[time 1074] Re: [time 1069] Re: Prigogine Entropy


Matti Pitkänen (matpitka@pcu.helsinki.fi)
Wed, 1 Dec 1999 06:11:19 +0200


Hi all,

Funny accident! Just yesterday I ended up with a
concrete prediction about evolution made possible
by the identification evolution as p-adic evolution.

Before continuing, does anyone know about reference
about the lower bound for the neuron number for
structural units of vertebrate brain? My prediction
is that neuron N=256.000 is good order of magnitude guess
for emergence of cognition and vertebrates with their
brains increasing rapidly in size. Insects never achieved
cognition if I am right.
I could not however find from web any data about this.

1. Evolution as p-adic evolution

Quantum TGD predicts that evolution reduces to
the gradual increase of p-adic prime (in fact I must allow
infinite primes and corresponding p-adic primes
for entire universe). This boils down to the statement
that each revolutionary step corresponds to the emergence
of a larger spacetime sheet with minimal sized characterized
by p-adic length scale L_p:

L_p= about sqrt(p)*10^4 Planck lengths,

p =about 2^k, k prime of power of prime.

There are not two many interesting values of k in biolength scales.

2. Evolutionary steps at critical neuron numbers

This leads to a precise prediction at what critical neuron numbers
evolution of nervous system made dramatic jumps.
Since typical cell size corresponds to the length scale L(k=167),
these jumps occurred when the neuron number for relevant
unit of brain became so large that neurons filled volume of cube
with side L(k). Thus the critical neuron numbers
are given by

N(k) =about (L(k)/L(167)^3.

If one considers spheres of diameter L(k), the estimate is reduced by
a factor of 1/2.

 3. Hierarchy of p-adic primes and components of conscious
experience

The hierarchy of p-adic primes could also correspond
to hierarchical structure of consciousness. The relevant
p-adic primes are k=169,173,179,181 and can consider
the possibility that sensory experiencing corresponds to
k=169, emotions corresponds to k=173
and cognition and higher cognition
like aesthetic and religious experiencec
correspond to k=181. The fact that ocular dominance
columns correspond to k=179 and their pairs
giving rise to stereovision to to k=181
suggests that k=181 could integrate left and right
sensory experience, emotion
and cognition to single unified experience.

In this picture various sensory homunculi would provide
 maps sensory experience of self
at given level to experience of self
at the next hierarchy level. This kind of mapping would
be necessary
since given self forms average about experiences of its
subsubselves. For instance, all experience from points of skin
would average to single experience without this map at 2 levels
above the primary sensory experience.

4. Neuronal evolution and p-adic length scale hypothesis

The stages at which the sizes of subunits of brain
or brain itself have reached critical size given
by p-adic length scale must have been meant dramatic jumps in
the rate of evolution.

a) The proposed model
 predicts that the size L(173) for primitive
brain must have been a threshold for the emergence of
emotions. A cube with side of L(173)=about 3.2* 10^{-4}
 meters contains roughly

N(173) )= (L(173)/L(167))^3=512

neurons if neuron is assumed to fill cube of side L(167).
 For a sphere with a diameter L(173) this number is
scaled roughly by a factor of two to N=256.

The microtubular model of Penrose predicts that
Cambrian explosion occured, when critical neuron number about 300
(nematode worms)! TGD in turn suggests that it was the emergence
of k=173 neuronal spacetime sheets and of emotions
that led to Cambrian explosion!
According to TGD the emergence of microtubules meant emergence
of vision making possible formation of cell societies.
Of course, it is possible that primitive eye had the critical number
of N=256 neurons.

b) The emergence of brain substructures with size larger
than L(179) must have also meant a revolution in the evolution.
If the proposed identifications are correct, rudimentary
 cognition emerged at this stage. Also the coupling to Earth's
magnetic field with proposed manner emerged.
The number of cells involved is

N=2^{18}=about 256.000

for a cube of this size. It would be interesting to find what level of
evolution this
neuron number for single structural unit corresponds. Perhaps
the emergence of verterbrates: this evolution step
meant that brain size began to grow rapidly. Plausible if
cognition emerged at this evolutionary step.

-MP

----- Original Message -----
From: ca314159 <ca314159@bestweb.net>
To: <time@kitada.com>
Sent: Sunday, November 21, 1999 7:52 PM
Subject: [time 1069] Re: Prigogine Entropy

