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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'MS Mincho'"><FONT face="Times New Roman">Eshel Ben-Jacob has brought a very important concept into the dialog that goes on here.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>It’s “meaning”.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> Meaning and its relationship to relationships--its relationship to sociality, its relationship to linguistics, its relationship to context. Eshel's </SPAN> latest paper, <SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'MS Mincho'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">“</SPAN><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">Seeking the Foundations of Cognition:From Thermodynamics to Contextual Information and Back”,</SPAN> is forcing me to rethink old thoughts about entropy in slightly new ways.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>So please bear with me as I try to tie a few threads of thought together.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'MS Mincho'"><FONT face="Times New Roman"> <o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'MS Mincho'"><FONT face="Times New Roman">Entropy is related to meaning.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Not to information, at least not in Shannon’s sense of information… but to meaning.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Energy is motion that can be put to work.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Entropy is disordered energy.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Entropy is the waste made by work—specifically by the work of a “heat engine”—by the work of a steam engine.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Waste is energy teasing the cosmos, daring the universe to make its next creative upgrade, the upgrade that will harness the mischief of waste.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Waste is energy waiting for meaning.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>It is energy waiting for a rider that can tame it, for a harvester who can use it to achieve whatever purpose the harvester is aiming toward.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN><o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'MS Mincho'"><FONT face="Times New Roman"> <o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'MS Mincho'"><FONT face="Times New Roman">Let’s get back to entropy.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Waste is entropy.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>And entropy is waste.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Waste is just a temporary state.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>It’s a state that invites the evolution of the goals and of the gizmos—living or dead—that produce meaning.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>300,000 ABB (after the big bang), atoms gave the random movement of protons and electrons a new meaning.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>380,000 ABB gas wisps gave atoms new meaning.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Roughly 600,000 ABB galaxies gave gas wisps new meaning. Then came stars, giving an entirely new set of meanings to atoms, gas wisps, and galaxies. </FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'MS Mincho'"><FONT face="Times New Roman"></FONT></SPAN> </P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'MS Mincho'"><FONT face="Times New Roman">Today we are giving the photons shed by those stars new meaning every day in the offices of astrophysicists, in the interpretations of astrologers, in the myths of indigenous peoples, in the wonder evoked in those who stare at the stars from dark fields in the American Midwest, from porches in Portland Maine and Portland Oregon, and from rooftops in Beijing and Beirut.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'MS Mincho'"><FONT face="Times New Roman"> <o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'MS Mincho'"><FONT face="Times New Roman">Which leaves us with a few more questions and a few more hints at answers.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>What is meaning?<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>What’s the difference between meaning and information?<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Are meaning and information separable?<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'MS Mincho'"><FONT face="Times New Roman"><SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"></SPAN></FONT></SPAN> </P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'MS Mincho'"><FONT face="Times New Roman"><SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"></SPAN>Goals are a part of meaning.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>What does it take to produce a goal?<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN><o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'MS Mincho'"><FONT face="Times New Roman"> <o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'MS Mincho'"><FONT face="Times New Roman">Here’s a guess.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>It takes a sense of past and a sense of future.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Why? Because goals compact the past to predict to a future.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN><o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'MS Mincho'"><FONT face="Times New Roman"> <o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'MS Mincho'"><FONT face="Times New Roman">If that’s true, do atoms really give new meaning to protons and electrons?<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Does a proton or an electron have enough past compacted within it to anticipate a future?<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Is that anticipation really necessary to meaning?<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN><o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'MS Mincho'"><FONT face="Times New Roman"> <o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'MS Mincho'"><FONT face="Times New Roman">Does it take a vast mesh of another of this cosmos’ inventions—molecules—to give meaning to atoms?<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>How vast must that mesh be before it anticipates a future?<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>How vast must that interacting society of atoms be to create the first primitive scenario of "what's next"?<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'MS Mincho'"><FONT face="Times New Roman"> <o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'MS Mincho'"><FONT face="Times New Roman"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'MS Mincho'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">Here’s another question, this one inspired by the concepts of Paul Werbos and Pavel Kurakin. </SPAN>If time is reversible, is the future spreading its tendrils as much into the past as the past is spreading its tendrils into the future?<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> <SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'MS Mincho'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">If the future is beckoning us forward through the sheer power of a future to attract all that a cosmos holds</SPAN></SPAN>, how would that change the meaning of meaning? And what would the nature be of the future's attractive power?</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'MS Mincho'"><FONT face="Times New Roman"> <o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'MS Mincho'"><FONT face="Times New Roman">Sorry for pestering you with so many questions, but the meaning of meaning—the latest of Eshel’s fertile mysteries—seem worth re-perceiving.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'MS Mincho'"><FONT face="Times New Roman"> <o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'MS Mincho'"><FONT face="Times New Roman">Onward--Howard<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P></DIV></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT lang=0 face=Arial size=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="10">----------<BR>Howard Bloom<BR>Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century<BR>Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Core Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute<BR>www.howardbloom.net<BR>www.bigbangtango.net<BR>Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series.<BR>For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: www.paleopsych.org<BR>for two chapters from <BR>The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer<BR>For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net<BR></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>