt of her beige suit. She moved the button on her Saks blouse. She tweezed out two freshly surfaced hairs in her mole. When the operator finally rang her room, she was sitting on the window seat and had almost finished putting lacquer on the nails of her left hand.

She was a girl who for a ringing phone dropped exactly nothing. She looked as if her phone had been ringing continually ever since she had reached puberty.

With her little lacquer brush, while the phone was ringing, she went over the nail of her little finger, accentuating the line of the moon. She then replaced the cap on the bottle of lacquer and, standing up, passed her left--the wet--hand back and forth through the air. With her dry hand, she picked up a congested ashtray from the window seat and carried it with her over to the night table, on which the phone stood. She sat down on one of the made-up twin beds and--it was the fifth or sixth ring--picked up the phone.

"Hello," she said, keeping the fingers of her left hand outstretched and away from her white silk dressing gown, which was all that she was wearing, except mules--her rings were in the bathroom.

"I have your call to New York now, Mrs. Glass," the operator said.

"Thank you," said the girl, and made room on the night table for the ashtray.

A woman's voice came through. "Muriel? Is that you?"

The girl turned the receiver slightly away from her ear. "Yes, Mother. How are you?" she said.

"I've been worried to death about you. Why haven't you phoned? Are you all right?"

"I tried to get you last night and the night before. The phone here's been--"

"Are you all right, Muriel?"

The girl increased the angle between the receiver and her ear. "I'm fine. I'm hot. This is the hottest day they've had in Florida in--"

"Why haven't you called me? I've been worried to--"

"Mother, darling, don't yell at me. I can hear you beautifully," said the girl. "I called you twice last night. Once just after--"

"I told your father you'd probably call last night. But, no, he had to-Are you all right, Muriel? Tell me the truth."

"I'm fine. Stop asking me that, please."

"When did you get there?"

"I don't know. Wednesday morning, early."

"Who drove?"

"He did," said the girl. "And don't get excited. He drove very nicely. I was amazed."

"He drove? Muriel, you gave me your word of--"

"Mother," the girl interrupted, "I just told you. He drove very nicely. Under fifty the whole way, as a matter of fact."

"Did he try any of that funny business with the trees?"

"I said he drove very nicely, Mother. Now, please. I asked him to stay close to the white line, and all, and he knew what I meant, and he did. He was even trying not to look at the trees-you could tell. Did Daddy get the car fixed, incidentally?"

"Not yet. They want four hundred dollars, just to--"

"Mother, Seymour told Daddy that he'd pay for it. There's no reason for--"

"Well, we'll see. How did he behave--in the car and all?"

"All right," said the girl.

"Did he keep calling you that awful--"

"No. He has something new now."

"What?"

"Oh, what's the difference, Mother?"

"Muriel, I want to know. Your father--"

"All right, all right. He calls me Miss Spiritual Tramp of 1948," the girl said, and giggled.

"It isn't funny, Muriel. It isn't funny at all. It's horrible. It's sad, actually. When I think how--"

"Mother," the girl interrupted, "listen to me. You remember that book he sent me from Germany? You know--those German poems. What'd I do with it? I've been racking my--"

"You have it."

"Are you sure?" said the girl.

"Certainly. That is, I have it. It's in Freddy's room. You left it here and I didn't have room for it in the--Why? Does he want it?"

"No. Only, he asked me about it, when we were driving down. He wanted to know if I'd read it."

"It was in German!"

"Yes, dear. That doesn't make any difference," said the girl, crossing her legs. "He said that the poems happen to be written by the only great poet of the century. He said I should've bought a translation or something. Or learned the language, if you please."

"Awful. Awful. It's sad, actually, is what it is. Your father said last night--"

"Just a second, Mother," the girl said. She went over to the window seat for her cigarettes, lit one, and returned to her seat on the bed. "Mother?" she said, exhaling smoke.

"Muriel. Now, listen to me."

"I'm listening."

"Your father talked to Dr. Sivetski."

"Oh?" said the girl.

"He told him everything. At least, he said he did--you know your father. The trees. That business with the window. Those horrible things he said to Granny about her plans for passing away. What he did with all those lovely pictures from Bermuda--everything."

"Well?" said the girl.

"Well. In the first place, he said it was a perfect crime the Army released him from the hospital--my word of honor. He very definitely told your father there's a chance--a very great chance, he said--that Seymour may completely lose control of himself. My word of honor."

"There's a psychiatrist here at the hotel," said the girl.

"Who? What's his name?"

"I don't know. Rieser or something. He's supposed to be very good."

"Never heard of him."

"Well, he's supposed to be very good, anyway."

"Muriel, don't be fresh, please. We're very worried about you. Your father wanted to wire you last night to come home, as a matter of f--"

"I'm not coming home right now, Mother. So relax."

"Muriel. My word of honor. Dr. Sivetski said Seymour may completely lose contr--"

"I just got here, Mother. This is the first vacation I've had in years, and I'm not going to just pack everything and come home," said the girl. "I couldn't travel now anyway. I'm so sunburned I can hardly move."

"You're badly sunburned? Didn't you use that jar of Bronze I put in your bag? I put it right--"

"I used it. I'm burned anyway."

"That's terrible. Where are you burned?"

"All over, dear, all over."

"That's terrible."

"I'll live."

"Tell me, did you talk to this psychiatrist?"

"Well, sort of," said the girl.

"What'd he say? Where was Seymour when you talked to him?"

"In the Ocean Room, playing the piano. He's played the piano both nights we've been here."

"Well, what'd he say?"

"Oh, nothing much. He spoke to me first. I was sitting next to him at Bingo last night, and he asked me if that wasn't my husband playing the piano in the other room. I said yes, it was, and he asked me if Seymour's been sick or something. So I said--"

"Why'd he ask that?"

"I don't know, Mother. I guess because he's so pale and all," said the girl. "Anyway, after Bingo he and his wife asked me if I wouldn't like to join them for a drink. So I did. His wife was horrible. You remember that awful dinner dress we saw in Bonwit's window? The one you said you'd have to have a tiny, tiny--"

"The green?"

"She had it on. And all hips. She kept asking me if Seymour's related to that Suzanne Glass that has that place on Madison Avenue--the millinery."

"What'd he say, though? The doctor."

"Oh. Well, nothing much, really. I mean we were in the bar and all. It was terribly noisy."

"Yes, but did--did you tell him what he tried to do with Granny's chair?"

"No, Mother. I didn't go into details very much," said the girl. "I'll probably get a chance to talk to him again. He's in the bar all day long."

"Did he say he thought there was a chance he might get--you know--funny or anything? Do something to you!"

"Not exactly," said the girl. "He had to have more facts, Mother. They have to know about your childhood--all that stuff. I told you, we could hardly talk, it was so noisy in there."

"Well. How's your blue coat?"

"All right. I had some of the padding taken out."

"How are the clothes this year?"

"Terrible. But out of this world. You see sequins--everything," said the girl.

"How's your room?"

"All right. Just all right, though. We couldn't get the room we had before the war," said the girl. "The people are awful this year. You should see what sits next to us in the dining room. At the next table. They look as if they drove down in a truck."

"Well, it's that way all over. How's your ballerina?"

"It's too long. I told you it was too long."

"Muriel, I'm only going to ask you once more--are you really all right?"

"Yes, Mother," said the girl. "For the ninetieth time."

"And you don't want to come home?"

"No, Mother."

"Your father said last night that he'd be more than willing to pay for it if you'd go away someplace by yourself and think things over. You could take a lovely cruise. We both thought--"

"No, thanks," said the girl, and uncrossed her legs. "Mother, this call is costing a for--"

"When I think of how you waited for that boy all through the war-I mean when you think of all those crazy little wives who--"

"Mother," said the girl, "we'd better hang up. Seymour may come in any minute."

"Where is he?"

"On the beach."

"On the beach? By himself? Does he behave himself on the beach?"

"Mother," said the girl, "you talk about him as though he were a raving maniac--"

"I said nothing of the kind, Muriel."

"Well, you sound that way. I mean all he does is lie there. He won't take his bathrobe off."

"He won't take his bathrobe off? Why not?"

"I don't know. I guess because he's so pale."

"My goodness, he needs the sun. Can't you make him?

"You know Seymour," said the girl, and crossed her legs again. "He says he doesn't want a lot of fools looking at his tattoo."

"He doesn't have any tattoo! Did he get one in the Army?"

"No, Mother. No, dear," said the girl, and stood up. "Listen, I'll call you tomorrow, maybe."

"Muriel. Now, listen to me."

"Yes, Mother," said the girl, putting her weight on her right leg.

"Call me the instant he does, or says, anything at all funny--you know what I mean. Do you hear me?"

"Mother, I'm not afraid of Seymour."

"Muriel, I want you to promise me."

"All right, I promise. Goodbye, Mother," said the girl. "My love to Daddy." She hung up.

"See more glass," said Sybil Carpenter, who was staying at the hotel with her mother. "Did you see more glass?"

"Pussycat, stop saying that. It's driving Mommy absolutely crazy. Hold still, please."

Mrs. Carpenter was putting sun-tan oil on Sybil's shoulders, spreading it down over the delicate, winglike blades of her back. Sybil was sitting insecurely on a huge, inflated beach ball, facing the ocean. She was wearing a canary-yellow two-piece bathing suit, one piece of which she would not actually be needing for another nine or ten years.

"It was really just an ordinary silk handkerchief--you could see when you got up close," said the woman in the beach chair beside Mrs. Carpenter's. "I wish I knew how she tied it. It was really darling."

"It sounds darling," Mrs. Carpenter agreed. "Sybil, hold still, pussy."

"Did you see more glass?" said Sybil.

Mrs. Carpenter sighed. "All right," she said. She replaced the cap on the sun-tan oil bottle. "Now run and play, pussy. Mommy's going up to the hotel and have a Martini with Mrs. Hubbel. I'll bring you the olive."

Set loose, Sybil immediately ran down to the flat part of the beach and began to walk in the direction of Fisherman's Pavilion. Stopping only to sink a foot in a soggy, collapsed castle, she was soon out of the area reserved for guests of the hotel.

She walked for about a quarter of a mile and then suddenly broke into an oblique run up the soft part of the beach. She stopped short when she reached the place where a young man was lying on his back.

"Are you going in the water, see more glass?" she said.

The young man started, his right hand going to the lapels of his terry-cloth robe. He turned over on his stomach, letting a sausaged towel fall away from his eyes, and squinted up at Sybil.

"Hey. Hello, Sybil."

"Are you going in the water?"

"I was waiting for you," said the young man. "What's new?"

"What?" said Sybil.

"What's new? What's on the program?"

"My daddy's coming tomorrow on a nairiplane," Sybil said, kicking sand.

"Not in my face, baby," the young man said, putting his hand on Sybil's ankle. "Well, it's about time he got here, your daddy. I've been expecting him hourly. Hourly."

"Where's the lady?" Sybil said.

"The lady?" the young man brushed some sand out of his thin hair. "That's hard to say, Sybil. She may be in any one of a thousand places. At the hairdresser's. Having her hair dyed mink. Or making dolls for poor children, in her room." Lying prone now, he made two fists, set one on top of the other, and rested his chin on the top one. "Ask me something else, Sybil," he said. "That's a fine bathing suit you have on. If there's one thing I like, it's a blue bathing suit."

Sybil stared at him, then looked down at her protruding stomach. "This is a yellow," she said. "This is a yellow."

"It is? Come a little closer." Sybil took a step forward. "You're absolutely right. What a fool I am."

"Are you going in the water?" Sybil said.

"I'm seriously considering it. I'm giving it plenty of thought, Sybil, you'll be glad to know."

Sybil prodded the rubber float that the young man sometimes used as a head-rest. "It needs air," she said.

"You're right. It needs more air than I'm willing to admit." He took away his fists and let his chin rest on the sand. "Sybil," he said, "you're looking fine. It's good to see you. Tell me about yourself." He reached in front of him and took both of Sybil's ankles in his hands. "I'm Capricorn," he said. "What are you?"

"Sharon Lipschutz said you let her sit on the piano seat with you," Sybil said.

"Sharon Lipschutz said that?"

Sybil nodded vigorously.

He let go of her ankles, drew in his hands, and laid the side of his face on his right forearm. "Well," he said, "you know how those things happen, Sybil. I was sitting there, playing. And you were nowhere in sight. And Sharon Lipschutz came over and sat down next to me. I couldn't push her off, could I?"

"Yes."

"Oh, no. No. I couldn't do that," said the young man. "I'll tell you what I did do, though."

"What?"

"I pretended she was you."

Sybil immediately stooped and began to dig in the sand. "Let's go in the water," she said.

"All right," said the young man. "I think I can work it in."

"Next time, push her off," Sybil said. "Push who off?"

"Sharon Lipschutz."

"Ah, Sharon Lipschutz," said the young man. "How that name comes up. Mixing memory and desire." He suddenly got to his feet. He looked at the ocean. "Sybil," he said, "I'll tell you what we'll do. We'll see if we can catch a bananafish."

"A what?"

"A bananafish," he said, and undid the belt of his robe. He took off the robe. His shoulders were white and narrow, and his trunks were royal blue. He folded the robe, first lengthwise, then in thirds. He unrolled the towel he had used over his eyes, spread it out on the sand, and then laid the folded robe on top of it. He bent over, picked up the float, and secured it under his right arm. Then, with his left hand, he took Sybil's hand.

