Autonomy

I work in an autonomous university, and work in an autonomous Mathematics Department. We all have an idea of what the word means. I hope I can draw your attention to a deeper understanding of the idea.

I start with a word: Autopoiesis.

I am in the middle of a study of the work of two original Chilean scientists, Humberto Maturana, and Francisco J. Varela. I am reading "Principles of Biological Autonomy" . I got this book from the library at the Naperville campus of Alcatel-Lucent . They did not need the book anymore, and they did not need me either.

Since I am an autonomous person I won't stop thinking.

Classical Information Theory, also developed in that company, when the name was Bell Labs, is the original work of Claude Shannon. That first approach to this important concept, restricted its attention to human communication, through telegraphs, and telephones. The field of Cybernetics started by Norbert Weiner, was concerned with control. Information and control.

When I started working at Lucent, I frequently heard, command and control, in shop talk. Slowly I realized that my American colleagues have had their military service, and they were taught those two words. Command and Control. The Mexican Army in charge of my military training , is anything but Command and Control; at least the watered down version of military service duty I was required to have as a pampered-out high school student.

Well autopoiesis, is anything but Command and Control.

The military hierarchy, necessary to go to war, is not what living things need. There is nothing of such rigid control in a living being. If there were, life will soon disintegrate.

Military means death. Autopoiesis means life.

Now I understand why Maturana et al., are not that famous around the world. In fact, the younger one, Francisco Varela had to leave Chile when Command and Control took over. Augusto Pinochet and Francisco Varela could not live in the same country. The wiser Maturana, found accomodation with the nightmare that finally seems to have ended in that country. Professor Maturana, is still living there. Varela unfortunately died young, after a distinguished career in many institutions of higher learning.

I believe that a scientific description and understanding of the Universe, from the perspective of Physics, has to pass through an understanding of life; at least that has been my belief since I first decided to be a physicist.

I already proposed an idea to follow on the footsteps of Prof. Frampton. In his Universe; there is no Gravity as a fundamental force, that is a big step forward. It has been impossible so far, to create a Quantum Theory of Gravity following the steps of Feynman, Schwinger and Tomonaga with Quantum Electrodynamics.

I just closed a poll, the result was mixed. Half of my readers knew what was Frampton's Universe and half didn't, (The final tally was actually one yes, and one no, I do not have a popular blog :( ...).

When reading the 1979 book by Varela, linked above, I feel overwhelmed. So little of that set of ideas has been socialized, that I am starting to understand, why the Information Category, I believe is necesary to understand the Universe, is so hard to come by. I feel alone, it is unfortunate that Varela had to die so young.

Autopoiesis literaly means produced by itself. Auto is self, and poiesis means produce. Self-made would be another translation from Greek to English.

As far as we know, in the begining there was no life. The datum of the existence of life, in my mind, has not been used by physicists to understand the Universe.

My contribution to Frampton's proposal is that the entropic third dimension, emergent in his theory, has to be autopoietic.

I am sure there are simpler ways to get ahead with Frampton's idea, but this is the one I am looking at.

Thanks Francisco J. Varela.