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III. Ecosmos: A Revolutionary Fertile, Habitable, Solar-Bioplanet, Incubator Lifescape2. Computational Systems Physics: Self-Organization, Active Matter Pietronero, Luciano. Complexity Ideas from Condensed Matter and Statistical Physics. Europhysics News. 39/6, 2008. The STATPHYS 23 (Google) conference held in Rome, July 2007 is seen as initiating a fertile merger of this older field with the new sciences of nonlinear dynamics, since it became evident they studied the same phenomena from different approaches. In this note, a senior University of Rome physicist provides a succinct introduction to a combined “Physics of Complex Systems.” But a further scope is added by seeing a turn from a long reduction phase to particles or “bricks” only to getting on with their integral (re)assembly or “architecture.” Pietronero points out that these advances are uncovering grand affinities whence the same “self-organized fractal growth dynamics” from material aggregates to galactic clusters. A need going forward is the attainment of agreed, clear terminologies. The basic idea is that nature is organized in a hierarchical way and that there are individual elements and collective emergent properties every time one moves from a level of the hierarchy to the next one. The later development of the renormalization group has provided a formalism which permits to interpret these intuitions within a rigorous framework. Examples of these various levels can be quarks and nuclear physics, atoms, molecules, proteins, the emergence of life and on up to the macroscopic scales and the entire universe. The idea is that each discipline refers to the step between one level and the next one. In this process the essential concepts are the basic elements and their interactions. These lead to emergent properties and collective behaviours which cannot be identified from the original elements. (26)
Pyo, Andrew, et al.
Proximity to Criticality Predicts Surface Properties of Biomolecular Condensates.
PNAS.
120/23,
2023.
This mid 2023 entry by Princeton and Johns Hopkins University biologists including Ned Wingreen is a good example of the wide and deep convergent synthesis that is presently underway. The paper notably views the title biological functions as primarily due to deep self-organizing energies as they serve ti generate life’s oriented developmental evolution. A further vital finding is its constant propensity to seek and reside at an optimum critical point. Self-organization through the phase separation of biomolecular condensates is ubiquitous in living cells. What general principles relate these macroscopic properties to the underlying microscopic features of biomolecules? By using universal ratios of thermodynamic quantities in the vicinity of a critical point, condensate physical properties can be inferred from a small number of thermodynamic parameters. We confirm that the range of validity of the critical region is large enough to cover the physiologically relevant range in living cells. (Pyo Significance excerpt) Radicchi, Filippo, et al. Renormalization Flows in Complex Networks. Physical Review E. 79/026104, 2009. An example of a paper in this large journal for “statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter (that’s us) physics” which can illustrate, at once, a movement to become more receptive of and engaged with dynamical living systems, along with the impediments of abstract terminologies that are not well defined. All of which hightlights the need for a clear, common vernacular in physics itself, within the complexity sciences, and amongst them. We quote a Wikipedia post for “Renormalization Groups.” In theoretical physics, renormalization group (RG) refers to a mathematical apparatus that allows one to investigate the changes of a physical system as one views it at different distance scales. In particle physics it reflects the changes in the underlying force laws as one varies the energy scale at which physical processes occur. A change in scale is called a "scale transformation" or "conformal transformation." The renormalization group is intimately related to "conformal invariance" or "scale invariance," a symmetry by which the system appears the same at all scales (so-called self-similarity). Rodriguez, Quentin. Idealizations and Analogies. arXiv:2110.12712. A University of Clermont Auvergne physicist comments on a paper by Robert Batterman (Universality and RG Explanations in Perspectives in Science (27/1, 2019.) and others to explain and endorse nature’s tendency to seek and reside at a critically poised condition wherever possible. (Search Sara Green and RB 2021 for more.) Our take is to note that into late 2021, such perceptions of an infinite repetitive balance between more or less order or coherence is becoming well verified. The "universality" of critical phenomena is much discussed in the philosophy of scientific philosophy of physics. Lange and Reutlinger recently opposed Batterman concerning the role of some deliberate distortions in unifying a large class of phenomena, regardless of microscopic constitution. In recent regard, an essential explanatory role for "commonalities" rather than that of idealizations has been proposed. Here we show that the differences between the universality of critical phenomena and two paradigmatic cases of a "commonality strategy" (ideal gas and harmonic oscillator) serve to clarify the issue. These benchmarks of critical phenomena reveals the importance of the various analogies which underlie their assumptions. (Abstract excerpt) Ross, Tyler, et al. Controlling Organization and Forces in Active Matter through Optically-defined Boundaries. Nature. 