FROM QUANTUM TO CLASSICAL. “Physics underlies all complexity, including our own existence. How is this possible? How can our own lives emerge from interactions of electrons, protons and neutrons?” https://lnkd.in/dnngg6a View in LinkedIn
ARTICLE AUTHOR. “Professor George Francis Rayner Ellis, FRS, Hon. FRSSAf (born 11 August 1939), is the emeritus distinguished professor of complex systems in the Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. He co-authored The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time with University of Cambridge physicist Stephen Hawking, published in 1973, and is considered one of the world's leading theorists in cosmology. From 1989 to 1992 he served as president of the International Society on General Relativity and Gravitation. He is a past president of the International Society for Science and Religion. He is an A-rated researcher with the NRF.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_F._R._Ellis View in LinkedIn
FRAGMENT FROM NATURE this weekend touches on the subject of causation in the biological phenomenon of emergence. The article author has had a distinguished career as a physicist concentrating on complexity. He brings a different viewpoint on how emergence in complexity happens. View in LinkedIn
NOT QUITE READY FOR MARKET. "And here's why you can’t go grab a brain-to-text device and hook it up to the internet just yet: For one, the patients' skulls were split open and electrode sheets were attached directly to their brains." http://motherboard.vice.com/read/this-device-reads-your-mind-and-types-your-thoughts View in LinkedIn
SMALL FOOTNOTE. "In this case, the patients were already undergoing an epilepsy procedure where the skull is popped open and an electrode grid is placed on the brain to map areas where neurons are misfiring." These scientists made important findings on these patients undergoing surgery. http://www.popsci.com/mind-reading-technology-turns-thoughts-text View in LinkedIn
COMBINED CAUSATION. “It is the combination of bottom-up and top-down causation that enables same-level behaviour to emerge at higher levels, because the entities at the higher level set the context for the lower level actions in such a way that consistent same-level behaviour emerges at the higher level.” https://lnkd.in/dnngg6a View in LinkedIn
LOCALIZED WORDS. "As each patient spoke, a computer algorithm learned to associate speech sounds—such as "foh", "net", and "ik"—with different firing patterns in the brain cells. Eventually it learned to read the brain cells well enough that it could guess which sound they were producing with up to 75 percent accuracy." http://www.popsci.com/mind-reading-technology-turns-thoughts-text View in LinkedIn
TWO CAUSATIONS. “Both bottom-up and top-down causation occur in the hierarchy of structure and causation. Bottom-up causation is the basic way physicists think: lower level action underlies higher level behaviour, for example physics underlies chemistry, biochemistry underlies cell biology and so on.” https://lnkd.in/dnngg6a View in LinkedIn
THE CELL. “This information cannot be derived in a bottom-up way, because it implicitly embodies information about environmental niches. It would be different in a different environment. Hence, higher level conditions influence what happens at the lower levels, even if the lower levels do the work. This is what I characterize as top-down causation.” https://lnkd.in/dnngg6a View in LinkedIn
TOP DOWN CAUSATION. “These, however, do not extend to truly complex systems such as a single living cell. It seems that developing very complex systems such as those occurring in biology requires top-down causation, needed in order to build up the necessary biological information.” https://lnkd.in/dnngg6a View in LinkedIn
