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Биофизика / Biophysics

The XXI Century: Study of the Semantics of Languages of Describing Interactions of Competing Biosystems and the Principle of Complementarity of the Language of Theology to the Language of Natural Sciences

G.R. Ivanitskii

Published Jan 1, 2025• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

It has been shown that when two biosystems compete with each other, their struggle can intensify, which leads to uncertainty of the final result. When describing these phenomena, instead of binary logic (there is no third), ternary logic appears. In the interval between “Yes” and “No” there is a distance, which is filled with an additional “Possible” option, implemented with different probability values depending on its position on the “Yes”–“No” scale. The same phenomenon is typical for quantum theory, which implements one of two events. Various languages used to describe such phenomena are considered.

DOI
10.7868/s3034527825040222

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It has been shown that when two biosystems compete with each other, their struggle can intensify, which leads to uncertainty of the final result. When describing these phenomena, instead of binary logic (there is no third), ternary logic appears. In the interval between “Yes” and “No” there is a distance, which is filled with an additional “Possible” option, implemented with different probability values depending on its position on the “Yes”–“No” scale. The same phenomenon is typical for quantum theory, which implements one of two events. Various languages used to describe such phenomena are considered.
From the preceding exposition it follows that not only physics but natural science as a whole is basically dependent on ordinary language. The complementarity of quantum physics displays the fundamental interdependence of observation and description of natural phenomena, and the very objectivity of natural science relies directly on the differentiation of experiences into external and private phenomena afforded by ordinary language. Because of the extreme smallness of the quantum of action the complementarity of physical phenomena is not experienced either in daily life or in classical physics. But the interdependence of observation and description of phenomena prevails as much in classical science as in quantum physics. The very aim of experimental investigation is to perform observations in those particular ways which make possible the communication of information sufficient for the reproduction of the observed phenomena. Concordantly the elementary physical variables, which are indispensable to any systematic analysis in natural science, are defined through reference to measuring arrangements constructed so as to be unambiguously describable in ordinary language. Thus no scientific formula, law, or result of measurement can be given objective significance independent of ordinary language. Through every hierarchy of descriptions in natural science ordinary language penetrates as the unambiguity of propositions.
Aspects of the methodology and language of chemistry and physics are discussed. Chemistry defines the chemical properties of any substance from the results of its interaction with other substances using the logic of relations. Therefore, describing the properties of substances means using sets of different ideas, including ones that are opposite in meaning. Consequently, depending on the nature of reagents with respect to which properties are established, substances show chemical dualism. This dualism was established in chemistry long before the discovery of wave–particle dualism, to understand which N. Bohr proposed the complementarity principle in 1927. The methodology of natural sciences corresponds to the principle of complementarity and the need to use it to understand the world and record the results in the linguistic reality of several languages.
An attempt is made in this paper to analyze the purely formal nature of information-theoretic concepts. The suggestion follows that such concepts, used to supplement the logical and mathematical structure of the language of science, represent an addition to this language of such a sort as to allow the use of a unitary language for the description of phenomena. (The alternative to this approach must be certain multi-linguistic and mutually untranslatable descriptions of related phenomena, as with the various versions of Complementarity). This conception is tested for the specific case of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, in order to show that, with the assumption of a suitable and intuitively satisfactory definition of the quantity of information contained in a measurement, the Heisenberg Principle becomes an informational restriction arising from the formal properties of the symbols of a given language rather than as a “law” of nature.
