🚀 go-pugleaf

> >>>       (In fact, I dispute the suggestion that any finite mechanical
> >>>system can build a copy of itself. I find this notion to contain an
> >
> To my view, system A does not have complete knowledge of system B,
> it has a set of rules the following of which yields a copy of system
> B.  I'm not sure of what comprises "complete knowledge".
> 
Robert Rosen has written a book:
Life Itself
Robert Rosen
Columbia University Press, NY, 1992
Complexity in Ecological Systems Series
ISBN 0-231-07564-2

He discusses these issues and give a mathematical proof that simple
mechanisms cannot replicate themselves without infinite regress.

He also shows how it IS possible for organisms to do this by being,
in his terminology, "closed to effective causation".  He gives a
mathematical definition of what it means to be closed in this
manner.  The closure of the system means there is no infinite
regress, for one thing.

This closure is like having "complete knowledge".  I find the
suggestion that matter may be infinitely layered with self-organizing
systems interesting - it certainly is over quite a large set of
scales, but perhaps it is not necessary (if Rosen is correct).

Tom Holroyd
tomh@bambi.ccs.fau.edu