12.04.07
Posted in General Relativity, Relativity, Special Relativity, biology, evolution, fitness, measurement, philosophy, physics, science at 8:22 pm by nogre
It’s always interesting to see the start of ideas. Although I don’t have anything from the Spring of ‘04 when I recall realizing biorelativity for the first time, I have found a file with a ‘last modified’ date of June12, ‘05, the contents of which are below:
Quantum Biology
biology: the study of the physical attributes of life.
the rate of mutation is constant, much as the speed of light
organisms mutate. light shines. hence organisms bend/curve life-time as objects bend/curve space-time. greater the mass, the more the curve… the greater the inertia (momentum), the greater the curve. so what is meant by inertia in biology (or in physics)? what does mutation light, as photons light objects? [mutation is the smallest unit of life. photons smallest things with momentum.] we use mutation to view changes of a species. so if a species remains the same, its genetic(?) inertia/ momentum is remaining constant. that with the greatest inertia/ momentum creates the most gravity. that with the greatest inertia/ momentum creates biological gravitation towards itself…
space as vacuum for objects, DNA as vacuum for mutations. objects bend space; mutations do what to DNA? organisms bend life. as objects move to the speed of light their mass (apparently) goes to infinity. as organisms move to the rate of mutation (sex), their DNA (apparently) goes to infinity. as objects slow to absolute 0, their mass (apparently) disappears; as organisms cease mutation (death) the DNA (apparently) disappears. [space is a non-material object, same as concepts, numbers, words etc]
so when there is some massive change to the organism.. say when bats developed sonar, every other mutation became pulled closer around that as to become a part of it. nose, ears, face… eyes are just satellites now
we can then use the fossil history to see what was a major mutative innovation of the day- when preexisting mutations became reoriented around a new mutation (as we can see objects by the change they cause in the motion of other objects, and know their relative size)
location * momentum </= const
species * mutation </= const
——————-
Biological General, Special and plain Relativity in both physics and biology are all confused and mixed together and I was nowhere near my current understanding of biological mass (which didn’t happen till sometime in September of this year and perhaps I’ll go through how I came to that a bit later). It looks like I used DNA for biological mass.
Still, there is a lot of good stuff here.
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11.13.07
Posted in General Relativity, Relativity, biology, evolution, fitness, measurement, philosophy, physics, science at 9:32 pm by nogre
With my recent paper on Measuring Fitness I realize that my previous responses to evolutionary drift, though not incorrect, may have not stated the solution particularly clearly. When fitness is defined and measured as described in the aforementioned article, evolutionary drift is irrelevant. The method of measuring the fitness of an organism or species makes no reference to any mutations whatsoever. Therefore evolutionary drift is no problem for the theory of fitness described here.
If we are trying to identify whether a certain mutation makes an organism more fit, we can of course test it against an organism without that mutation. However if we are unable to test it (say we are studying a historical period or it is just unfeasible), then I believe my previous posts are accurate. I mainly argue that you can’t tell what exactly makes an organism more fit- it’s an underdetermination thesis of sorts - based upon our limited evolutionary perspective.
I think I just failed to say how irrelevant drift was to fitness before this.
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11.12.07
Posted in General Relativity, Relativity, biology, evolution, fitness, measurement, philosophy, physics, science at 12:01 am by nogre
The basic premise is to measure fitness in a conceptually similar way to how we measure mass. To measure mass we can use a scale to compare the effect of gravity on a test object to an object with an agreed upon mass, or we can compare the test object’s resistance to acceleration as compared to an object with an agreed upon mass. These methods measure the ‘gravitational’ mass and ‘inertial mass’ respectively.
Gravitational Mass and Selection Fitness
Measuring an object’s gravitational mass requires a uniform gravitational field, e.g. the gravitational field at the surface of the earth. The gravitational field accelerates things based upon how massive they are: the more massive an object is the greater the force that the gravitational field exerts. To measure the mass of an object it is placed on one pan of a scale and pre-calibrated masses (objects of known mass) are placed on the other pan. When the two pans are level the test object has an equivalent mass to the calibrated masses because they have equivalent forces being applied to them by the gravitational field.
To measure fitness we require a similar experimental setup. First, a uniform gravitational field: according to the General Theory of Biological Relativity ecosystems create large natural selection fields. A uniform natural selection field requires an ecosystem free from disturbances which could skew the reproductive rates of the organisms. Secondly we would need organisms with a standard fitness. A suitable organism would be easily clonable and of a fitness that we suspect our test organism to be near. That organism’s fitness would be defined as one ‘biogram’ (or what you will). Lastly we would need to see how the organisms fair in the ecosystem. Their fitness will be proportional: if both proliferate (or die off) at the same rate, then their fitness will be equivalent, if one does much better than the other then it’s fitness will be proportionally higher.
Inertial Mass and Survival Fitness
Measuring an object’s inertial mass is measuring how resistant it is to acceleration as compared to how resistant to acceleration an object of known mass is. To measure inertial mass the test mass is attached to a spring clamped horizontally to a stable structure. The mass and spring are then pulled to one side and let oscillate back and forth: the more massive the object, the slower oscillations. The number of oscillations per unit of time can be compared to the oscillations per time of a known mass and thence the inertial mass can be calculated.
As above a controlled environment and an organism whose fitness is known (even if by definition) is needed. However the organisms need to be ‘accelerated’ for this measurement. According to the General Theory of Biological Relativity environmental conditions will dictate how a species changes over time. Therefore to ‘accelerate’ a species a changing environment is needed. Simply put: measuring ‘survival fitness’ is measuring how well an organism or species fairs in a changing environment. For example a plant that can survive in a wide range of temperatures will be fitter than one that requires a narrow temperature range. If a test plant proliferates and the benchmark organism withers under a temperature swing, the test organism has a greater fitness.
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10.19.07
Posted in General Relativity, Relativity, Special Relativity, biology, fitness, philosophy, physics, science at 3:37 pm by nogre
DRAFT: DO NOT REFERENCE/QUOTE THIS WORK WITHOUT MY EXPLICIT PERMISSION- Noah Greenstein
I’ve discussed relativity in evolutionary biology with regards to uniform change but, as with the Special Theory of Relativity in physics, we want a theory that covers all change.
This means that insofar as relativity applies to biology under uniform motion, i.e. when a species is reproducing in a regular fashion, we want a theory of relativity that applies to biology even when a species is undergoing non-uniform motion, i.e. when the species reproductive cycle has undergone a serious change.
It is a fundamental equivalence of evolutionary biology that the struggle for survival and natural selection yield the exact same results. This relationship has yet to be interpreted. If we consider a person in love, financially secure and who wants nothing more than to raise children for foreseeable rest of his life. That person may view this situation as the culmination of his struggle to survive and replicate. That person may equally view the situation to be nature selecting him as suitable to continue life.
For what apparently are good reasons action at a distance is not allowed. Struggle for survival does not occur at a distance; ‘struggle’ seems to inherently imply some local interaction. Natural selection, however, is much more amorphous in nature: how exactly does nature select? I suggest that we think of natural selection as a biofield that acts upon organisms.
Inertial ‘fitness’ and Gravitational ‘fitness’
The fitness of a thing creates a (teeny) natural selection field. The fitness of a species creates a (small) natural selection field. The fitness of an ecosystem creates a (large) natural selection field.
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