From: Phil Osborn (philosborn2001@yahoo.com)
Date: Sat Aug 24 2002 - 17:23:23 MDT
In 1980, I attended something called "The Knowledge
Symposium," in San Jose as a reporter for "Reason
Magazine." "Reason" was willing to make me their rep
as the conference was an offshoot of Galambos's Free
Enterprise Institute. The subject of the conference
was an integrated theory of medicine and health.
Those of you who have heard of Andrew Galambos know
that one of his "primary" foci was his theory of
"Primary Property," meaning, very loosely,
intellectual property. The correspondence is very
loose, as Galamobos' theories were his own, mostly
completely unique, and based in the methodology of
physics. He derived precise mathematical formulas to
define most of the really fuzzy concepts we throw
around connected with issues social, economic, or
political.
Anyway, this doctor - Timothy Wilken
<http://www.synearth.net/Restricted-Confidential/OT.pdf>,
who sponsored the conference had brought in all of the
seminal figures in medical research who had figured
into his breakthrough idea - including such luminaries
as James Miller of Systems Theory, Hans Selye - who
identified the concept of medical "stress," Stewart
Wolfe, Maxwell Maltsby, and a host of others whose
names momentarily escape me. Galambos was also there,
but I think that the Altzheimers that ultimately
killed him was already severely impairing his mental
faculties, and he contributed nothing to the
conference except to make himself look very foolish by
insulting everyone and to that extent discredit the
whole proceedings. Sad.
Last night I happened to recall a thread from that
conference that I had never really completed. It
occured to me after the 1980 con, that perhaps there
were systemic aspects to aging in the sense of Systems
Theory. I wasn't able to get very specific then, but
I did play around with the idea a bit.
For example, we know that as we form higher and higher
level abstractions, there are more chances for error.
Also, the corrective feedback systems don't work as
well. Complex abstractions such as "justice" are
difficult to perceptually reaffirm, yet they motivate
us nonetheless. When we get them wrong, they can be
just a fatal as any other error.
The physical aspects of thought in terms of how its
emotive content triggers our body to set itself up for
an impending scenario are largely unconscious, very
nearly hardwired as we learned how to do them well
before the maturation of our critical faculties.
We do not have easy direct access to these processes,
even though they directly impact our health - as in
stress illnesses, cortisol, etc. Intervention to
return these processes to some degree of conscious
control is possible, via bio-feedback, for example,
but we probably would not want to do this on a
comprehensive basis, as these systems are part of a
synergistic, evolved whole, designed to work in
complement to conscious awareness.
They can serve as either a corrective or a secondary
level of awareness which would be subverted by direct
control. They provide a critical level of visibilitiy
- the mirror of the soul, so to speak - via emotional
interactions with other consciousnesses, which would
also be hindered if we could simply tell ourselves to
be happy, for example.
The problem is that they function as a derivative of
out conscious thought, in all its hierarchical
complexity. We get ANGRY at perceived "injustice,"
even if we have got it wrong. And if our derivations
of high level concepts contain internal
contradictions, then how does the whole system resolve
those in terms of emotional/phsical response? It
doesn't. It's not that smart. Instead we get stress
and ultimately system breakdown.
Now think about the fact that there are as many
neurons allegedly in the "2nd Brain" that surrounds
our gut. The immune system has its own system for
handling information and learning. The various
complex and interconnected control and feedback
mechanisms of our body may have hierarchical learned
systems almost as complex as our consciousness itself.
Are these same problems applicable in some sense?
Could this be another approach to aging itself?
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