The two started to walk down to the ocean.

"I imagine you've seen quite a few bananafish in your day," the young man said.

Sybil shook her head.

"You haven't? Where do you live, anyway?"

"I don't know," said Sybil.

"Sure you know. You must know. Sharon Lipschutz knows where she lives and she's only three and a half."

Sybil stopped walking and yanked her hand away from him. She picked up an ordinary beach shell and looked at it with elaborate interest. She threw it down. "Whirly Wood, Connecticut," she said, and resumed walking, stomach foremost.

"Whirly Wood, Connecticut," said the young man. "Is that anywhere near Whirly Wood, Connecticut, by any chance?"

Sybil looked at him. "That's where I live," she said impatiently. "I live in Whirly Wood, Connecticut." She ran a few steps ahead of him, caught up her left foot in her left hand, and hopped two or three times.

"You have no idea how clear that makes everything," the young man said.

Sybil released her foot. "Did you read `Little Black Sambo'?" she said.

"It's very funny you ask me that," he said. "It so happens I just finished reading it last night." He reached down and took back Sybil's hand. "What did you think of it?" he asked her.

"Did the tigers run all around that tree?"

"I thought they'd never stop. I never saw so many tigers."

"There were only six," Sybil said.

"Only six!" said the young man. "Do you call that only?"

"Do you like wax?" Sybil asked.

"Do I like what?" asked the young man. "Wax."

"Very much. Don't you?"

Sybil nodded. "Do you like olives?" she asked.

"Olives--yes. Olives and wax. I never go anyplace without 'em."

"Do you like Sharon Lipschutz?" Sybil asked.

"Yes. Yes, I do," said the young man. "What I like particularly about her is that she never does anything mean to little dogs in the lobby of the hotel. That little toy bull that belongs to that lady from Canada, for instance. You probably won't believe this, but some little girls like to poke that little dog with balloon sticks. Sharon doesn't. She's never mean or unkind. That's why I like her so much."

Sybil was silent.

"I like to chew candles," she said finally.

"Who doesn't?" said the young man, getting his feet wet. "Wow! It's cold." He dropped the rubber float on its back. "No, wait just a second, Sybil. Wait'll we get out a little bit."

They waded out till the water was up to Sybil's waist. Then the young man picked her up and laid her down on her stomach on the float.

"Don't you ever wear a bathing cap or anything?" he asked.

"Don't let go," Sybil ordered. "You hold me, now."

"Miss Carpenter. Please. I know my business," the young man said. "You just keep your eyes open for any bananafish. This is a perfect day for bananafish."

"I don't see any," Sybil said.

"That's understandable. Their habits are very peculiar." He kept pushing the float. The water was not quite up to his chest. "They lead a very tragic life," he said. "You know what they do, Sybil?"

She shook her head.

"Well, they swim into a hole where there's a lot of bananas. They're very ordinary-looking fish when they swim in. But once they get in, they behave like pigs. Why, I've known some bananafish to swim into a banana hole and eat as many as seventy-eight bananas." He edged the float and its passenger a foot closer to the horizon. "Naturally, after that they're so fat they can't get out of the hole again. Can't fit through the door."

"Not too far out," Sybil said. "What happens to them?"

"What happens to who?"

"The bananafish."

"Oh, you mean after they eat so many bananas they can't get out of the banana hole?"

"Yes," said Sybil.

"Well, I hate to tell you, Sybil. They die."

"Why?" asked Sybil.

"Well, they get banana fever. It's a terrible disease."

"Here comes a wave," Sybil said nervously.

"We'll ignore it. We'll snub it," said the young man. "Two snobs." He took Sybil's ankles in his hands and pressed down and forward. The float nosed over the top of the wave. The water soaked Sybil's blond hair, but her scream was full of pleasure.

With her hand, when the float was level again, she wiped away a flat, wet band of hair from her eyes, and reported, "I just saw one."

"Saw what, my love?"

"A bananafish."

"My God, no!" said the young man. "Did he have any bananas in his mouth?"

"Yes," said Sybil. "Six."

The young man suddenly picked up one of Sybil's wet feet, which were drooping over the end of the float, and kissed the arch.

"Hey!" said the owner of the foot, turning around.

"Hey, yourself We're going in now. You had enough?"

"No!"

"Sorry," he said, and pushed the float toward shore until Sybil got off it. He carried it the rest of the way.

"Goodbye," said Sybil, and ran without regret in the direction of the hotel.

The young man put on his robe, closed the lapels tight, and jammed his towel into his pocket. He picked up the slimy wet, cumbersome float and put it under his arm. He plodded alone through the soft, hot sand toward the hotel.

On the sub-main floor of the hotel, which the management directed bathers to use, a woman with zinc salve on her nose got into the elevator with the young man.

"I see you're looking at my feet," he said to her when the car was in motion.

"I beg your pardon?" said the woman.

"I said I see you're looking at my feet."

"I beg your pardon. I happened to be looking at the floor," said the woman, and faced the doors of the car.

"If you want to look at my feet, say so," said the young man. "But don't be a God-damned sneak about it."

"Let me out here, please," the woman said quickly to the girl operating the car.

The car doors opened and the woman got out without looking back.

"I have two normal feet and I can't see the slightest God-damned reason why anybody should stare at them," said the young man. "Five, please." He took his room key out of his robe pocket.

He got off at the fifth floor, walked down the hall, and let himself into 507. The room smelled of new calfskin luggage and nail-lacquer remover.

He glanced at the girl lying asleep on one of the twin beds. Then he went over to one of the pieces of luggage, opened it, and from under a pile of shorts and undershirts he took out an Ortgies calibre 7.65 automatic. He released the magazine, looked at it, then reinserted it. He cocked the piece. Then he went over and sat down on the unoccupied twin bed, looked at the girl, aimed the pistol, and fired a bullet through his right temple.

complex Tao levels 2-3: Autopoiesis of Tao

2011-05-10T14:16:00.004+02:00

The model of Operational Closure of a system, introduced by Maturana and Varela as one of the fundamental characteristics of all the living systems, however is not sufficient as minimum complete set of description. Since the complexity of the living systems it is expected that a single type of description would not be enough but would be necessary a plot of more descriptions at different levels to obtain a minimum complete synthesis.

In the early 70s, and particularly in 1972, Humberto Maturana, subsequently with Francisco Varela, has introduced the concept of autopoiesis or autopoietic system.

What property, then, must have a system to be called truly alive?

We can make a clear distinction between living and non-living systems?

What is the exact connection that exists between self-organization and life?

These were the questions which arose Humberto Maturana, a chilean scholar of neurosciences, in the sixties. After six years of studies abd research in the biology field in England and USA, where he collaborated with the McCulloch group at MIT and was strongly influenced by cybernetics, in 1960 Maturana returned to the University of Santiago. Here he specialized in neurosciences and, in particular, in understanding color perception. As a result of this research, in Maturana mind take form two key questions. As he reminded later: "I found myself in a situation where my academic life was divided, and I turned in the research of the answers to two questions which appear to conduct in two opposite directions" that is:

"What is the organization of the living?"

"What happens in the phenomenon of perception?""

Maturana struggled with these two questions for almost a decade, and thanks to his genius will find a common answer to both. In this way he made possible the unification of two systemic thought traditions which had occupied of the cartesian separation from different point of view. While organicists biologists explored the nature of the biological form, the cybernetics tried to understand the nature of the mind. At the end of the 60s, Maturana realized that the key to the two enigma was in the comprehension of the "organization of the living". In the autumn of 1968 Maturana was invited by Heinz von Foerster to join his interdisciplinary group by the University of Illinois and to attend a congress about cognition in Chicago some months later.This gave him an ideal opportunity to present his ideason cognition as a biological phenomenon. Which was, therefore, the Maturana central intuition?
As he put it:

"The investigations of the color perception led me to a discovery which was extremely important to me: the nervous system operates as a closed network of interactions, in which every change of the relations of interaction between some components always result in a change in the relations of interaction of the same or other components."

From this discovery Maturana drew two conclusions which give him the answers to the fundamental questions he worked. He hypothesized that the circular organization of the nervous system was the base organization of all living systems:

"Living systems ... [are] organized in a causal closed circular process which allows the evolutionary change in the way circularity is maintained, but not the loss of the circularity itself".

Since all the changes in the system happen into this base circularity, Maturana claimed that the elements which determine the circular organization che gli elementi che determinano l'organizzazione circolare must also be produced and maintained by it. He concluded that this network scheme, where any components has the function to help to produce and transform other components maintaining at the same time the global network circularity, constitutes the true "organization of the living".
The second conclusion that Maturana drew of the circular closure of the nervous system equals to a radically new conception of cognition. He suggested that the nervous system not only self-organize itself but it continuosly refers to itself, so that the perception cannot be regarded as a representation of an external reality but should be considered as a continuous creation of new relationships into the neural network:

"The activity of nerve cells do not reflect an environment independent of the living organism and thus do not allow the construction of an outside world that actually exists"

According to Maturana, the perception, and more generally the cognition, do not represent an extenal reality but rather they specify one through the process of organization of the nervous system. Starting from this premise Muturana performed then a radical step postulating that the process itself of circular organization - with or without a nervous system - is identical to the process of cognition:

"Living systems are cognitive systems, and living as a process is a process of cognition. This declaration applies to all organisms, with or without a nervous system"

There is no doubt that this way to identify the cognition with the life process is a radically new conception; after published his ideas in 970 Maturana began a long collaboration relationship with Francisco Varela, a young student of neuroscieces of University of Santiago, who has been his student. Maturana tells that their collaboration began when Varela, during a conversation, proposed to find a more formal and complete description of the circular organization concept. They decided immediatly to work on a complete verbal description of the Maturana idea before to attempt to built up a mathematical model and began inventing a name for it autopoiesis. Auto, of corse, means "by itself" and refers to the autonomy of self-organizing systems; and poiesi - from greek poiesis, from which derives also the word "poetry" - means "production". Therefore autopoiesis means "production of itself". Since they have coined a new word, without a history, they had no problems to use it as a technical term to indicate the distinctive organization of living systems. Two years later, Maturana and Varela published their first formulation of the autopoiesis concept in a long paper and within 1975, together with their colleague Ricardo Uribe, had developed a corresponding mathematical model for the simplest autopoietic system: the living cell.

Maturana and Varela begin the essay on autopoiesis defining their "mechanistic" approach to distinguish from vitalistic theoris on the nature of life: "our approach will be mechanistic: no forces and no pronciples will be put forward that is not in the physical universe"
The next sentence, however, immediatly clarify that the authors do not comply with the Cartesian mechanism, but they think in systemic terms:

"However, our problem is the organization of the living, and so our interest does not focus on the properties of components, but on processes and relations between processes realized through the components"

The authors define even better their position through the basic distinction between "organization" e "structure/pattern", which has been an implicit theme along the history of the systemic thought which was not explicity formulated untill the development of cybernetics. Maturana and Varela make this distinction crystal clear.

The organization of a living system, they explain, is the whole of the relations among components (the system elements) which define the system as belonging to a certain class (for example a bacterium, a cat or a human brain). The description of this organization is an absctract of relationships and does not define the componenets. The authors hyphotesize that the autopoiesis is a general organization scheme, common to all the living systems, whatever is the nature of their componentsi.

The structure/pattern of a living system, on the contrary, is constituted by the real relations among physical components. In other words, the system pattern is the physical embodiment of its organization. Maturana and Varela emphasize the fact the the organization of a system is indipendent from the properties of its components, so that a certain organization may translate in a physical pattern in many different ways, through many different components types.

After clarifying that their interest is addressed to the organization and not to the pattern, the authors give the definition of autopoiesis, the common organization of all living beings:

It is a network of production processes, where the function of any components is to share to the production or to the transformation of other components of the network. In this way, the entire network "continuosly produces itself'. It is produced by its components and in turn produces its components.

"In living systems the product of their operation is their own organization"

Which is the concept of Operational Closure. In other words:

An autopoietic machine (system) is a machine organized (defined as a unit) as a network of production (transformation and distribution) processes of components so that:

(i) through their interactions and transformations they continuously regenerate and realize the process (relations) network which has produced them, and

(ii) constitute (the machine) as a concrete unit in the space where (the components) exist, specifying the topological domain of its realization as a network.

[...] the space defined by an autopoietic system is self-contained and cannot be described using dimensions of another space. When we refer to our interaction with a concrete autopoietic system, however, we project this system in the space of our manipulations and we make a description of this projection.

An important characteristic of living systems is that their autopoietic organization involves the creation of a boundary which specify the network operational domain and defines the system as a unit .

Creation of a cellular membrane from the internal dynamic metabolism and, vice versa, the cellular membrane allows the creation of the autopoietic internal domain for cellular metabolism

An image of a human buccal epithelial cell obtained using Differential Interference Contrast (DIC) microscopy
(www.canisius.edu/biology/cell_imaging/gallery.asp)

According to Maturana and Varela, the autopoiesis concept is necessary and sufficient to define the organization of living systemsi. However, this definition does not include any information on the physical constitution of the system components.

