Text of Kauffman's Lecture on Thursday?

[Friam mailing list]

Anybody,

I'm traveling in the East visiting family & friends,
(right now in Santa Fe's "Sister City",
Williamsburg, Va.).
Streaming Video is a great idea,
but text would be better.
Can anybody pressure Dr. Kauffman into providing
electronic text for this "inaugural talk of the
FRIAM Group's Applied Complexity Lecture Series"
for archival\pick-apart\Exorcism purposes?
I promise I won't send it to Dorion Sagan.
(Check out: http://www.randi.org/jr/011802.html &
http://www.randi.org/jr/012502.html)

Regards,

Lanny


__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Web Hosting - establish your business online
http://webhosting.yahoo.com

[Friam mailing list]

Steve to Dorion: It's a wonderful day for an exorcism.

Did you happend to see Dorion quoting Schneider, too?

FROM: http://www.randi.org/jr/011802.html-------------------
Increasingly, it is becoming recognized that complex phenomena require this
sort of broader perspective - which is properly the science of
non-equilibrium thermodynamics - to make sense of them. Even would-be guru
Kauffman himself, in his new book "Investigations" looks high and low for a
4th law of thermodynamics to explain life. The basic problem is that the
second law says entropy increases in isolated systems - that disorder - not
order, organization, or complexity - tends naturally to grow. But then how
can we have life, or even highly organized spinning tornados, ornate
chemical patterns, or other complex systems, cropping up naturally? The
answer, as beautiful in outline as it is simple, is the brainchild of
Montana thermodynamicist Eric D. Schneider: nature abhors a gradient. A
tornado reduces a pressure gradient, a Belousov-Zhabotinski reaction (a kind
of chemical clock) reduces an electron potential (chemical concentration)
gradient, and life reduces the solar (an electromagnetic) gradient.

This isn't armchair theorizing. Schneider shows that the most complex
assemblages of life we know (not Silicon Valley but rather Amazonian
ecosystems) are cool if you measure them with airborne black body
thermometers or from satellites in space: using clouds they more effectively
degrade the vast gradient between sun and space. Schneider's gradient
principle is really an extension of the 2nd Law. Complex systems arise to
destroy the order around them more efficiently than would otherwise be the
case. Kauffman's mad scramble to intuit a 4th law is misguided: to
understand life (as a complex system) you need only extend the second law.

--------------------------------------------------------------

____________________________________________________
http://www.redfish.com    [hidden email]
624 Agua Fria Street      office: [phone]
Santa Fe, NM 87501        mobile: [phone]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]]On Behalf
> Of Lanny Bear
> Sent: Wednesday, March 12, 2003 12:57 PM
> To: [hidden email]
> Subject: [FRIAM] Text of Kauffman's Lecture on Thursday?
>
>
>
> Anybody,
>
> I'm traveling in the East visiting family & friends,
> (right now in Santa Fe's "Sister City",
> Williamsburg, Va.).
> Streaming Video is a great idea,
> but text would be better.
> Can anybody pressure Dr. Kauffman into providing
> electronic text for this "inaugural talk of the
> FRIAM Group's Applied Complexity Lecture Series"
> for archival\pick-apart\Exorcism purposes?
> I promise I won't send it to Dorion Sagan.
> (Check out: http://www.randi.org/jr/011802.html &
> http://www.randi.org/jr/012502.html)
>
> Regards,
>
> Lanny
>
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Web Hosting - establish your business online
> http://webhosting.yahoo.com
>
> =========================================================
> FRIAM Complexity Coffee listserv
> Meets Fridays 9AM @ Museum Hill Cafe
> Archives, unsubscribe, etc.:
> http://www.redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
>
>