Abstract
We recapitulate the arguments we have presented, most particularly in the distinction between living and inorganic systems. Electron properties in the solid state provide a representative model for inorganic systems, and these are evaluated following De Kronig and Penneys’ model. The result is a set of energetic bands whose structure resembles that of a biological hierarchy. We address conductivity in a semiconductor, and conclude that it can be characterized as a relationship between electron properties and their ecosystem, thus mirroring the derivation of hierarchical metascale. This provides us with a way of linking together living and inorganic systems as two extremes of the same instantiation. We describe how integration of the two system descriptions can provide a bootstrapping method of advancing both of them. We address the effect of stress on the emergence of scalar levels in both systems, and account for the missing second hyperscale in inorganic contexts.
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Notes
- 1.
A crystal ’s macro properties reproduce the lowest level recognizable structure , which is called the unit cell. This structure of often 2, 4 or 6 atoms is reproduced throughout the crystal in all three dimensions.
- 2.
The clock in a digital computer imposes a waiting-time on all the individual processing gates to be certain that all of them have settled down before they are allowed to pass on their results to other gates. This formally eliminates any interactions which were not foreseen and planned (in principle!) by the computer designer or programmer: the only global character is that existing in the designer’s or programmer’s head—not in the computer itself. This apparently trivial argument formally eliminates any possibility of intra-digital -computer generation of real intelligence or consciousness .
- 3.
We will refer here to living systems rather than organisms to emphasize the multi-component systemic nature of life .
- 4.
The reader should note that this is a somewhat abstract view of machines, which in reality are often far more unpredictable than we expect—usually at the worst possible moment!
- 5.
Gödel (Berto 2010) has demonstrated that all formal systems are at least to some degree incomplete —implying non-self -consistency across their axioms. Antoniou et al.’s (1997) conclusion is that as a quantum system increases in size the self -consistency of its formal description progressively breaks down, leading to the necessity for probabilistic rather than deterministic description.
- 6.
Leaving aside for simplicity elementary particles , quarks, superstrings….
- 7.
The sequential argument here is intentionally phrased in terms of ‘must’ at each step, as each step’s conclusion is logically unavoidable.
- 8.
In a solid, an electron appears to have a different mass from its free space value—called its effective mass \(m^{*}\).
- 9.
A cellular automaton constitutes a regular grid of cells, each in one of a finite number of states, such as ‘black’ or ‘white’. An associated set of cells called its neighborhood is defined relative to a specified cell. An initial state is selected for each cell, and a next generation is created according to some fixed rule which determines the new state of each cell in terms of the current state of the cell itself and the states of the cells in its neighborhood. Cellular automata are variously applied in computational contexts in attempts to represent, for example, living systems.
- 10.
The most visible example of this effect is found in the social context (Cancian 1976), where society strongly influences individual habits.
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Cottam, R., Ranson, W. (2017). Bridging the Gap. In: Bridging the Gap between Life and Physics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74533-6_15
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