The autopoiesis becomes therefore the combination between the complementarity of structure-pattern and organization and the operational closure of the system. The process of life born from the co-emergence between an autopoietic system and the environment in a process which Maturana identifies as cognitive:

"Living systems are cognitive systems, and living as a process is a process of cognition. This statement is valid for all organism, with or without a nervous system"

This particular interpretation of cognition as the life process is called "Santiago Theory of Cognition", and has been further elaborated particularly by Francisco Varela in the field of cognitive sciences. To understand the properties of the components and their physical interactions, should be added to the abstract description of the system organization a description of its pattern in the language of physics and chemistry. The clear distinction between these two descriptions - one in terms of pattern and the other in terms of organization - make possible to join the models of self-organization which refers to the structure (as those of Prigogine and Haken) and the models which refer to the organization (as those of Eigen and of Maturana and Varela) in a coherent theory of living systems.

english Tao lectures

2011-05-03T11:44:00.000+02:00

Tribute to Tao

2011-05-03T11:40:00.000+02:00

"Without Contraries is no progression.
Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence.
From these contraries spring what the religious call Good & Evil.
Good is the passive that obeys Reason.
Evil is the active springing from Energy.
Good is Heaven.
Evil is Hell."

red Tao dragon

2011-05-03T11:38:00.000+02:00

The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun

William Blake

waretcolor 54.6 by 43.2, c. 1805

Brooklyn Museum

“	And behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads. And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth.	”
	— (Rev. 12:3-4)

Metalogue: why do Tao have outlines?*

2011-05-03T11:36:00.001+02:00

Daughter: Daddy, why do things have outlines?
Father: Do they? I don't know. What sort of things do you mean?
D: I mean when I draw things, why do they have outlines?
F: Well, what about other sorts of things—a flock of sheep? or a conversation? Do they have outlines?
D: Don't be silly. I can't draw a conversation. I mean things.
F: Yes—I was trying to find out just what you meant. Do you mean "Why do we give things outlines when we draw them?" or do you mean that the things have out-lines whether we draw them or not?
D: I don't know, Daddy. You tell me. Which do I mean?
F: I don't know, my dear. There was a very angry artist once who scribbled all sorts of things down, and after he was dead they looked in his books and in one place they found he'd written "Wise men see outlines and therefore they draw them" but in another place he'd written "Mad men see outlines and therefore they draw them."
D: But which does he mean? I don't understand.
F: Well, William Blake—that was his name—was a great artist and a very angry man. And sometimes he rolled up his ideas into little spitballs so that he could throw them at people.
D: But what was he mad about, Daddy?
F: But what was he mad about? Oh, I see—you mean "angry." We have to keep those two meanings of "mad" clear if we are going to talk about Blake. Because a lot of people thought he was mad—really mad—crazy. And that was one of the things he was mad-angry about. And then he was mad-angry, too, about some artists who painted pictures as though things didn't have out-lines. He called them "the slobbering school."
D: He wasn't very tolerant, was he, Daddy?
F: Tolerant? Oh, God. Yes, I know—that's what they drum into you at school. No, Blake was not very tolerant. He didn't even think tolerance was a good thing. It was just more slobbering. He thought it blurred all the outlines and muddled everything—that it made all cats gray. So that nobody would be able to see anything clearly and sharply.
D: Yes, Daddy.
F: No, that's not the answer. I mean "Yes, Daddy" is not the answer. All that says is that you don't know what your opinion is—and you don't give a damn what I say or what Blake says and that the school has so befuddled you with talk about tolerance that you can-not tell the difference between anything and anything else.
D: (Weeps.)
F: Oh, God. I'm sorry, but I was angry. But not really an¬gry with you. Just angry at the general mushiness of how people act and think—and how they preach muddle and call it tolerance.
D: But, Daddy
F: Yes?
D: I don't know. I don't seem able to think very well. It's all in a muddle.
F: I'm sorry. I suppose I muddled you by starting to let off steam.

D: Daddy? F: Yes?
D: Why is that something to get angry about?
F: Is what something to get angry about?
D: I mean—about whether things have outlines. You said William Blake got angry about it. And then you get angry about it. Why is that, Daddy?
F: Yes, in a way I think it is. I think it matters. Perhaps in a way, is the thing that matters. And other things only matter because they are part of this.
D: What do you mean, Daddy?
F: I mean, well, let's talk about tolerance. When Gentiles want to bully Jews because they killed Christ, I get intolerant. I think the Gentiles are being muddle-headed and are blurring all the outlines. Because the Jews didn't kill Christ, the Italians did it.
D: Did they, Daddy?
F: Yes, only the ones who did are called Romans today, and we have another word for their descendants. We call them Italians. You see there are two muddles and I was making the second muddle on purpose so we could catch it. First there's the muddle of getting the history wrong and saying the Jews did it, and then there's the muddle of saying that the descendants should be responsible for what their ancestors didn't do. It's all slovenly.
D: Yes, Daddy.
F: All right, I'll try not to get angry again. All I'm trying to say is that muddle is something to get angry about. D: Daddy?
F: Yes?
D: We were talking about muddle the other day. Are we really talking about the same thing now?
F: Yes. Of course we are. That's why it's important—what we said the other day.
D: And you said that getting things clear was what Science was about.
F: Yes, that's the same thing again.

D: I don't seem to understand it all very well. Everything seems to be everything else, and I get lost in it.
F: Yes, I know it's difficult. The point is that our conversa¬tions do have an outline, somehow—if only one could see it clearly.

F: Let's think about a real concrete out-and-out muddle, for a change, and see if that will help. Do you remember the game of croquet in Alice in Wonderland?
D: Yes—with flamingos?
F: That's right.
D: And porcupines for balls?
F: No, hedgehogs. They were hedgehogs. They don't have porcupines in England.
D: Oh. Was it in England, Daddy? I didn't know.
F: Of course it was in England. You don't have duchesses in America either.
D: But there's the Duchess of Windsor, Daddy.
F: Yes, but she doesn't have quills, not like a real porcupine.
D: Go on about Alice and don't be silly, Daddy.
F: Yes, we were talking about flamingos. The point is that the man who wrote Alice was thinking about the same things that we are. And he amused himself with little Alice by imagining a game of croquet that would be all muddle, just absolute muddle. So he said they should use flamingos as mallets because the flamingos would bend their necks so the player wouldn't know even whether his mallet would hit the ball or how it would hit the ball.
D: Anyhow the ball might walk away of its own accord because it was a hedgehog.
F: That's right. So that it's all so muddled that nobody can tell at all what's going to happen.
D: And the hoops walked around, too, because they were soldiers.
F: That's right—everything could move and nobody could tell how it would move.
D: Did everything have to be alive so as to make a complete muddle?
F: No—he could have made it a muddle by . . . no, I suppose you're right. That's interesting. Yes, it had to be that way. Wait a minute. It's curious but you're right. Because if he'd muddled things any other way, the players could have learned how to deal with the muddling details. I mean, suppose the croquet lawn was bumpy, or the balls were a funny shape, or the heads of the mallets just wobbly instead of being alive, then the people could still learn and the game would only be more difficult—it wouldn't be impossible. But once you bring live things into it, it becomes impossible. I wouldn't have expected that.
D: Wouldn't you, Daddy? I would have. That seems natural to me.
F: Natural? Sure—natural enough. But I would not have expected it to work that way.
D: Why not? That's what I would have expected.
F: Yes. But this is the thing that I would not have ex¬pected. That animals, which are themselves able to see things ahead and act on what they think is going to happen—a cat can catch a mouse by jumping to land where the mouse will probably be when she has com¬pleted her jump—but it's just the fact that animals are capable of seeing ahead and learning that makes them the only really unpredictable things in the world. To think that we try to make laws as though people were quite regular and predictable.
D: Or do they make the laws just because people are not predictable, and the people who make the laws wish the other people were predictable?
F: Yes, I suppose so.

Tribute to Tao

2011-05-03T10:58:00.000+02:00

copyright Kevin Scanlon

« "And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth." »

“. . . The places where water comes together

with other water. Those places stand out
in my mind like holy places..."

(from “Where Water Comes Together With Other Water” by Raymond Carver)

what we talk about when we talk about Tao

2011-05-03T10:52:00.000+02:00

Little Things

Early that day the weather turned and the snow was melting into dirty water.

Streaks of it ran down from the little shoulder-high window that faced the backyard. Cars slushed by on the street outside, where it was getting dark. But it was getting dark on the inside too.

He was in the bedroom pushing clothes into a suitcase when she came to the door.

I'm glad you're leaving! I'm glad you're leaving! she said. Do you hear?

He kept on putting his things into the suitcase.

Son of a bitch! I'm so glad you're leaving! She began to cry. You can't even look me in the face, can you?

Then she noticed the baby's picture on the bed and picked it up.

He looked at her and she wiped her eyes and stared at him before turning and going back to the living room.

Bring that back, he said.

Just get your things and get out, she said.

He did not answer. He fastened the suitcase, put on his coat, looked around the bedroom before turning off the light. Then he went out to the living room.

She stood in the doorway of the little kitchen, holding the baby.

I want the baby, he said.

Are you crazy?

No, but I want the baby. I'll get someone to come by for his things.

You're not touching this baby, she said.

The baby had begun to cry and she uncovered the blanket from around his head.

Oh, oh, she said, looking at the baby.

He moved toward her.

For God's sake! she said. She took a step back into the kitchen.

I want the baby.

Get out of here!

She turned and tried to hold the baby over in a corner behind the stove.

But he came up. He reached across the stove and tightened his hands on the baby.

Let go of him, he said.

Get away, get away! she cried.

The baby was red-faced and screaming. In the scuffle they knocked down a flowerpot that hung behind the stove.

He crowded her into the wall then, trying to break her grip. He held on to the baby and pushed with all his weight.

Let go of him, he said.

Don't, she said. You're hurting the baby, she said.

I'm not hurting the baby, he said.

The kitchen window gave no light. In the near-dark he worked on her fisted fingers with one hand and with the other hand he gripped the screaming baby up under an arm near the shoulder.

She felt her fingers being forced open. She felt the baby going from her.

No! she screamed just as her hands came loose.

She would have it, this baby. She grabbed for the baby's other arm. She caught the baby around the wrist and leaned back.

But he would not let go. He felt the baby slipping out of his hands and he pulled back very hard.

In this manner, the issue was decided.

the Te of Tao

2011-05-03T10:51:00.000+02:00

- 15 -

The ancient Masters were profound and subtle.
Their wisdom was unfathomable.
There is no way to describe it;
all we can describe is their appearance.

They were careful
as someone crossing an iced-over stream.
Alert as a warrior in enemy territory.
Courteous as a guest.
Fluid as melting ice.
Shapable as a block of wood.
Receptive as a valley.
Clear as a glass of water.

Do you have the patience to wait
till your mud settles and the water is clear?
Can you remain unmoving
till the right action arises by itself?

The Master doesn't seek fulfillment.
Not seeking, not expecting,
she is present, and can welcome all things.

moving up and down the Tao: emergentism, reductionism, holism

2011-04-28T15:00:00.217+02:00

In the description levels hierarchical structure:

there are two possibilities to move from one description level to another:

the way in which one moves starting from physical level 0 and proceeds toward higher levels till ecosystem 5 is the one of emergentism and of complexity, where moving from a level to the higher emphasis is placed on the emergence of new properties and phenomena not present at the lower level, consideration already present in the Anderson work of 1972.

If one proceeds in the reverse way from the higher level to the lowest the way is the one of reductionism, or of simplicity, where moving from a level to the lower all the properties of the higher level are "canceled", and one focuses only on the description specifical at that level.

Then there is a third possibility, typically philosophical and not methodological, generically called holism (from greck όλος, or "total), where the description levels are taken all together, and is based partly on basic system theory and emergentism concepts, that is the properties of a system cannot be explained uniquely through its components and that the functional sum of all the parts is always greater/different than the sum of the parts functions taken individually, and partly is based on the conception that every level is intrinsically interconnected with all the others, and it is just for ease of description that are separeted, while in reality are indivisible. This latter concept is explicited for example in the Duhem-Quine thesis, according to which it is not possible to compare by experience individual scientific theories, one by one, but only sets of theories, holistically. The holism has some examples in physics in the entanglement concept and in the one of hologramatic system/universe, used for example in the so-called holographic principle, proposed by Nobel prize for physics 1999 Gerardus 't Hooft to attempt to model quantum gravity. At higher levels, such those of ecosystem and interaction/communication/social, the holistic vision may coincide with the systemic one; it is instead in general very difficult, if not impossible, to connect in an holistic way levels which are very far apart.

Then we analyze an example of "reality" or "piece of world" describing it level by level in the reductionism mode from top to bottom and in that emergentist from bottom to top, for the following image of reality:

The card players - Les joueurs de cartes

Paul Cézanne

oil on canvas 47 x 56 cm 1890-1892

Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Reductionist level 5: ecosystem

Two men play card, and probably sometimes talk, making use of a table presumably by wood, in a place one may speculate as a tavern, probably of a village or in the countryside from the enviromental context marker which is possible to note from the mirror upon them which reflects outside, revealing as a countryside landscape. From the image there are no information on where and when this scene takes place, but we can certainly say that occurs about 13 billions of years after the birth of the universe in a emergerged continent on the third planet of a solar system of a G2V star of yellow dwarf type, placed rather toward the external edges of a barred spiral galaxy.