572/224, 2019. CalTech bioengineers uncover non-equilibrium phenomena and principles by optically controlling structures and fluid flow in an engineered system of active biomolecules which led to views of an innate tendency to spontaneously organize into animate structures and movements. Rovelli, Carlo. The Relational Interpretation of Quantum Physics. arXiv:2109.09170. The Aix Marseille University and Perimeter Institute polyphysicist provides a latest finesse of his theoretical perception since the 1990s that interactivities between objects have their own existence which may be more vital that the pieces themselves. As a general validity of this concept has come to most subject fields, this insight also gains credence for this deepest, substantial realm. See also Information is Physical: Cross Perspective Links in Relational Quantum Mechanics by CR and Emily Adlam at arXiv:2203.13342, For a popular article see The Big Idea: Why Relationships are the Key to Existence in the Manchester Guardian for September 5, 2022. The relational interpretation (or RQM, for Relational Quantum Mechanics) solves the measurement problem by considering an ontology of sparse relative events, or "facts". Facts are realized in interactions between any two physical systems and are relative to these systems. RQM's technical core is the realisation that quantum transition amplitudes determine physical probabilities only when their arguments are facts relative to the same system. The relativity of facts can be neglected in the approximation where decoherence hides interference, thus making facts approximately stable. (Abstract)
Rupe, Adam and James Crutchfield..
On Principles of Emergent Organization.
arXiv:2311.13749.
Self-organization is ubiquitous in natural systems at all scales from patterning in quantum wave functions at sub-Plank-lengths to biological morphogenesis to mass distribution at the largest scales of the universe. Herein Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA and Complexity Sciences Center, UC Davis system physicists (search JC) post a 50 page, 228 reference entry as a 21st century survey of better understandings of nature’s energetic creativity. The extensive contents noted below can convey the depth and scope of their theoretical synthesis. In regard, I look back to Erich Jantsch’s 1980 The Self-Organizing Universe whose prescience is at last being fulfilled.
Saarloos, Win van, et al. Soft Matter: Concepts, Phenomena, and Applications. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2024. Wim van Saarloos is professor emeritus of theoretical physics at the Lorentz Institute at Leiden University, Vincenzo Vitelli is professor of physics at the University of Chicago and Zorana Zeravcic is professor of physics in the Gulliver Laboratory at ESPCI Paris. In regard they contribute the first book treatment of this animate subject, hardly a decade old. A chapter on Active Matter is included along Non-Equilibrium Pattern Formation, Elasticity, Designing Matter and so on. Altogether one more perspective upon a natural dynamic liveliness due to common codings gains a broad and deep expression. Soft matter science is an interdisciplinary field at the interface of physics, biology, chemistry, engineering, and materials science. It encompasses colloids, polymers, and liquid crystals as well as rapidly emerging topics such as metamaterials, memory formation and learning in matter, bioactive systems, and artificial life.. The presentation integrates statistical mechanics, dynamical systems, and hydrodynamic approaches with conservation laws and broken symmetries as guiding principles along with computational and machine learning advances. Sakellariou, Jason, et al. Maximum Entropy Models Capture Melodic Styles. Nature Scientific Reports. 7/9172, 2017. Into the 21st century, Sorbonne Universities and Sapienza University of Rome physicists including Vittorio Loreto can tune into the actual music of the spheres, and its natural harmonies by way of algorithmic, Markov and thermodynamic essences. Many complex systems exhibit a highly non-trivial structure that is difficult to capture with simple models. Several biological systems form networks of interacting components (neurons, proteins, genes, whole organisms) whose collective behavior is characterized by a complex mosaic of correlations among the different components. Arguably, the ultimate biological origin of purely intellectual constructs such as language or music, should allow us to look at them from a similar point of view, i.e., as complex networks of interacting components. In both