> >From the New York Times science section today:
>
> ----------------------------------------------------
> Pondering Next Rung on the Evolutionary Ladder
> By MALCOLM W. BROWNE
>
> If evolution is still unfolding, and most scientists believe it is,
> just how complex an organism could the evolutionary process create,
> before hitting some fundamental limit?
>
> People leading independent lives, as we do today, might not be the end
> of the human evolutionary line. Is it possible that one day we might
> subordinate impulses toward individual behavior and merge into an
> organic community, a kind of human superbeing with its own sense of
> self?
>
> No one can predict what might happen in
> the next million years or so, but it's fun to
> speculate.
>
> One thing is certain: an important rung in the
> evolutionary ladder was the transition from
> single-celled to multicellular existence. And
> that rung may have been the first of many
> along an endless road to complexity.
>
> How to account for that first step, which our remote ancestors took eons
> ago, still poses many puzzles.
>
> But however the progression from individual independence to collective
> life may have unfolded, it seemed to have required some kind of chemical
> internet, by which independent cells communicated with one another and
> learned to enhance their collective well-being by acting in concert.
>
> Surely, the human race has already hit upon something like that.
>
> A fundamental step in the process entails inducing many independent
> individuals to join together and march in lockstep. Scientists in Denmark
> recently discovered an intriguing new manifestation of this behavior in
> cells of baker's yeast -- the kind that makes bread dough rise.
>
> Yeast cells ordinarily lead lives independent of one another as they
leaven
> bread dough, ferment grape juice or cause yeast infections. But a team
> led by Dr. Sune Dano of the University of Copenhagen reported in a
> recent issue of Nature that they had engineered a yeast community in
> which all the cells produced synchronous pulses of a chemical called
> NADH, one of the substances created when an organism breaks down
> sugar to generate energy.
>
> This chemical oscillation of yeast, in which concentrations of NADH
> rhythmically rise and fall, has been observed before. But the trick in
this
> case was finding a way to keep the oscillations going indefinitely. To do
> this, Dr. Dano said in an interview, the scientists exploited a theory for
> which the Belgian chemist Ilya Prigogine was awarded the 1977 Nobel
> Prize in Chemistry. In simple terms, Dr. Prigogine showed that despite
> the laws of thermodynamics that make most physical processes run
> downhill, an upward march toward increasing complexity can be
> achieved in "open" systems.
>
> Open systems, which Dr. Prigogine dubbed "dissipative structures," are
> those to which energy is constantly added and waste (in the form of
> entropy, a measure of a system's disorder) is removed. Trees and people
> are examples of dissipative structures.
>
> In Dr. Dano's application of this idea, a glass tube containing yeast
cells
> was constantly replenished with fresh cells, along with glucose and
> cyanide, while waste matter and excess liquid were constantly removed
> and discarded. When conditions were adjusted precisely, clock-like
> chemical oscillations were induced in the yeast culture, and they
> continued indefinitely, as long as fresh yeast cells, glucose and cyanide
> were continuously added in the right amounts and excess fluid was
> removed.
>
> Collective chemical oscillations in yeast colonies, the scientists
concluded,
> "suggest an evolutionary path from unicellular to multicellular behavior."
>
> Yeast cells are not the only creatures that routinely cross the boundary
> between one-celled and multicellular existence.
>
> Single-celled bacteria can form huge mat-like colonies that live almost
> like multicellular creatures, and evidence that such mats existed even
> during the earth's early years has been found in ancient rock.
>
> Soil amoebas -- highly complex single-celled organisms -- live
> independently from one another when there is plenty to eat. But in
> impoverished environments they join together to produce spores, and in
> their collective state they can move relatively fast, sensing light and
> warmth as guides to food supplies.
>
> The creation of collective beings from single-celled organisms has been
> going on a long time.
>
> Millions of years ago, shells of single-celled animals (called nummulites)
> were deposited in huge layers in the limestone later used by ancient
> Egyptians in building the Sphinx.
>
> Among the oldest multicellular animals with an apparent sense of self are
> the sponges, which can exist either as independent, freely moving cells or
> as huge assemblages of cells held together by skeletons made of protein
> and minerals, and containing complex food-filtering plumbing. Once
> thought to have no power of locomotion, sponges have been shown to
> be capable of creeping over a surface at a speed of a few millimeters a
> day to seek out food.
>
> At higher levels of organization, many individual insects (ants and bees
for
> example) are essentially mere components of the superbeing represented
> by the colony or hive.
>
> Communication provides the coherence allowing such superbeings to
> function; the complicated dance steps used by bees to inform their
> hive-mates of the directions and distances to food sources serve as their
> colonies' internet.
>
> Higher still on the complexity ladder are birds that flock and fish that
> swim in perfectly choreographed collective patterns.
>
> One of the strangest creatures is the naked mole rat, a nearly blind
little
> animal living in East African deserts that spends its life underground
within
> a "eusocial" organization, as biologists call it, more like that of
insects than
> of other mammals. Each individual in a mole rat colony serves as a cog in
> a big wheel; only one female in a colony produces young, and the other
> animals have the specialized jobs of searching for food, caring for the
> young, guarding against predators and house-cleaning.
>
> For a naked mole rat, the sole focus of existence is the colony;
individual
> life outside the colony is meaningless.
>
> Aldous Huxley's 1932 novel, "Brave New World," envisions a human
> society in which individuals are programmed before birth as "Alpha-plus
> intellectuals," "Epsilon-minus morons" or any of the intermediate levels,
> predestining everyone to specific occupations in a rigidly structured
> society, not unlike that of mole rats.
>
> Today, the world has sufficient "carrying capacity" to sustain its human
> population in the guise of individuals capable of independent action. But
> might a day come when we run out of necessities and are forced to
> evolve toward a eusocial superbeing?
>
>
> --
>
> http://www.bestweb.net/~ca314159/



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