Reduzionist level 4: interaction/social

Two men are performing an interactive activity very special called play. The scopes and methods of such an activity vary depending of the type of game and of the age of the players. In this case, since they are two adults who use a tool called "cards" - composed of dozens of different figures printed, in fact, on paper - the business is to get to the end of the game for both players through a set of specific rules game. The end of the game, which was also codified into rules, is generally opposite between the two players and called "victory " for one and "loss" for the other. The goal for both players is to reach the end of the game called "victory".
The social level can be estimeted primarily by the marker on clothing and the supposed context of the province: both could be worth an indication of a middle class in the usual fashion, or a lower middle class with one of their best clothes. It has to be noted the use of hats with a of social function rather than functional to protect themselves from the weather conditions. The shaving of facial hair present in these two males can be considered of social use. From the type of clothing is possible here to estimate that the scene can takes place about the beginning of the 800s up to the present day in a western-style society.

Reduzionist level 3: organism/biological

The individual of male sex has self-named himself man (Homo sapiens sapiens, Linnaeus, 1758), also called uman being, a subspecies of Homo sapiens, a bipedal primate memeber of the family of hominids which includes many extinct genera and seven different living species of big monkeys. The species H. sapiens - of african origin such the same genus Homo - is a primate with short hair, adapted to terrestrial life, omnivore e and the eating habits of the original hunter-gatherer. The species, as all primates, has sexual reproduction. Its current distribution is almost cosmopolitan, and is by far the dominant species on the planet.

Both men and women have a brain very structured and developed, in proportion to the size of the individual, and able to abstract reasoning, language and introspection. This mental capacity, combined with the upright posture that frees the upper limbs, left grasping for the arboreal origin common to the whole species, allowed to manipulate the objects and allowed humanity to create a wide variety of tools.

From the african origin, about 200 000 y.a. from Homo erectus to date, the species has spread over almost the entire surface of the land with a total population that has passed, in March 2011, 6.9 billion people.

Similar to most primates, humans are social animals. They are also particularly successful in using systems of communication for the expression, the exchange of ideas and for organization. Men create complex social structures composed by cooperating and competing groups, which vary from small families and associations to large political, scientific and economical unions. The social interaction has introduced a very large variety of traditions, rituals, behavioral and moral rules, social norms and laws which form the basis of the human society. Men also have a marked appreciation for beauty and aesthetics which, combined with the human desire of self-expression, have led to cultural innovations such art, literature and music.

The men seem to express a wish to understand and influence the world around them, trying to understand, explain and manipulate natural phenomena through science, philosophy, mythology and religion. This natural curiosity has led to the development of technological tools and advanced skill;, the men are the only species still alive that uses fire, cook their own foods, dresses, and use many other technologies.

Reduzionist level 2: biological/cellular

As an animal, the human is an eukaryotic species. Every diploid cell contains 23 pairs of chromosomes, received from both parents. Of these, 22 pairs are autosomes and a pair are sexual chromosomes. It is estimated that humans have about 20000 or 25 000 genes. As with other mammals, females have identical sex chromosomes (XX) and males have different sex chromosomes (XY). The X chromosome is larger and carries more genes than the Y chromosome: that means that any disease of the X chromosome occurs more easily in men, because any errors in genes on the X chromosome which are not present at the same time in the Y should causing damage to the human phenotype; however, since in the Y chromosome there are many genes that are not also present in the X, among all SRY which is present in many other animals, the male genetic heritage is overall larger than the female and allows the formation of more tissue in males, which implies a strong contribution to sexual dimorphism.

The genome is composed by 46 separate chromosomes (22 pairs of autosomes + X + Y) with a total of con un totale di approximately 3,2 billions of base pair of DNA conteining about 20,000–25,000 genes.

Before the human being reaches adulthood, the body consists of 100.000 billions of cells, grouped in tissues and parts of systems or organs whose purpose is to enable essential vital functions. The organ systems of the human body include: circulatory system, immune system, respiratory system, digestive system, urinary system, muscular system, skeletal system, nervous system, endocrine system and the male and female reproductive system.

Reduzionist level 1: chemical/molecular

It is necessary to distinguish between the biological individual and the other elements of the scene.

The first is basically composed by water and characterized by the presence of macromolecules and molecules of organic type based on carbon and its bonding, such proteins, nucleic acids and lipids. Among the inorganic elements should be noted the presence of a macromolecule in the cellulose contained in the central element, associated with lignin. In the upper element with reflective characteristics should be noted the presence mainly of silicon dioxide with other oxides. Then there is the widespread presence of a gas, transparent in the figure, composed mainly by nitrogen and oxigen, singular characteristic typical of the higher levels, with remaining minor portions of other gases such and carbon dioxide. In a small spot of the image it is noted a exothermic reaction, probably due to the combustion of some kind of compounds.

Reduzionist level 0: physical - Emergentist levelo 0: physical

The reductionist and emergentist descriptions at level 0 coincide. What is present at the elementary level are protons, neutrons, electrons, at a less elementary level they are present in a bounded state called atom. According to the number of protons, equal to the number of electrons, in the various atoms there is the presence of different elements. The largest is nitrogen, in the trasparent gas diffused in the image, then there are relevant traces of hydrogen, oxigen and heavier elements such carbon, iron till about zinc. There is also the presence of photons in the solar light that illuminates the scene, some cosmic rays and (perhaps) some passing neutrinos and the omnipresent background cosmic microwave radiation.

Emergentist levelo 1: chemical/molecular

The atoms of the different elements present at level 0 join by chemical bonding making a wide variety of compounds, molecules and macromolecules. Single or bonded atoms are present in the gas that fills the scene. Compounds with elements even heavy are present in the two objects in the middle and on top of the image. In particular the first has the property to reflect the incident photons on its surface, while all the others absorb it and reflect only a fraction with specific wavelenghts. The molecules and macromolecules far more complex are present in the object on the left of the image, mainly based on carbon bonded with other elements in various forms, making long chemival chains with multiple properties: replication, self-replication, energy sources, catalysts and reaction controllers etc.

Emergentist levelo 2: cellular/biological

The compounds, molecules and macromolecules present at level 1 group together in various ways and structures: in the non-organic objects they group in mixtures or alloys, in the amorphous solid state in the object placed on top of the scene, composed mainly by amorphous silica. In the object at the center of the scene are present polysaccharides and an heavy and complex organic polymer mainly made by phenolic compounds which suggest that it is of organic origin. In the item on the left of the scene the compunds, mainly of carbon, are combined in long molecular sequences and form morphofunctional structures , that is of form and function, of very different types but with unique common characteristics od reproduction/self-replication, complex reactions for energy production, responses to external stimuli, retention over time of their own structure even with a continuos replacement of components.

Emergentist level 3: biological/organism

The morphofunctional units of level 2 join together in assemblies at different levels which make several types of systems, at least four included the overall structure, structurally very different and associated by function. The general ensemble has the properties of multiple structural and functional units, system integration, internal transmission of information and among different systems, growth, reproduction, evolution characteristics and interaction with the external environment.

Emergentist level 4: interaction/social

Two of the systems of level 3 use their property of interacting with the external. It is supposed that they are exchanging information by the use of the colored figures which are manipulating.

Emergentist level 5: ecosystem

From the reflecting structure present in the scene one can deduce the presence of an external environment extremely variegated and complex with many of the system properties present in the internal of the scene. This is also illuminated with a radiation with wavelength at least from 400 to 700 nm, since the color spectrum and the photons present at level 0, of unknown origin, coming from the external of the scene. It is noted the presence of morphogenetic structures both complex and with simple simmetries. The presence of elements and compounds at the gaseous state at level 1 indicates the presence of a compound gas in the environment.

Context

The overall description should not be complete without specifying the context and, if any, the meta-context markers.

The context derives from the fact that we are not describing a scene while physically present in a bistrot of the french countryside at the end of the 800s observing two men playing card, but we are using a representation of that scene, specifically a painting of oil over canvas.

Also of the context we may have a description, and in this case it is in art criticism field, for example:

"Two men in a tavern in the country are playing cards in front of a mirror. The image shows a pattern strongly geometric, which gives dignity to the two classic characters. Twisting the perspective view, Cezanne is able to obtain the highest degree of centrality, that is credible in a scene from real life: this slight deviation from the center is a keen ploy to avoid the risk that the work is too contrived: the things we do not are never in a state of perfect balance. The whole painting is made up of lowering the tone of the colors blue, yellow and red. The strokes are made with wooden blocks, and sometimes they are solitary and synthetic, as a reflection on the bottle or just the section that describes the sunken eye of the right player.

In Cézanne's painting, not only makes an impression, but also a description of the internal sense action, as if the summary is intended to remain in the mind, almost calcified and as a memory."

Meta-Context

The meta-context marker in this case is present, since we are not describing the scene observing the painting of Cézanne personally in a room of Musée d'Orsay of Parigi, but we are viewing a jpg image of 640x533 px displayed by a browser on a monitor, presumably allocated on a PC or mobile device, getting it through a fixed or mobile connection from one of the servers of blogger.com, where it resides, by internet.

sympathy for the (half) Tao

2011-04-01T13:51:00.001+02:00

Please allow me to introduce myself

I'm a man of wealth and taste

I've been around for a long, long years

Stole many a man's soul and faith

And I was 'round when Jesus Christ

Had his moment of doubt and pain

Made damn sure that Pilate

Washed his hands and sealed his fate

Pleased to meet you

Hope you guess my name

But what's puzzling you

Is the nature of my game

I stuck around St. Petersburg

When I saw it was a time for a change

Killed the czar and his ministers

Anastasia screamed in vain

I rode a tank

Held a general's rank

When the blitzkrieg raged

And the bodies stank

Pleased to meet you

Hope you guess my name, oh yeah

Ah, what's puzzling you

Is the nature of my game, oh yeah

(woo woo, woo woo)

I watched with glee

While your kings and queens

Fought for ten decades

For the gods they made

(woo woo, woo woo)

I shouted out,

"Who killed the Kennedys?"

When after all

It was you and me

(who who, who who)

Let me please introduce myself

I'm a man of wealth and taste

And I laid traps for troubadours

Who get killed before they reached Bombay

(woo woo, who who)

Pleased to meet you

Hope you guessed my name, oh yeah

(who who)

But what's puzzling you

Is the nature of my game, oh yeah, get down, baby

(who who, who who)

Pleased to meet you

Hope you guessed my name, oh yeah

But what's confusing you

Is just the nature of my game

(woo woo, who who)

Just as every cop is a criminal

And all the sinners saints

As heads is tails

Just call me Lucifer

'Cause I'm in need of some restraint

(who who, who who)

So if you meet me

Have some courtesy

Have some sympathy, and some taste

(woo woo)

Use all your well-learned politesse

Or I'll lay your soul to waste, um yeah

(woo woo, woo woo)

Pleased to meet you

Hope you guessed my name, um yeah

(who who)

But what's puzzling you

Is the nature of my game, um mean it, get down

(woo woo, woo woo)

Conditioning (the Devil) - XV Major

2011-04-01T13:17:00.000+02:00

This card recalls an old Zen story, about a lion who was brought up by sheep and who thought he was a sheep until an old lion captured him and took him to a pond, where he showed him his own reflection. Many of us are like this lion - the image we have of ourselves comes not from our own direct experience but from the opinions of others. A "personality" imposed from the outside replaces the individuality that could have grown from within. We become just another sheep in the herd, unable to move freely and unconscious of our own true identity.

It's time to take a look at your own reflection in the pond, and make a move to break out of whatever you have been conditioned by others to believe about yourself. Dance, run, jog, do gibberish - whatever is needed to wake up the sleeping lion within.

Unless you drop your personality you will not be able to find your individuality. Individuality is given by existence; personality is imposed by the society. Personality is social convenience.

Society cannot tolerate individuality, because individuality will not follow like a sheep. Individuality has the quality of the lion; the lion moves alone. The sheep are always in the crowd, hoping that being in the crowd will feel cozy. Being in the crowd one feels more protected, secure. If somebody attacks, there is every possibility in a crowd to save yourself. But alone? - only the lions move alone.

And every one of you is born a lion, but the society goes on conditioning you, programming your mind as a sheep. It gives you a personality, a cozy personality, nice, very convenient, very obedient. Society wants slaves, not people who are absolutely dedicated to freedom. Society wants slaves because all the vested interests want obedience.

The roots of conditioning are multiple and deep; the figure shows as from the base level which surrounds us (the environment and the society - the world - in which we live and lived) several actions at different levels act on our biological, neural and cultural processes as a conditioning toward the higher cognition levels, determining who we believe to be.

Metalogue: what is the instinct of Tao?

2011-04-01T13:05:00.005+02:00

Definition of insinct: in animal psychology and ethology, “nervous mechanism hierarchically organized, with innate action patterns, sensitive to certain environmental stimuli that arouse it, put it in action and direct it, to which it responds with well-coordinated movements which have as their purpose the preservation of the individual or species". The animal instinct (which leads for example the birds to build nests) is more complex than reflection; does not change either during the life of the individual or through several generations of individuals of the same species, and become less rigid or preformed and so much more connected to learning as going up in the zoological scale..

quoted from Nikolaas Tinbergen, Nobel prize 1973 in Physiology and Medicine shared with Karl von Frisch and Konrad Lorenz

Definition of Metalogue: A metalogue is a conversation about some problematic subject. This conversation should be such that not only do the participants discuss the problem but the structure of the conversation as a whole is also relevant to the same subject.