Among philosophers in particular the principle of complementarity has been considered an unreasonable limitation of natural science, and Niels Bohr’s exposition of the inevitability of a statistical description when accounting for atomic phenomena has been regarded as a renouncement directly opposed to the very spirit of scientific investigation. Indeed, fundamental limitations in the range of applicability of the causal spacetime description of physical phenomena do exist, but quantum physics is precisely the generalization of the conceptual frame of classical physics which has converted these limitations into a springboard for investigations which are among the most fruitful in the history of science. Far from raising a barrier for scientific investigation, quantum physics has extended the scope of natural science to a degree that was unimaginable before its advent. Natural science now encompasses such different objects as the constituents of atoms, processes in remote galaxies, and psycho-chemical phenomena in man. Biochemistry and psychopharmacology, for instance, both rely on one of the most important results of quantum physics: the periodical system of the elements, which is fundamental to all modern chemistry. Furthermore atomic physics and chemistry are basic sciences for technology and thus contribute to the continuous development of instruments of observation for all branches of natural science.
Introduction: On Issues in Complementarity and Beyond M.E. Carvallo. Part I: Complementarity, Epistemology, and Ontology. 1. Complementarity-Polarity-Dialectic-Autology: A Conceptual Analysis of Opposition and Unity A. Locker. 2. Complementarity as Challenge: Prefigurations in the History of Thinking H. Fischer-Barnicol. 3. Bohr's Idea of Complementarity J. Hilgevoord. 4. Complementarity and Our Knowledge of Nature H.J. Folse. 5. Ontological Implications of Complementarity K.V. Laurikainen. 6. Aspects of Complementarity R. Vallee. Part II: Complementarity: Alternative Views and Applications. 7. The Probability Trees of Quantum Mechanics: Probabilistic Meta-Dependence and Meta-Meta-Dependence M. Mugur-Schachter. 8. Complementarity in Language: Toward a General Understanding L. Loefgren. 9. Language, Incompleteness and Continuous Domains: Considerations of Complementarity of Abstractions H.W. Campbell, D.G. Stuart. 10. The Measurement Problem in Physics, Computation, and Brain Theories H.H. Pattee. 11. On the Double Architecture of the Semantic Memory P. Erdi, T. Groebler, P. Marton. 12. Axiomatic Methods in Science P. Suppes. 13. Complementarity in the Theory of Conversations and Lp G. Pask. 14. A Theory of Bargains in Experience S.M. Lindenberg. Part III: Beyond Complementarity, Beyond Physics. 15. Complementarity or Process? T. Bastin. 16. Can Quantum Computation Provide a Physically Realistic Model of the Self and Its Brain? P.J.Marcer. 17. Non-Locality in Nature and Cognition F.D. Peat. 18. Spontaneity of Consciousness V.V. Nalimov. 19. A Brief Prolegomenon to the Principle of Metaphoricity M.E. Carvallo. Name Index. Subject Index.
A suggestion of Bohr's to the effect that numerous situations exist among the life sciences and the social sciences which exhibit characteristics of complementarity strikingly parallel to those of quantum physics is developed further in this paper. The supposition is advanced that there may exist for biological systems inherent relations of indeterminacy between sets of observable properties of such systems analogous to the Heisenberg indeterminacy relations between canonically conjugate pairs of observables in quantum mechanics. The existence of such indeterminacies would be manifested, as it is in physical systems, in disturbances, uncontrollable in principle, produced when such systems interact with instruments and apparatus used to gain information about them. The fact that radical disturbances, whether incidental or inherent, accompany the process of observation in the life sciences is, of course, quite obvious. If a well-defined portion of such disturbances should turn out to be inherent, indeterminacy and probability would be introduced into biological phenomena as basic elements. Further progress in scientific explanation and synthesis of knowledge in these fields would then require a redefinition of the state of a biological system analogous to the necessity for using quantum ψ-functions for specifying the state of a physical system with the attendant possibility of wholly new insights, such as those in physics which ultimately depend on the symmetry properties of ψ-functions. This new, and presently unknown, scheme for specifying the state of biological systems would then presumably result in the typically complementary aspects of phenomena in these fields to which Bohr has called attention. A number of familiar examples of apparently complementary phenomena among the biological and social sciences are described, and the possibility that they may arise from inherent indeterminacies basic to the systems which exhibit these phenomena is considered. It is concluded that these considerations lead to the expectation that an approach along such lines in future investigations in the life sciences holds considerable promise, and that the physics teacher is in a unique position to assist in stimulating such an approach and in pointing out by analogy the means at each stage which are likely to prove best suited for carrying it through.