Report on French Society for Theoretical Biology Annual Meeting

DON MIKULECKY (MIKULECKY@VCUVAX.BITNET)
Sat, 17 Jun 1995 06:40:53 -0400

Don Mikulecky, MCV/VCU, Mikulecky@gems.vcu.edu
The French Society for Theoretical Biology met June 12-14 in St. Flour,
France. The meeting, for which I was a co-organizer, was well attended.
I was given almost three hours on the first day to present my
version of Rosen's definition of complexity. As a working definition,
I used his definition from "Fundamentals of Measurement" which summarised is:
Complexity is not an intrinsic property of a system, but through the
modeling relation is a function of the number of DISTINCT ways we can
interact with the system. (Distinct in that the formal systems used to
model those interactions can not be derived from each other.) In this sense,
a system is SIMPLE if we aresatisfied with just one way of interacting
with it, usually through the Newtonian Paradigm. Otherwise it is COMPLEX.
The ideas and multitutde of clarifying examples were well recieved,
to the extent that other speakers adapted their presentations so as to
utilize these definitions.
Furthermore, we made some real headway in using final cause as
a starting point in obtaining a global "attractor" for a system which
then could provide causal interpretations for local, mechanistic events.
One speaker revised his paper to apply this to a situation involving
algae growth showing the failure of the mechanistic/reductionist
approach and the escape from its infinite regressions by using the
Rosen approach.
Jeff Prideaux gave an excellent paper "Anticipatory Systems"
which extended an example from Rosen and interpreted it clearly.
The system is realized in glycolysis and given a final cause interpretation
in Stryer's Biochemistry text.
The willingness to put these ideas to use suggests to me that
there is a hunger for meaningful working definitions like this.
We are indeed charged up and going to forge ahead as a result.
Thanks to everyone who vicariously contributed to this success via
you discussions here!
Best wishes, Don Mikulecky