Notably, the history of evolutionary theory is inevitably a metalogue between man and nature, in which the creation and interaction of ideas must necessarily exemplify evolutionary process.

Daughter: Daddy, what is an instinct?

Father: An instinct, my dear, is a explanatory principle.

D: But what does it explain?

F: Anything—almost anything at all. Anything you want it to explain.

D: Don't be silly. It doesn't explain gravity.

F: No. But that is because nobody wants "instinct" to explain gravity. If they did, it would explain it. We could simply say that the moon has an instinct whose strength varies inversely as thesquare of the distance .. .

D: But that's nonsense, Daddy.

F: Yes, surely. But it was you who mentioned "instinct," not I.

D: All right—but then what does explain gravity?

F: Nothing, my dear, because gravity is an explanatory principle.

D: Oh.

D: Do you mean that you cannot use one explanatory principle to explain another? Never?

F: Hmm . . . hardly ever. That is what Newton meant when he said,"hypotheses non fingo."

D: And what does that mean? Please.

F: Well, you know what "hypotheses" are. Any statement linking together two descriptive statements is an hypothesis. If you say that there was a full moon on February 1st and another on March 1st; and then you link these two observations together in any way, the statement which links them is an hypothesis.

D: Yes—and I know what non means. But what's fingo?

F: Well—fingo is a late Latin word for "make." It forms a verbal

noun fictio from which we get the word "fiction."

D: Daddy, do you mean that Sir Isaac Newton thought that all hypotheses were just made up like stories?

F: Yes—precisely that

D: But didn't he discover gravity? With the apple? F: No, dear. He invented it.

D: Oh.... Daddy, who invented instinct?

F: I don't know. Probably biblical.

D: But if the idea of gravity links together two descriptive statements, it must be an hypothesis.

F: That's right.

D: Then Newton did fingo an hypothesis after all.

F: Yes—indeed he did. He was a very great scientist.

D : Oh.

D: Daddy, is an explanatory principle the same thing as anhypothesis?

F: Nearly, but not quite. You see, an hypothesis tries to explain some particular something but an explanatory principle—like "gravity" or "instinct"—really explains nothing. It's a sort of conventional agreement between scientists to stop trying to explain things at a certain point.

D: Then is that what Newton meant? If "gravity" explains nothing but is only a sort of full stop at the end of a line of explanation, then inventing gravity was not the same as inventing an hypothesis, and he could say he did not fingo any hypotheses.

F: That's right. There's no explanation of an explanatory principle. It's like a black box.

D: Oh.

the Places of Tao

2011-04-01T11:52:00.000+02:00

Borobudur, or Barabudur, is a 9th-century Mahayana Buddhist monument near Magelang, Central Java, Indonesia. The monument comprises six square platforms topped by three circular platforms, and is decorated with 2,672 relief panels and 504 Buddha statues. A main dome, located at the center of the top platform, is surrounded by 72 Buddha statues seated inside perforated stupa.

The building has a squared line divided by steps and appears like a mountain; from the top view is visible its complexity and its architecture. It is the most visited monument of all Indonesia.

From 1991 has been included by UNESCO as a world heritage site.

horizontality, verticality, transversality and laterality of Tao

2011-03-30T15:36:00.002+02:00

The hierarchical levels structure of the description domains:

basically corresponds to the so-called natural sciences, and has two distinctive features:

the first is that each level of description contains the lower levels, extending them and it s based on them:

in this sense chemistry is based on physics but at the same time is more than physics, biology is based on chemistry etc. As noted by Anderson this does not mean that each level is a simple or direct extension of the lower level(s), since at any new level some emergent phenomena arise which bear no relation or that can be explained by the lower levels, even if they depend from these.

The second is that each of these areas of description, with many above and below-levels, intermediate levels, mixtures of levels etc., is based (has as "foundation") on the physical level 0. Of course, leveling up the properties of the physical level are becoming less relevant to the description at that level, if not for the fact - taken for granted, and therefore became "transparent"- to obey the laws of the lower levels.
For example, just imagine a psychiatrist at level 4 visiting a patient with mental disorders. The psychiatrist may need to obtain information from lower levels of the patient to have a complete diagnosis, for example by requiring blood or genetic tests, but he does not expect the patient begins to rise for air and began to fly out the window for the laws which apply at level 0, or that his blood is made up of hydrocarbons to the laws that apply to level 1 and 2.

The vertical hierarchical levels structure becomes also with an horizontal extension when considered in three dimensions:

in this case at each level is associated a hierarchical and/or logical plane which includes all the topics of description of that level. If an higher level emerges from the lower, as in the case of the biological phenomena from the chemical level, then the gap between levels in not only hierarchical but also logical,in the sense that the descriptions in the biological domain necessarily become meta-descriptions obsrved from the lower chemical level - not only they will be quantitatively more extensive, as occurs between physics and chemistry (although some chemical phenomena such dissipative structures by Prigogine or the hypercycle theory by Eigen are not immediatly referable to physics), but will be qualitatively and logically different. The same is valid for the higher levels: the communicative interaction and the rising of social structures among organisms are not referable to their biology, and so on.

However, there are many areas of description that does not have a base level 0; among the many is enough to remember the so-called social sciences - such as literature, history, pedagogy, etc. - plus a number of areas of non-immediate placement but to self-evidence or self-definition, such as art, music, economics, linguistics, artificial intelligence, psychology etc.
It is also to be noted, for the distinction between map and territory, that even for the description domains of the natural sciences what are based on the lower levels are the objects/topics of the description, in particular always on level 0, but not the description domain itself which, as such, has no physical material aspect - if not the paper books or data bits which describe it or the cerebral activity of those who are thinking that description. In this sense physics or chemistry are la fisica o la chimica are no less "immaterial" of literature or music.

Besides, there are at least three description domains which are transversal with respect to the hierarchical structure and to many others description domains non-hierarchical.

The first, classically, is the one of philosophy: with its meaning from the greek φιλοσοφία, composed by φιλεῖν (filèin), "to love", and σοφία (sofìa), "wisdom", that is"love of wisdom", philosophy potentially applies to any description domains, from physics to art. A single definition of philosophy is not possible because every philosophical system of some significance (and there are at least dozens, if not hundreds, in the course of at least 3000 years) has in its conceptual foundations a redefinition of the meaning, scope and purpose of philosophy. In its research dialogue upon something rather than of something philosophy is intrinsically a meta-domain of description, as it provides essentially meta-descriptions; applied to several specific areas of description it divides in several fields of specific meta-description as metaphysics, ontology, epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, of language, of science, of history, of specific sciences and specific histories etc.

The second is the study of the mind, or more specifically of mental processes. Also in this case the description domain depends from the definition of mind, whether considered as an emerging phenomena defined as the whole of the brain higher functions or as something more extensive intended as a mental process beyond the brain and not necessarily requires its presence. In the framework of the philosophy of mind (or philosophy in general) have been proposed models which are exactly opposed, from those who consider the mind all and only "inside" the brain (and therefore a product of the cerebral activity) to those which consider it (at least in part - but in the essential part: consciousness, if not even in its entirety of mind-consciousness-soul, and in this case is more defined as Mind) entirely outside of the brain.
In the figure the mind is intended primarily as a process (in various forms) in a larger system that does not necessarily limit to the skull, but that can extend to an environment/ecosystem in which the mind works; this conception of mental process was proposed independently and quite complementary in the 70s-80s by Gregory Bateson and Humberto Maturana, and later developed by Francisco Varela in the context of the cognitive science, but of course has several preconditions in various philosophical systems of the past.
It should be noted that - singularly - does not exist a specified organized "science of the mind", the so-called "mentalics" described by Isaac Asimov; the various aspects of it are divided into a number of fields ranging from anatomy to neurophysiology to psychiatry to psychology up to artificial intelligence.

The third is complexity, or science of complexity. In its intrinsic characteristic of multi-dimensionality, which it divides among all possible description domains, lthe study of complexity is intrinsically trasversal to any organized discipline.

Finally there is the possibility of a laterality over the several description domains, based on the so-called lateral thinking, to be intended as a description and logical path which transversally and laterally crosses the various description domains, capturing the aspects which singly taken would not have any particular interest, while collected together and interrelated in a specific description path may bring out new descriptions typically multi-disciplinary and multi-dimensional. Laterality may occurs between any level of several systems, in particular has been often applied as a technique in philosophy to conceptual (or partially conceptual) systems, such the philosophical ones and leads, and has lead in the history of philosophy, to next new systems than the previous.

A classical example of this type is the work of Douglas Hofstadter, where lateralizing description domains very far apart such formal logic, music and visual arts he revealed the common pattern of Strange Loop.

tribute to Tao

2011-03-21T14:20:00.000+01:00

the grave of Gregory Bateson: Pacific in front of Esalen, Big Sur, CA

Before he passed away, someone asked an ailing Gregory Bateson:

"Who will carry on with your work, once you're gone?"

Bateson replied:

"A man by the name of Humberto Maturana out of Santiago, Chile. He has been doing some very interesting research that compliments my work."

(1997)

Francisco Javier Varela García (Santiago, Chile, 7 September 7, 1946 – Paris, May 28, 2001)

"Why do emergent selves, virtual identities, pop up all over the place, creating worlds, whether at the mind/body level, the cellular level, or the transorganism level? This phenomenon is something so productive that it doesn't cease creating entirely new realms: life, mind, and societies. Yet these emergent selves are based on processes so shifty, so ungrounded, that we have an apparent paradox between the solidity of what appears to show up and its groundlessness. That, to me, is the key and eternal question."

Humberto Maturana (Santiago, Chile, September 14, 1928)

«Conservation is not for the earth, it is for ourselves; biodiversity is important for our physiological, psycological, relational, aesthetic ... wellness. [...] It is a problem of desire»

recursive literary Tao

2011-03-14T15:36:00.000+01:00

You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler. Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade. Best to close the door; the TV is always on in the next room. Tell the others right away, "No, I don't want to watch TV!" Raise your voice--they won't hear you otherwise--"I'm reading! I don't want to be disturbed!" Maybe they haven't heard you, with all that racket; speak louder, yell: "I'm beginning to read Italo Calvino's new novel!" Or if you prefer, don't say anything; just hope they'll leave you alone.

change and stability of Tao

2011-03-14T15:25:00.001+01:00

"STABILITY" AND "CHANGE" DESCRIBE PARTS OF OUR DESCRIPTIONS

In other parts of this book, the word stable and also, necessarily, the word change will become very important. It is therefore wise to examine these words now in the introductory phase of our task. What traps do these words contain or conceal?
Stable is commonly used as an adjective applied to a thing. A chemical compound, house, ecosystem, or government is described as stable. If we pursue this matter further, we shall be told that the stable object is unchanging under the impact or stress of some particular external or internal variable or, perhaps, that it resists the passage of time.
If we start to investigate what lies behind this use of stability, we shall find a wide range of mechanisms. At the simplest level, we have simple physical hardness or viscosity, qualities descriptive of relations of impact between the stable object and some other. At more complex levels, the whole mass of interlocking processes called life may be involved in keeping our object in a state of change that can maintain some necessary constants, such as body temperature, blood circulation, blood sugar or even life itself.
The acrobat on the high wire maintains his stability by continual correction of his imbalance.
These more complex examples suggest that when we use stability in talking about living things or self-corrective circuits, we should follow the example of the entities about which we are talking. For the acrobat on the high wire, his or her so-called "balance" is important; so, for the mammalian body, is its "temperature". The changing state of these important variables from moment to moment is reported in the communication networks of the body. To follow the example of the entity, we should define "stability" always by reference to the ongoing truth of some descriptive proposition. The statement "The acrobat is on the high wire" continues to be true under impact of small breezes and vibrations of the wire. This "stability" is the result of continual changes in descriptions of the acrobat's posture and the position of his or her balancing pole.
It follows that when we talk about living entities, statements about "stability" should always be labeled by reference to some descriptive proposition so that the typing of the word, stable, may be clear. We shall see later, especially in Chapter ..., that every descriptive proposition is to be characterized according to logical typing of subject, predicate, and context.
Similarly, all statements about change require the same sort of precision. Such profound saws as the French "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose" owe their wiseacre wisdom to a muddling of logical types. What "changes" and what "stays the same" are both of them descriptive propositions, but of different order.
Some comment on the list of presuppositions examined in this chapter is called for. First of all, the list is in no sense complete, and there is no suggestion that such a thing as a complete list of verities or generalities could be prepared. Is it even a characteristic of the world in which we live that such a list should be finite?
In the preparation of this chapter, roughly another dozen candidates for inclusion were dropped, and a number of others were removed from this chapter to become integrated parts of Chapters ... However, even with its incompleteness, there are a number of possible exercises that the reader might perform with the list.
First, when we have a list, the natural impulse of the scientist is to start classifying or ordering its members. This I have partly done, breaking the list into four groups in which the members are linked together in various ways. It would be a nontrivial exercise to list the ways in which such verities or presuppositions may be connected. The grouping I have imposed is as follows:
A first cluster includes numbers 1 to 5, which seem to be related aspects of the necessary phenomenon of coding. There, for example, the proposition that "science never proves anything" is rather easily recognized as a synonym for the distinction between map and territory; both follow from the Ames experiments and the generalization of natural history that "there is no objective experience."
It is interesting to note that on the abstract and philosophical side, this group of generalizations has to depend very closely on something like Occam's razor or the rule of parsimony. Without some such ultimate criterion, there is no ultimate way of choosing between one hypothesis and another. The criterion found necessary is of simplicity versus complexity. But along with these generalizations stands their connection with neurophysiology, Ames experiments, and the like. One wonders immediately whether the material on perception does not go along with the more philosophical material because the process of perception contains something like an Occam's razor or a criterion of parsimony. The discussion of wholes and parts in number 5 is a spelling out of a common form of transformation that occurs in those processes we call description.
Numbers 6, 7 and 8 form a second cluster, dealing with questions of the random and the ordered. The reader will observe that the notion that the new can be plucked only out of the random is in almost total contradiction to the inevitability of entropy. The whole matter of entropy and negentropy and the contrasts between the set of generalities associated with these words and those associated with energy will be dealt with in Chapter 6... in the discussion of the economics of flexibility. Here it is only necessary to note the interesting formal analogy between the apparent contradiction in this cluster and the discrimination drawn in the third cluster, in which number 9 contrasts number with quantity. The sort of thinking that deals with quantity resembles in many ways the thinking that surrounds the concept of energy; whereas the concept of number is much more closely related to the concepts of pattern and negentropy.
The central mystery of evolution lies, of course, in the contrast between statements of the second law of thermodynamics and the observation that the new can only be plucked from the random. It was this contrast that Darwin partly resolved by his theory of natural selection.
The other two clusters in the list as given are 9 to 12 and 13 to 16. I will leave it to the reader to construct his or her phrasings of how these clusters are internally related and to create other clusters according to his/her own ways of thought.
In Chapter ... I shall continue to sketch in the background of my thesis with a listing of generalities or presuppositions. I shall, however, come closer to the central problems of thought and evolution, trying to give answers to the question: In what ways can two or more items of information or command work together or in opposition? This question with its multiple answers seems to me to be central to any theory of thought or evolution.