cases, one would suspect that essential features of their complexity arise from high-order combinatorial interactions. However, a number of works in recent years have shown that models based on pairwise interactions alone capture most of the correlation structure of some biological systems and even English words. In this paper we extend this idea to the field of music. (1) Schweitzer, Frank. An Agent-Based Framework of Active Matter with Applications in Biological and Social Systems. arXiv:1806.10829. The ETH Zurich Chair of Systems Design has been a pioneer theorist and practitioner of the complexity revolution since the 1990s. As this paper conveys, a latest phase is an on-going rooting in and synthesis with physical phenomena, along with a strong inclusion of ubiquitous network features. Elemental agents, aka nodes, thus engage in “binary interactions” in the guise of a manifest statistical physics. Their persistent non-equilibrium dynamics can then reveal common, general principles across micro and macro perspectives. In living instantiations, they foster aggregation, cross-communication, self-assemblies, and so on. Active matter, as other types of self-organizing systems, relies on the take-up of energy that can be used for different actions, such as motion or structure formation. Here we provide a dynamic agent-based approach for these processes at different levels of organization, physical, biological and social. Nonlinear driving variables describe the take-up, storage and conversion of energy, whereas driven variables describe the energy consuming activities. To demonstrate, we recast a number of existing models of Brownian agents and Active Brownian Particles such as clustering and self-wiring of networks based on chemotactic interactions, online communication and polarization of opinions based on emotional influence. The framework obtains critical parameters for active motion and the emergence of collective phenomena and the role of energy take-up and dissipation in dynamic regimes. (Abstract edits) Scott, Alwyn. The Nonlinear Universe. Berlin: Springer, 2007. The late (1931 – 2007) University of Arizona mathematician was a leading pioneer of this revolution to reconceive an emergent nature in terms of complex dynamical systems. The original director of the Center for Nonlinear Studies at Los Alamos Laboratory, he was a founding editor of Physica D: Nonlinear Phenomena. This present work provides a first hand history from general systems theory to mathematical biology, synergetics, complex adaptive systems, and others, along with their recent application from fractal galaxies to brains and the biosphere. In so doing Scott champions a hierarchical arrangement as nature’s skeletal scale for rising consciousness. A final chapter, Reductionism and Life, contends that this necessary earlier, linear phase quite misses an innate cosmic animation to be newly engaged as synthesis may take over analysis. Please note the quote’s last line. So what is the secret of Life? Although rooted in nature, living beings are organized as immensely complex dynamic hierarchies, where “immense” is used in the technical sense to denote a finite number of possibilities that is to large to list and “complex” implies a class of natural systems that cannot be reductively modeled. Biological hierarchies achieve their immense complexities through processes of chaotic emergence, a phrase that was coined by philosophers to describe mental self-organization and can be applied to Darwinian evolution, the growth of biological forms, and their daily dynamics….suggesting that there may be something to Henri Bergson’s vitalism after all. (304-305) Stanley, Eugene, et al. Statistical Physics and Economic Fluctuations. Lawrence Blume and Steven Durlauf, eds. The Economy as an Evolving Complex System III. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. The authors are involved with a cross-fertilization and synthesis of nonlinear science and commercial business, via a new field named econophysics. Indeed across this wide expanse are found many correspondences which again suggests that the same universal phenomena recurs at every stage and instance. Statistical physics deals with systems comprising a very large number of interacting subunits, for which predicting the exact behavior of the individual subunit would be impossible. Hence, one is limited to making statistical predictions regarding the collective behavior of the subunits. Recently, it has come to be appreciated that many such systems consisting of a large number of interacting subunits obey universal laws that are independent of the microscopic details. The finding, in physical systems, of universal properties that do not depend on the specific form of the interactions gives rise to the intriguing hypothesis that universal laws or results may also be present in economic and social systems. (70-71) Moreover, the general principles of scale invariance used here have proved useful in interpreting a number of other phenomena, ranging from elementary particle physics and galaxy structure to finance. (71-72)
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