I don't remember what he said when I first heard his voice from somewhere in the midst of the public during the 8th Annual Conference of the Physics, Chemistry and Biology of Water in Samokov, Bulgaria, 2013. I only remember that I couldn't have agreed more. In any case, it was not only what he said, but also the sound of his voice that seemed to resonate within me. Later the man whose voice it was said to me that he thought that my poster was very interesting and he wanted to talk with me about it. But time flies and the meeting was over before we got around to it. Nonetheless, we agreed to stay in touch.
Eshel Ben Jacob's presentation at the water meeting
"Rethinking natural water" impressed me on many levels. The thought-provoking things he had to say about water included its effect on colonies of bacteria. I would never have thought that bacteria were capable of creating the beauty that was shown on his slides. Since then I have watched a video he has posted on his skype site called
"Learning from bacteria about social networks" and I read an article he co-authored, titled
"Seeking the foundation of cognition in bacteria: From Schrödinger's negative entropy to latent information". I had no idea that bacteria were as intelligent, communicative and socially involved as Dr. Ben Jacob proves them to be. They certainly don't use complex terms such as "negative entropy" in their communications, and nor would I. As a matter of fact it always takes a bit of an effort to wrap my head around sentences containing that concept, be it negative entropy, or entropy just on its own. There are some formula and things in that article that I read across diagonally, but there is much in it I just love. I have picked some of my favorite parts to share here.
In short, bacteria continuously sense their milieu and store the relevant information and thus exhibit ‘‘cognition’’ by their ability to process information and responding accordingly. From those fundamental sensing faculties, bacterial information processing has evolved communication capabilities that allow the creation of cooperative structures among individuals to form super-organisms
p.10
Higher linguistic levels—assigning contextual meaning to words and sentences (semantic) and conducting meaningful dialogue (pragmatic)—are typically associated with the cognitive of human and higher primates or social insects, but [are] regard[ed] as well beyond the realm of bacterial communication. This view is now reconsidered....
p. 12
The term ‘‘cognition’’ usually refers to human mental functions associated with capacities such as the use of semantic and pragmatic levels of language, perceiving self vs. non-self, association with group identity and perceiving individual and group goals. It is now realized that bacteria facilitate surprising collective functions. They can develop collective memory, use and generate common knowledge, develop group chemical identity, distinguish the chemical identity of other colonies in their environment or even higher organisms, learn from experience to improve their collective state and more.
These are the bacteria faculties we refer to when using the term fundamental elements of cognition. We emphasize that these features should not be confused with the unique, human level of symbolic cognition. We do not imply that bacteria possess human capabilities but that fundamental elements of cognition can also be found in bacteria. From a practical perspective, this realization can shed light on the evolution of cognition and on the most basic requirement for its facilitation in all organisms. (the highlight is mine)
p. 17
In summary, we propose that meaning-based natural intelligence is a fundamental requirement of life, and that the roots of cognition can be traced back to bacteria.
p.19
It is commonly argued [...] that by using Gödel-like mapping of the genetic code into numbers, or by mapping the synthesis of organic molecules and other metabolic functions onto a computer program, one might deduce that the stored genetic code is both self-consistent and complete in describing the organism’s lifecycle. This implies that Schrödinger was wrong in looking for missing principles of physics. The line of argument presented here is that Schrödinger was right and that organisms must glean additional information from their surroundings, perform information processing, and then generate new information. Only in this way can they maintain the level of freedom of response and flexibility required for life. (the highlight is mine)
p.22
Whether we are offering a viable hypothesis that can be translated to concrete laboratory investigations or only an armchair conjecture with some seductive appeal but little else remains to be determined
p.24
We conclude with the following phrase attributed to Schrödinger:
Democritus introduces the intellect having an argument with the senses about what is ‘real’. The intellect says; ‘Ostensibly there is color, ostensibly sweetness, ostensibly bitterness, actually only atoms and the void.’ To which the senses retort; ‘Poor intellect, do you hope to defeat us while from us you borrow your evidence? Your victory is your defeat.’
p.24
From Appendix A:
Structural complexity might be an appropriate quantity, instead of entropy production, to describe the response of open systems to external imposed conditions — especially when these conditions vary in time and/or space
p. 26
Eshel Ben Jacob teaches and does research at the School of Physics and Astronomy, Raymond & Beverly Sackler Faculty of Exact Sciences, Tel Aviv University, 69978 Tel Aviv, Israel, at the Max-Planck-Institute für Physik Komplexer Systeme, Nothenitzer Strasse 38, Dresden 01187, Germany, and The Center for Theoretical and Biological Physics, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA. Co-authors of this article are Yoash Shapira from the School of Physics and Astronomy, Raymond & Beverly Sackler Faculty of Exact Sciences, and Alfred I. Tauber from the Center for Philosophy and History of Science, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215, USA.
As a practitioner of DFA Somatic Pattern Recognition I find this article relevant because it helps me understand
the most basic requirements for facilitating cognition in myself as well as in my clients. This understanding helps me raise my clients' level of sensitivity and improve their ability to
glean additional information from their surroundings, for example when they learn to perceive the relationship between their bodies and the gravitational field, both in terms of the material base of support on the ground as well as the open space around them, when they begin to discover the freedom that comes with being able to chose how they relate to those givens of the physical world they are a part of, even more so when they make it extensive also to their relationships in the social world and family life.
The understanding that the more then 10 times as many bacteria as cells that live in our bodies
perform information processing and generate new information implies possibilities I had never thought about. I knew of course that bacteria learn to protect themselves against antibiotics and develop resistence to them, but there seems to be more. All of a sudden I have much more respect for bacteria and all they are capable of. And I believe they like it. In any case, I feel much happier in my belly. Somehow it seems as if they digest certain things more easily and it makes me more patient. If a bunch of bacteria is capable of gleaning additional information from their surrounding, of processing it and generating new information, so are we.
Only in this way can we maintain the level of freedom of response and flexibility required for life, each of us individually as well as all of us together collectively.
The problem is that we get easily side-tracked by information created to attract our attention for commercial purposes or to protect ourselves against the impact of traumatic experiences, even when they took place long ago in the past, maybe even in earlier generations. This keeps us stuck in repetitive cycles of behavior and interferes with our ability to sense the environment and (re-)orient our movement/behavior in a direction that allows for greater complexity and diversity in life. This ability is inherent in our inner being. We may have to recover it from underneath layers and layers of cultural overlay that make us insensitive, but it is there within us for us to (re-)discover. That's what I love about being a DFA practitioner. I get to help people recover this foundation of cognition. And it is what I love about Appendix A of Eshel's article:
Structural complexity might be an appropriate quantity, instead of
entropy production, to describe the response of open systems to external
imposed conditions — especially when these conditions vary in time
and/or space.
Thank you Eshel, Yoash and Alfred!