the Te of Tao

2011-03-14T13:19:00.002+01:00

- 14 -

Look, and it can't be seen.
Listen, and it can't be heard.
Reach, and it can't be grasped.

Above, it isn't bright.
Below, it isn't dark.
Seamless, unnamable,
it returns to the realm of nothing.
Form that includes all forms,
image without an image,
subtle, beyond all conception.

Approach it and there is no beginning;
follow it and there is no end.
You can't know it, but you can be it,
at ease in your own life.
Just realize where you come from:
this is the essence of wisdom.

circular western and eastern Tao

2011-03-11T14:00:00.003+01:00

The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things
Hieronymus Bosch or imitator
ab. 1500-1525
Oil on wood 120×150 cm
Museo del Prado, Madrid

Kalachakra Mandala

International Kalachakra Network

Complex Tao level 2 and 0-5: Closure of Tao

2011-03-11T12:47:00.006+01:00

The situation of the visual system of the brain, namely that the system is organized in a reticular pattern, and there is a convergence or coherence among all the parts concerned, is not specific of this issue but is generalizable to all the brain areas and in general to all the nervous system: the flow of process/information occurs in a global network with multiple interconnections which works at any time generating an internal coherence state according to a cooperative process.
The focus for the description of such set of processes is no longer to establish the information flow, which is practically impossible and also useless, but the specific modalities where the internal coherence states occur in the area of this network which defines itself.

This requires a change of the paradigmatic general principle to describe the systems by stimulus/reaction, input/output, and so on, characteristic of the heteronomous systems.

Such a scheme is valid when dealing with computers or control circuits or cybernetic system, but no longer when dealing with complex systems such the nervous system.
Maturana and Varela have defined a key concept (just apparently tautological) for the latter as Operational Closure:

the consequences of the operations of the system
are the operations of the system

where closure is not closeness. The Operational Closure defines some eigenbehaviors where the operations of a complex system, made by interconnected elemets, have as result an operation which falls again into the system domain itself and in its internal dynamics.

Closure is refers to the fact that the result of an operation is still inside the system itself this does not mean thta the system has not interactions with the external, since that - as any living system - it is an open system: the system is organizationally closed but open for what energy and environment exchange are concerned. The Operational Closure defines the stability and autonomy points, namely where the relations and interactions which defines the overall system are determined only by the sustem itself, and finally defines the system homeostasis, a condition of complementary interaction stability/change which has a consequence the persistence of the system following changes: to be always itself the system must continuously change, and at the same time to change it must remain itself.

An example of an operational closure for a complex system is the one between sensory-motor system and nervous system:

In the figure can be noted three levels of circular processes: that of the sensori-motor system with operational closure which defines the state of the brain and of the body, that of the nervous system ad closed dynamical system and finally the closed circular interaction between the two. The autonomous system so defined responds to the external perturbations adjusting itself and producing effects outwards.

The same example is valid for a cell scheme:

The metabolic cell internal network produces a cell membrane such that allows at the metabolic network to produces the metabolites which form it, and so on. Through the cell membrane then there is the interchange of energy, molecules and so typical of the open systems. the system has clear characteristics of operational closure, stability, autonomy and homeostasis.
Generally the operational closure as recursive circular process in living systems links an automous system which generates a process network which produces some system components which in turn determine the closure/autonomy of the system, and so on:

Maturana and Varela have schematically symbolized the structure of any living system as:

where the operational closure part defines, and is in turn defined, by the organization of the living system which exchanges interaction with the environment as an open system.

The following table summarizes the characteristics of the heteronomous and autonomous systems:

heteronomous systems autonomous systems

operations logic correspondence coherence

organizational type input/output operational closure

interaction mode instructive-representational creating a world

The concept of operational closure, defined as the fact that a system has coherence states, - and one may say of existence - in the case where the operations made by the system fall within the system domain itself, is quite general.

At the level 0 and 1 psysical-chemical, where a formal system is available this is represented by a fundamendal class of equations called eigenvalues equations, in the form:

Hf=af

where H is a functional operator, f some functions defined in a functional space S(f) and a are generally real numbers.
If the equation, given a specific operator H, and specified the boundary conditions, has solutions f_i and a_i, with i a discrete or continuos index depending from the boundary conditions, then these are called eigenfunctions and eigenvalues of the equation.
The equation entirely expresses the operational closure concept, since that made an operation H over a function f_ithe result is still the function f_i a unless a number a_i, that is the operation lies always in the functional space S(f).
In physics some of the most important equations are of this kind, in particular (for the stationary sytates - i.e. time invariant) the Newton motion equations of classical mechanics, expresses in the hamiltonian form, and those of quantum mechanics in the two dual representations wavefunction/particle expresses in the first case by the Schrödinger equation and in latter by the Heisenberg equation, where H is a hamiltonian operator associated to the energy of the system.
The solutions in both representations give the system eigenfunctions and the energy eigenvalues, for example in the case of the simplest physical-chemical system, that of the hydrogen atom, the eigenfunctions are of the type:

while the energy eigenvalues give a set of possible discrete quantum levels for the electron:

In the same way the solution of the energy eigenvalue equation for higher elements, molecules and molecules chains by the atomic orbital model poses the basis for the chemical bond and therefore for the existence of any chemical compound.
Another fundamental class is the one whwre the operators H are linear, and therefore define a linear system; in this case any function f is an eigenfunction and, depending on wether the eigenvalues are greater or lesser then 1, there are characteristics of amplification or attenuation.

At levels higher then the 2-3 biological/organism the operational closure concept continues to be meaningful as guideline to define or establish which are the stable states of a system.

There cab be cases of casi di meta-operational closure; a typical example by Von Foerster is the coupling between the nervous system and the endocrine system:

Both the nervous and the endocrine systems are operationally closed, represented by closed circles, and interact with each other, in particular the endocrine stabilize the nervous and vice versa. The resulting system is representable in a three-dimensional way by a torus, where the longitudinal rings represent a system and the trasverse ones the other system. T'he overall effect is that of a meta-regulation, i.e. a regulation of a regulation.

The general treatment of the operational closure as limit of recursive operations which lie in the same domain has been developed by Heinz Von Foerster in the following way:

let a variable x₀: x₀ _{is quite general, it can be a function, a numerical value, an arrangement (number lists, vectors, geometrical configurations), behaviors described by functions,}behaviors described by_{propositions and so on. We define an operation over}x₀_{symbolized by Op. Op can be an operator, a functional, un algorithm and so such that applied to}x₀_{transforms to} x₁_:

x_1=Op(x₀₎

subsequently applying the operation Op we have:

x_1=Op(x₀₎

x_2=Op(Op(x₁₎₎

_......

x_n=Op⁽ⁿ⁾₍x₀₎

and repeating infinitly times the application of Op:

x_∞₌Op^(∞)₍x₀₎

that is

x_∞=Op(Op(Op(Op(Op(Op( ...

in the last expression we note that the initial variable x₀ is disappeared, and that any infinite sequence of Op can be substituted by Op^(∞):

x_∞=Op(x_∞)
x_∞₌Op(Op(x_∞))
x_∞₌Op(Op(Op(x_∞)))
...

if this system of equation has solutions of the form E_i=x_∞ithen they are called eigenvalues, eigenoperators, eigenalgorithms, eigenbehaviors and so.

The operational closure is expressed as the limit of a recursive process of applications of Op:

lim (n→∞) Op⁽ⁿ⁾ = OP →

↑←↓

and in particular the operator Op implies its own eigenvalues E_i, and is implied by these; operators and eigenvalues are complementary:

Op↔E_i

besides, since the E_iself produce themself, through the Op⁽ⁿ⁾ complementary to them, they are self-reflexive.

Some examples given by Von Foerster are the operator H=SQRT, the square root of a number; starting from any real positive number x₀and applying infinite times the operation SQRT the eigenvalue is x_∞=1 and SQRT(1)=1 is an eigenvalue.
Another example is the phrase (in english):

THIS PHRASE HAS ... LETTERS

where instead of ... should be substituted a number by letters which make true the phrase; In an ontological sense the phrase exists, namely becomes logically true, only for its eigenvalues, otherwise is false.

In the case of levels 2-3 studied by Maturana and Varela lthe operational closure of the operations Op of the systems becomes:

ORG →

↑ ← ↓

that is the operational closure defines the organization of the system and vice versa the organization defines its closure.

the Pearl of Tao

2011-03-02T14:20:00.000+01:00

speaking of Tao

2011-03-02T14:18:00.000+01:00

Gregory Bateson, photographer. Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson working among the Iatmul,
Tambunam, 1938.
Gelatin silver print.

LANGUAGE COMMONLY STRESSES ONLY ONE SIDE OF ANY INTERACTION

We commonly speak as though a single "thing" could "have" some characteristic. A stone, we say, is "hard," "small," "heavy," "yellow," "dense," "fragile," "hot," "moving," "stationary," "visible," "edible," "inedible" and so on.

That is how our language is made: "The stone is hard." And so on. And that way of talking is good enough for the marketplace: "That is a new brand." "The potatoes are rotten." "The eggs are fresh." "The container is damaged." "The diamond is flawed." "A pound of apples is enough." And so on. But this way of talking is not good enough in science or epistemology. To think straight, it is advisable to expect all qualities and attributes, adjectives, and so on to refer to at least two sets of interactions in time.
"The stone is hard" means a) that when poked it resisted penetration and b) that certain continual interactions among the molecular parts of the stone in some way bond the parts together.
"The stone is stationary" comments on the location of the stone relative to the location of the speaker and other possible moving things. It also comments on matters internal to the stone: its inertia, lack of internal distortion, lack of friction at the surface, and so on. Language continually asserts by the syntax of subject and predicate that "things" somehow "have" qualities and attributes. A more precise way of talking bout insist that the "things" are produced, are seen as separate from other "things," and are made "real" by their internal relations and by their behavior in relationship with other things and with the speaker.
It is necessary to be quite clear about the universal truth that whatever "things" may be in their pleromatic and thingish world, they can only enter the world of communication and meaning by their names, their qualities and their attributes (i.e., by reports of their internal and external relations and interactions).

Patience (7 of Pentacles)

2011-03-02T14:07:00.000+01:00

There are times when the only thing to do is to wait. The seed has been planted, the child is growing in the womb, the oyster is coating the grain of sand and making it into a pearl. This card reminds us that now is a time when all that is required is to be simply alert, patient, waiting. The woman pictured here is in just such an attitude. Contented, with no trace of anxiety, she is simply waiting. Through all the phases of the moon passing overhead she remains patient, so in tune with the rhythms of the moon that she has almost become one with it. She knows it is a time to be passive, letting nature take its course. But she is neither sleepy nor indifferent; she knows it is time to be ready for something momentous. It is a time full of mystery, like the hours just before the dawn. It is a time when the only thing to do is to wait.

We have forgotten how to wait; it is almost an abandoned space. And it is our greatest treasure to be able to wait for the right moment. The whole existence waits for the right moment. Even trees know it--when it is time to bring the flowers and when it is time to let go of all the leaves and stand naked against the sky. They are still beautiful in that nakedness, waiting for the new foliage with a great trust that the old has gone, and the new will soon be coming, and the new leaves will start growing. We have forgotten to wait, we want everything in a hurry. It is a great loss to humanity.... In silence and waiting something inside you goes on growing--your authentic being. And one day it jumps and becomes a flame, and your whole personality is shattered; you are a new man. And this new man knows what ceremony is, this new man knows life's eternal juices.

A western contemporary of Tao in Tao

2011-03-02T13:20:00.001+01:00

Hendrick ter Brugghen (1588, Utrecht – 1629, idem)

Heraclitus - 1628

Rijksmuseum Amsterdam

"INTO THE SAME RIVERS WE STEP AND DO NOT STEP.
YOU CANNOT STEP TWICE IN THE SAME RIVER.
EVERYTHING FLOWS AND NOTHING ABIDES.
EVERYTHING GIVES WAY AND NOTHING STAYS FIXED.
COOL THINGS BECOME WARM, THE WARM GROWS COOL.
THE MOIST DRIES, THE PARCHED BECOMES MOIST.
IT IS BY DISEASE THAT HEALTH IS PLEASANT;
BY EVIL THAT GOOD IS PLEASANT,
BY HUNGER, SATIETY; BY WEARINESS, REST.
IT IS ONE AND THE SAME THING TO BE LIVING OR DEAD,
AWAKE OR ASLEEP, YOUNG OR OLD.
THE FORMER ASPECT IN EACH CASE BECOMES THE LATTER,
AND THE LATTER AGAIN THE FORMER,
BY SUDDEN UNEXPECTED REVERSAL.
IT THROWS APART
AND THEN BRINGS TOGETHER AGAIN.
ALL THINGS COME IN THEIR DUE SEASONS.
INTO THE SAME RIVERS WE STEP AND DO NOT STEP...
... because the appearance, and remember, only the appearance, remains the same.
Otherwise, everything changes and flows."

"THE HIDDEN HARMONY
IS BETTER THAN THE OBVIOUS.
OPPOSITION BRINGS CONCORD.
OUT OF DISCORD
COMES THE FAIREST HARMONY.
IT IS IN CHANGING
THAT THINGS FIND REPOSE.
PEOPLE DO NOT UNDERSTAND
HOW THAT WHICH IS AT VARIANCE WITH ITSELF,
AGREES WITH ITSELF.
THERE IS A HARMONY IN THE BENDING BACK,
AS IN THE CASE OF THE BOW AND LYRE.
THE NAME OF THE BOW IS LIFE,
BUT ITS WORK IS DEATH."

Heraclitus of Ephesus (535 - 475 BCE)

what we see of Tao?

2011-03-02T10:24:00.003+01:00

One of the fields of complexity where most has been concentrated the research is the neurophysiology of the vision system, that is how and what we see.

Anatomically and physiologically the brain visual system is widely known:

The image formed on the eye retina and codified is transferred by the optic nerve in the lateral geniculate nucleus (NGL/LGN), situated in the thalamus, from where nerve pathways go toward the visual cortex (CV/VC), the brain area which specific elaborate the information coming from the optic nerve. In particuar images from the right eye are elaborated in the left visual cortex, and vice versa.

The visual information flow according to this anatomical-functional model is represented as:

Following this model some thousands (litteraly) of works and papers has been made. The direct consequence of a model of this kind is the representationalist approach to the brain, outlined by Maturana and Varela with the Caesar's figure looking at the Imperial Eagle:

In the Varela words:

"The Caesar's Eagle is represented in his brain through the activity flow (the film tape) cthat undergoes a "treatment" (by some small operator) and which later produces the behavioral proof of the recognition by the word "eagle" (through carefully selected organ pipes)"

A model of this type is also what normally assumed by common sense: an object outise ourselves is represented in some way inside our head; more technically an object in the visual field are associated specific neural activity patternsi, typically in the primary visual cortex. The ultimate consequence is when we imagine ourselves, where the imagined ourselves naturally imagines himself, and so on, as in the following illustration by Von Foester, an extreme solipsism case:

In reality, the model of the flow of visual information in the brain is radically different, closer to the following type (NPG: geniculate nucleus; Coll. Sup.: superior colliculus; Ipo.: isothalamus; FRM: midbrain):

where have been added those connections to the NGL which do not come only from the retina but also from other central areas of the brain, including the same visual cortex. The conclusion is that less then 20% of the information dell'informazione which get the geniculate body come from the retina. The situation, drom the point of view of a neuron in the geniculate body, is more similar to a cocktail party rather than to a linear element of an information chain forwarded from the retina to the visual cortex. In addition, the dashed arrows may be bidirectional for the information, for example the visual cortex receives information from the geniculate body but at the same time forwards other information to the geniculate body. The Varela conclusion is:

"... in the visual system ... does not exists an overall flux, the system is organized in a reticular pattern, and there is a simultaneous convergence or coherence among all the parts concerned."

Francisco J. Varela: Brain complexity and autonomy of the living

He loved Clissold Tao

2011-03-01T11:26:00.000+01:00

clissoldpark.com

Tao does not work backward

2011-03-01T11:21:00.001+01:00

CAUSALITY DOES NOT WORK BACKWARD

Logic can often be reversed, but the effect does not precede the cause. This generalization has been a stumbling block for the psychological and biological sciences since the times of Plato and Aristotle. The Greeks were inclined to believe in what were later called final causes. They believed that the pattern generated at the end of a sequence of events could be regarded as in some way causal of the pathway followed by that sequence. This led to the whole of teleology, as it was called (telos meaning the end or purpose of a sequence).
The problem with confronted biological thinkers was the problem of adaptation. It appeared that a crab had claws in order to hold things. The difficulty was always in arguing backward from the purpose of claws to the causation of the development of claws. For a long time, it was considered heretical in biology to believe that claws were there because they were useful. This belief contained the teleological fallacy, an inversion of causality in time.
Lineal thinking will always generate either the teleological fallacy (that end determines process) or the myth of some supernatural controlling agency.
What is the case is that when causal systems become circular, a change in any part of the circle can be regarded as cause for change at a later time in any variable anywhere in the circle. It thus appears that a rise in the temperature of the room can be regarded as the cause of the change in the switch of the thermostat and, alternatively, that the action of the thermostat can be regarded as controlling the temperature of the room.

Wachet auf, ruft uns die Tao

2011-02-28T15:33:00.002+01:00

Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme: BWV 140

complex Tao level 1: Dissipative Tao

2011-02-28T15:29:00.004+01:00

A second model for complexity at level 1 - chemical - has been developed by Ilya Prigogine on the thermodynamic of complex susystems far from equilibrium, particolarly on the so-called dissipative systems, to be understood as an thermodynamical open system which works in a state far from thermodynamical equilibrium, exchanging energy, matter and/or entropy with the environment. Dissipative systems are characterized by spontaneous formation of anisotropy, namely of complex and oredered patterns, sometimes chaotic. Sush sustems, when crossed by increasing flows of energy and matter, may also evolve, passing from instability phases and increasing the complexity of the structure (that is the order) and decreasing their entropy (negentropy).

The term dissipative system has been named by Prigogine at the end of the '60s, lwork for which he received the 1977 Nobel prize for chemistry. The contribution of Prigogine was that to bring attention toward the connection between order and energy dissipation, differently from the static and equilibrium situations generally studied until then, and contributing significantly to the birth of what today is called epistemology of complexity.

In recent years there has been developed a vocabulary of complexity with fterms like fluctuation, stability, phase transitions. All these terms refer to the problem of time, which was one of the problems studied since the beginning of Western civilization.
The existence of a physical time separated by a philosophical time was a central issue for the concerns of many philosophers from Aristotle to Heidegger. The latter poses the question: what is time? He answered this question by saying that the time is difference, motion, it is a representation of the difference between what comes before and what comes after. This analysis was taken further by Heiddegger which defines a very strong difference between past and future. He emphasizes that it is not time as introduced by physicists to determine the difference. This explains the fact that science is not able to reach the essence in describing the universe.

Prigogine thinks that all the developments of science in the last decade have shown that time is an essential element of the physical universe. The fact that one is forced to speak of an evolving universe, because it is the only way to describe the events that are observed, is an evidence that the direction of time is not a creation of man but is inherent nature. That's why it is no longer possible to make a distinction between physical time and philosophical time.

According to Prigogine classical physics wanted to eliminate any reference to the history, the history was conceived as something that exists only because we do not understand the causes of a physical process. The universe, however, can not be attributed to independent events, it is not so simple. We also need stochastic events (probability, random, we need to reversibility. We need random events.

Prigogine claims a new scientific logic. On the basis of his view there is distrust on the classical idea that nature always follows the simplest way.

On the contrary, he argues that the operation of the machine-nature is due to the complexity of the irreversible processes. Prigogine comes to this idea analyzing the thermodynamical phenomenon known as entropy. In thermodynamics, entropy is a state function that is introduced with the second law of thermodynamics and which is interpreted as a measure of disorder of a physical system or the universe in general. According to this definition one can say, in a non-rigorous but explanatory form, that when a system moves from an ordered state to a disordered state its entropy increases.

In the historical evolution of the universe, there is indeed an exceptional event that denies the gradual transfer of energy from order to disorder (entropy. This event was the emergence of life on earth and the consequent existence of various forms of life characterized, like other irreversible processes, by self-organization. This latter is against the alleged balance of the natural order and thus against the anti-scientific idea of the simplicity of the phenomena, which should be contrasted with the complexity, that is necessarily the absence of energy balance (entropy) and physical disorder. It then develops the non-equilibrium physics with an underlying nonlinear dynamics. The most unexpected result of this is the awareness of the constructive role of non-equilibrium: far from equilibrium coherent states and complex structures are created that could not exist in a reversible world.

In this way, nature creates dissipative systems like living beings.

ILYA PRIGOGINE: THE EXPLORATION OF COMPLEXITY

“The fact that during growth living organisms actually show a decrease of entropy production during evolution up to the stationary state … also, the fact that their organization generally increases during this evolution [which] corresponds to the decrease of entropy as studied [leads one to puzzle as to why] the behavior of living organisms has always seemed so strange from the point of view of classical thermodynamics; that the applicability of thermodynamics to such systems has often been questioned. One may say that from the point of view of the thermodynamics of open and stationary systems [nonequilibrium thermodynamics] a much better understanding of their principal features is obtained.”

One of the biggest dissipative structures: the Great Red Spot on Jupiter su Giove taken by Voyager 1 in 1979

The coordinated movements of liquids and gases leading to patterns can also be observed in the laboratory This figure shows a hexagonal pattern of liquid helium in a vessel that is heated from below. This classical experiment was first done by Bénard (1900) with oil. In the middle of each cell, the liquid rises, cools down at the upper surface and then sinks down at its border

dissipative structure evolution in typhoon Matsa (2005)

Time, Structure, and Fluctuations
Ilya Prigogine

SCIENCE, VOL. 201, 1 SEPTEMBER 1978

The author is professor of physics and chemistry, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium; director of the Instituts Internationaux de Physique et de Chimie (Solvay), Brussels; and professor of physics and chemical engineering and director of the Center for Statistical Mechanics and Thermodynamics, University of Texas, Austin 78712. This article is the lecture he delivered in Stockholm, Sweden, on 8 December 1977 when he received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Summary

Fundamental conceptual problems that arise from the macroscopic and microscopic aspects of the second law of thermodynamics are considered. It is shown that nonequilibrium may become a source of order and that irreversible processes may lead to a new type of dynamic states of matter called "dissipative structures."
The thermodynamic theory of such structures is outlined. A microscopic definition of irreversible processes is given, and a transformation theory is developed that allows one to introduce nonunitary equations of motion that explicitly display irreversibility and approach to thermodynamic equilibrium. The work of the group at the University of Brussels in these fields is briefly reviewed. In this new development of theoretical chemistry and physics, it is likely that thermodynamic concepts will play an everincreasing role.

The Center for Complex Quantum Systems
Department of Physics | The University of Texas at Austin

planetary Tao mind

2011-02-25T14:35:00.000+01:00

Below, the Ocean - the planet's only inhabitant, organic, sentient, unimaginably powerful, profoundly indifferent to humanity. Above, the space station set from Earth, pathetically hovering over Solaris in an attempt to fathom some of the oceans mysteries, to tap a little of its knowledge. Newest arrival at the station is Kelvin, psychologist, principal character of a science fiction novel which has all the makings of a classic. This station is all but deserted, its crew reduced to a couple of half-crazed, furtive creatures, who are men of high repute among their fellow scientists. Are there but the three of them on board? Kelvin soon finds out, or thinks he does, when he is visited in the middle of the night by a lady bearing an uncanny resemblance to his long dead wife.
This is a dense and profound book, a parable and a thriller written at several levels and yielding more at each examination, yet it remains extremely readable throughout.

logical causal Tao

2011-02-25T14:25:00.000+01:00

LOGIC IS A POOR MODEL OF CAUSE AND EFFECT

We use the same words to talk about logical sequences and about sequences of cause and effect. We say "If Euclid's definitions and postulates are accepted, then two triangles having three sides of the one equal to thee sides of the other are equal each to each." And we say, "If the temperature falls below 0°C, then the water begins to become ice."
But the if…then of logic in the syllogism is very different from the if…then of cause and effect.
In a computer, which works by cause and effect, with one transistor, triggering another, the sequences of cause and effect are used to simulate logic. Thirty years ago, we sued to ask: Can a computer simulate all the processes of logic? The answer was yes, but the question was surely wrong. We should have asked: Can logic simulate all sequences of cause and effect? And the answer would have been no.
When the sequences of cause and effect become circular (or more complex than circular), then the description or mapping of those sequences onto timeless logic becomes self-contradictory. Paradoxes are generated that pure logic cannot tolerate. An ordinary buzzer circuit will serve as an example, a single instance of the apparent paradoxes generated in a million cases of homeostasis throughout biology. The buzzer circuit

is so rigged that current will pass around the circuit when the armature makes contact with the electrode at A. But the passage of current activates the electromagnet that will draw the armature away, breaking the contact at A. The current will then cease to pass around the circuit, the electromagnet will become inactive, and the armature will return to make contact at A and so repeat the cycle.

If we spell out this cycle onto a causal sequence, we get the following:
If contact is made at A, then the magnet is activated.
If the magnet is activated, then contact at A is broken.
If contact at A is broken, then the magnet is inactivated.
If magnet is inactivated, than contact is made.
The sequence is perfectly satisfactory provided it is clearly understood that the if…then junctures are casual. But the bad pun that would move the ifs and thens over into the world of logic will create havoc:
If the contact is made, then the contact is broken.
If P, then not P.
The if…then of causality contains time, but the if…then of logic is timeless. It follows that logic is an incomplete model of causality.

toward the center of Tao

2011-02-23T10:46:00.002+01:00

totally Tao

2011-02-23T10:44:00.003+01:00

quite Tao

2011-02-23T10:43:00.002+01:00

not - Tao

2011-02-23T10:42:00.002+01:00

Complex Tao level 0: Synergetic Tao

2011-02-22T16:13:00.000+01:00

In searching new methodologies for complex systems which could overcome the difficulties of the classical ones, at physical level 0 Hermann Haken has developed the Synergetics method (from greek "working together), born in the 70s-80s years in the field of laser theory, in particular to explain the coherence of the emitted radiation, namely how photons into the laser cavity interacted all together in a spatio-temporal way to form the high coherence characteristic of the output laser radiation.
The laser radiation has two peculiar characteristics: the first is its monochromaticity, that is the light emission has a narrow wavelength (one-colored), the second is its coherence, as clear to anyone have seen a laser beam.

While the former is easily explained in terms of electron transitions between higher energy levels to lower, producing a photon energy very definite, the second can not be explained by the characteristics of the emission of photons in the laser cavity, which should emit independently of each other, and then incoherently.

This application example clarifies some key concepts used in Synergetics in a qualitative way. In the gas lasers the emitting atoms are locked in a tube with the ends of the semi-reflective mirrors that act as resonator for the emitted light. The mirrors are designed in order to reflect light in the axial direction often enough so that the corresponding wave remains for a long time within the device and can interact strongly with the atoms through the phenomenon of stimulated emission.

The atoms are excited from the outside, eg by a light pump source. After being excited, each atom can spontaneously emit a trace of light. In the usual case of a lamp, these tracks of light are emitted independently of each other incoherently, and the amplitudes are distributed as a Gaussian. When the pump intensity is increased beyond a critical value, called laser threshold, where it starts the population inversion - or when there are more electrons in higher energy levels than on the fundamental - the current state gives way to a single wave with amplitude stability on which the fluctuations of small amplitude and phase overlap. The pump intensity acts as control parameter. At its critical value, the old state becomes unstable. The emerging coherent wave acts as a order parameter that through stimulated emission forces the electrons of the gas molecules to emit light in a coherent way. This action by the order parameter over single parts of the system has been called by Haken enslavement principle. In this case it can be seen that from 10¹⁸ degrees of freedom, in which any of the 10¹⁸ atoms in the cavity emit independently of each other, and therefore the total sum is incoherent, one switch to a single degree of freedom, the coherent laser mode over thresholdl. If the pump power is still increased may appear further instabilities and a variety of temporal patterns, but even spatio-temporal, such chaotic laser light or very short laser pulses. The laser threshold, where stimulated emission occurs, show typical characteristics of a phase transition of a system out of thermal equilibrium, such critical damping, critical fluctuations and simmetry breaking.

The high laser coherence is therefore a cooperative effect of self-organization, and the synergetic method of the enslavement principle between order parameters and the slaved subsystems gives the relationship between macroscopic and microscopic parameters of the complex system.

Haken has expanded in subsequent years the calculation model for synergetic to a range of disciplines from chemistry to biology to economics to the study of brain and cognitive sciences and, more generally, to any form of self-organization in complex systems that exhibit an emergent behavior. Synergetics therefore stands as a new authentic methodology to address Complexity.

In the Haken words:

"The systems under experimental or theoretical consideration I sistemi in esame sperimentale o teorico are subject to control parameters which can be fixed from the external or generated in part from the system itself. An example for an external control parameter is the absorbed power in a gas laser by the injected electrical current. An example for a internal generated control parameter are the hormones in the human body or the neurotransmitters in the brain. When the control parameters reach some specific critical values the system may become instable and to adopt a new macroscopic state. Close to these instability points, a new set of collective variables may be identified: the order parameters. They have, at least generally, a low dimensional dynamic and characterized the macroscopic system. Since the cooperation of the single parts allows the existence of order parameters which in turn determine the bahavior of the individual partsi, we speak of circular causality. According to the enslavement principle, the order parameters determine the bahavior of the individual parts, the enslaved subsystems, which can be still subjected to fluctuations. At a critical point, a single order parameter may be subjected to a non-equilibrium transition phase (bifurcation), with simmetry breaking, with a slowing down of critical fluctuations.
Synergetic ha several links to other disciplines, such complexity theory"

In general, the abused term synergy may indicate a cooperative effect of reinforcement/stabilization among different internal processes of the system, or among certain internal and other external to the system.

In the figure, for example, the two recursive closed processe red e blue are coupled by a third process which may habe synergetic effects, making a new three processes set which may have different qualities from those of the individual processes.

top Tao is like down Tao

2011-02-16T12:38:00.000+01:00

small Tao beauty Tao

2011-02-16T12:34:00.000+01:00

SOMETIMES SMALL IS BEATIFUL

Perhaps no variable brings the problems of being alive so vividly and clearly before the analyst's eye as does size. The elephant is afflicted with the problems of bigness; the shrew, with those of smallness. But for each, there is an optimum size. The elephant would not be better off if he were much smaller, nor would the shrew be relieved by being much bigger. We may say that each is addicted to the size that is.
There are purely physical problems of bigness or smallness, problems that affect the solar system, the bridge, and the wristwatch. But in addition to these, there are problems special to aggregates of living matter, whether these be single creatures or whole cities.
Let us first look at the physical. Problems of mechanical instability arise because, for example, the forces of gravity do not follow the same quantitative regularities as those of cohesion. A large clod of earth is easier to break by dropping it on the ground than is a small one. The glacier grows and therefore, partly melting and partly breaking, must begin a changed existence in the form of avalanches, smaller units that must fall off the larger matrix. Conversely, even in the physical universe, the very small may become unstable because the relation between surface area and weight is nonlinear. We break up any material which we wish to dissolve because the smaller pieces have a greater ratio of surface to volume and will therefore give more access to the solvent. The larger lumps will be the last to disappear. And so on.

To carry these thoughts over into the more complex world of living things, a fable may be offered:

THE TALE OF THE POLYPLOID HORSE

They say the Nobel people are still embarrassed when anybody mentions polyploid horses. Anyhow, Dr. P. U. Posif, the great Erewhonian geneticist, got his prize in the late 1980s for jiggling with the DNA of the common cart horse (Equus caballus). It was said that he made a great contribution to the then new science of transportology. At any rate, he got his prize for creating - no other word would be good enough for a piece of applied science so nearly usurping the role of deity - creating, I say, a horse precisely twice the size of the ordinary Clydesdale. It was twice as long, twice as high, and twice as thick. It was a polyploid, with four times the usual number of chromosomes.
P.U. Posif always claimed that there was a time, when this wonderful animal was still a colt, when it was able to stand on its four legs. A wonderful it must have been! But anyhow, by the time the horse was shown to the public and recorded with all the communicational devices of modern civilization, the horse was not doing any standing. In a word, it was too heavy. It weighed, of course, eight times as much as a normal Clydesdale.
For a public showing and for the media, Dr. Posif always insisted on turning off the hoses that were continuously necessary to keep the beast at normal mammalian temperature. But we were always afraid that the innermost parts would begin to cook. After all, the poor beast's skin and dermal fat were twice as thick as normal, and it surface area was only four times that of a normal horse, so it didn't cool properly.
Every morning, the horse had to be raised to its feet with the aid of a small crane and hung in a sort of box on wheels, in which it was suspended on springs, adjusted to take half its weigh off its legs.
Dr. Posif used to claim that the animal was outstandingly intelligent. It had, of course, eight times as much brain (by weight) as any other horse, but I could never see that it was concerned with any questions more complex than those which interest other horses. I had very little free time, what with one thing and another - always panting, partly to keep cool and partly to oxygenate its eight-times body. Its windpipe, after all, had only four times the normal area of cross section.
And then there was eating. Somehow it had to eat, every day, eight times the amount that would satisfy a normal horse and had to push all that food down an esophagus only four times the caliber of the normal. The blood vessels, too, were reduced in relative size, and this made circulation more difficult and put extra strain on the heart.
A sad beast.

The fable shows what inevitably happens when two or more variables, whose curves are discrepant, interact. That is what produces the interaction between change and tolerance. For instance, gradual growth in a population, whether of automobiles or of people, has no perceptible effect upon a transportation system until suddenly the threshold of tolerance is passed and the traffic jams. The changing of one variable exposes a critical value of the other.
Of all such cases, the best known today is the behavior of fissionable material in the atom bomb. The uranium occurs in nature and is continually undergoing fission, but no explosion occurs because no chain reaction is established. Each atom, as it breaks, gives off neutrons that, that if they hit another uranium atom, may cause fission, but many neutrons are merely lost. Unless the lump of uranium is of critical size, an average of less than one neutron from each fission will break another atom, and the chain will dwindle. If the lump is made bigger, a larger fraction of the neutrons will hit uranium atoms to cause fission. The process will then achieve positive exponential gain and become an explosion.
In the case of the imaginary horse, length, surface area, and volume (or mass) become discrepant because their curves of increase have mutually nonlinear characteristics. Surface varies as the square of length, volume varies as the cube of length, and surface varies as the 2/3 power of volume.
For the horse (and for all real creatures), the matter becomes more serious because to remain alive, many internal motions must be maintained. There is an internal logistics of blood, food, oxygen, and excretory products and a logistics of information in the form of neural and hormonal messages.
The harbor porpoise, which is about three feet long, with a jacket of blubber about one inch thick and a surface area of about six square feet, has a known heat budget that balances comfortably in Arctic waters. The heat budget of a big whale, which is about ten times the length of the porpoise (i.e. 1,000 times the volume and 100 times the surface), with a blubber jacket nearly twelve inches thick, is totally mysterious. Presumably, they have a superior logistic system moving blood through the dorsal fins and tail flukes, where all cetaceans get rid of heat.
The fact of growth adds another order of complexity to the problems of bigness in living things. Will growth alter the proportions of the organism? These problems of the limitation of growth are met in very different ways by different creatures.
A simple case is that of the palms, which do not adjust their girth to compensate for their height. An oak tree with growing tissue (cambium) between its wood, and its bark grows in length and width throughout its life. But a coconut palm, whose only growing tissue is the apex of the trunk (the so-called millionaire's salad, which can only be got at the price of killing the palm), simply gets taller and taller, with some slow increase of the bole at its base. For this organism, the limitation of height is simply a normal part of its adaptation of a niche. The sheer mechanical instability of excessive height without compensation in girth provides its normal way of death.
Many plants avoid (or solve?) these problems of the limitation of growth by linking their life-span to the calendar or to their own reproductive cycle. Annuals start a new generation each year, and plants like the so-called century plant (yucca) may live many years but, like the salmon, inevitably die when they reproduce. Except for multiple branching within the flowering head, the yucca makes no branches. The branching influorescence itself is its terminal stem; when that has completed its function, the plant dies. Its death is normal to its way of life.
Among some higher animals, growth is controlled. The creature reaches a size or age or stage at which growth simply stops (i.e., is stopped by chemical or other messages within the organization of the creature). The cells, under control, cease to grow and divide. When controls no longer operate (by failure to generate the message or failure to receive it), the result is cancer. Where do such messages originate, what triggers their sending, and in what presumably chemical code are these messages immanent? What controls the nearly perfect external bilateral symmetry of the mammalian body? We have remarkably
little knowledge of the message system that controls growth. There must be a whole interlocking system as yet scarcely studied.

the Places of Tao

2011-02-15T14:11:00.004+01:00

The Dhaulagiri (8167 m., western Himalaya, Nepal) South Face represents perhaps the greatest unsolved climbing problem, and may be impossible. From the base of the wall to the summit there is a difference of about 4000 m. with a slope ranging from 50° to 90° on ice, with difficulty from M5 to M7+. In particolar the band of rocks which runs across the whole wall at 7200 m. is considered virtually impossible.

The best attempt on this wall has been done by Tomaz Humar in 1999:

Climbing till the band of rocks Humar was forced to traverse to reach the southest crest.

Tribute to Tao

2011-02-15T13:53:00.002+01:00

Childwickbury Green Manor

Hertfordshire, England

Tao: second quantum leap

2011-02-15T13:20:00.000+01:00

first quantum leap