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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Hillman (talk | contribs) at 19:34, 28 July 2008 (→Process equation: +extlinks for background of Sabelli and Kovacevic). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Process equation

Process equation (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (delete) – (View log)

Two non-notable people (Kauffman and Sabelli) invented this term ten years ago for a recursive function that has an oscillating parameter. Since then, no one else anywhere in math, physics, or statistics has picked up on the term. The term therefore has no notability and generally the article is serving as a soapbox for one particular user's pet theories on Bios theory (see Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Bios theory. Misplaced Pages is not a free webhost for marginal original research. ScienceApologist (talk) 20:13, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't appreciate you saying Bios being my pet theory. Also, this is 'ad hominem' argument, and there is another logical fallacy you use, its name may be straw man, as you place into this article's discussion other deleted article which has little relevance to this? The topic of this article was cited in several books by other authors. Lakinekaki (talk) 20:20, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Other users should look in edit history of this article written by ScienceApologist, and compare what he sais with the facts in regards to licensing of images, promotional language, and other relevant information. One example about image licensingLakinekaki (talk) 20:22, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, your search just shows how parochial this term. Why not try this search and eke out how "notable" this topic is? Good luck! ScienceApologist (talk) 20:23, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

little more appropriate would be this searchLakinekaki (talk) 20:38, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Sure. And most of the links there are NOT to the Kauffman and Sabelli bollocks. ScienceApologist (talk) 20:40, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Therefore I suggested disambiguation page. Lakinekaki (talk) 20:42, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

BTW, very nice choice of words: Bollocks. I had to look it up. Thank you, I learned a word, that I am going to use in the future when I refer to certain kind of people. Whom do I have in mind? Lakinekaki (talk) 20:44, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

That's fine, as long as the content currently on the page is deleted due to lack of notability. ScienceApologist (talk) 20:43, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

We actually have an essay WP:BOLLOCKS. - Eldereft (cont.) 02:35, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

We also have an essay Don't be a dickLakinekaki (talk) 06:07, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

• Delete. Nominator neglected to mention that this terminology has also not gained traction with biologists or dynamic systems theorists. The primary meaning of process equation is, well, an equation which governs a physical process. This particular recursive relation may describe some systems (those figures are pretty generic), but the mapping of this name to this relation is not in common currency. - Eldereft (cont.) 02:35, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
• Delete From Web of Science, none of their work on this has ever been cited by anyone except themselves. DGG (talk) 04:34, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Actually, they had joined papers with other people, so that is technically incorrect, but nevertheless, if you think that should be criteria, lets put it in Notability guideline -- that for scientific stuff Web of Science indexing statistics should be the test. Lakinekaki (talk) 05:45, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Update: I guess people already tried something like that: Misplaced Pages:Notability_(science)Lakinekaki (talk) 05:49, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

I am not sure what goes into Web of science, maybe science citation index? but isn't COMPUTERS IN BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE journal indexed there? I know for sure that one paper of Sabelli and Kaufman is cited there by a paper where they are not co-authors. Lakinekaki (talk) 06:58, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Comment: Hi, all! As a former Wikipedian, I will offer an extended comment rather than a vote.

The ideas promoted at WP by Lakinekaki fall within the pseudoscience genre I call "living universe"; authors writing in this genre include James Rose, James Lovelock, and Hector Sabelli.

The basic rules vios here are easily verified:

WP:COI vios: User:Lakinekaki is IRL Lazar Kovacevic (see this previous AfD debate for details), who is or was affiliated with the Chicago Center for Creative Development of Hector Sabelli, which in my view cannot be characterized as a legitimate scientific institute. Kovacevic has coauthored several papers on so-called "bios theory" with Sabelli, but he has consistently failed to disclose this close personal connection to the ideas he is writing about at WP (for example by pointing out the connection in the talk pages of his articles).

WP:FRINGE vios: Kovacevic has repeatedly tried to present Sabelli's "bios theory" as mainstream, but the only papers on this so-called "theory" are authored or coauthored by Sabelli, and they appear to have been cited only by the authors themselves. Kovacevic provided a link to a paper by Sabelli e-published at the Ceptual Institute (formerly Integrity/Ceptual Institute) of James Neil Rose (Minden, NV), but this is apparently yet another one-man "research institute" which discusses such topics as "Gaia, teleology, Cyber-cosmos, Diakosmesis, Cyberneomonasticism, Integrity Dynamics, Novelty". Rose states his position like this:

The Universe is sentient and whole at every level, in every act.

It is good science. It is good spiritual enlightenment.

It is good humanity.

— James Neil Rose

From this brief snippet it should already be clear that "Ceptual Institute" cannot be characterized as promoting mainstream science. Rose earned an undergraduate degree in biology (1969) and worked as a art dealer and coin dealer; he is not a scientist.

Hector C. Sabelli is a psychiatrist by training, not a scientist. His coauthor Lazar Kovacevic is an electrical engineer by training; his other coauthor, Louis H. Kauffman, is a mathematician (more later on that!). Sabelli has written some more or less mainstream stuff in his own field, and has also written at least two fringe books on his so-called "bios theory".

In "Bios Theory of Creative Evolution", Sabelli summarizes his basic idea like this:

Bios is a theory regarding the natural creation of complexity from simple elementary forms. Fundamental physical, biological and human processes are autodynamic and creative, rather than determined or aleatory; they causally generate diversity, novelty, and complexity. This is bios.

... Bios is also found in the series of prime numbers, indicating that bios is a fundamental mathematical process. Mathematical recursions show that biotic patterns are generated by the recursion (action) of bipolar and bidimensional oppositions (e.g. sinusoidal waveforms) and conservation. In nature, bios may be generated by the interaction of similar and universal processes: (1) action, the flow of energy in time; (2) the rotation of harmonic opposites; (3) the conservation of stable structures. At the physical level, they are exemplified by physical action (Planck's quantum) and unipolar gravity, bipolar electromagnetic force and the tripolar nuclear forces that generate stable material structures. These factors appear to be necessary and sufficient to generate life-like (biotic) patterns. These forms reoccur in a homologous fashion within and between the multiple levels of organization they contribute to create. ... While current discourse on complexity stress random change and puts forward the emergence of order out of chaos, mathematical recursions show that order deterministically generates chaos, and the diffusion of chaos generates bios. Biological evolution is a creative development in which (1) causal actions (not just random mutations) generate biological variation; (2) bipolar feedback (synergy and antagonism, not only Darwinian struggle and competition) generates information (diversification, novelty and complexity); (3) connections (of molecules, genes, species) construct systems in which simple processes have priority for survival but complex processes acquire supremacy.

— Hector Sabelli

In other words, Sabelli et al. claim that natural selection is dominated by a murky alleged "creative principle" they call "bios", an alleged tendency toward complexity. This could be called a neo-Chardinian/Lamarckian notion, with the twist that Sabelli claims (quite incorrectly) that his principle is founded in modern nonlinear dynamical systems theory. Thus for example in addition to his Chicago Center, it seems that Sabelli is also associated with a Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology and Life Sciences and a Bios Group. Sabelli and Kovacevic claim in another paper that the distribution of galaxies is also determined by this alleged "bios principle", and they appear to suggest that "bios theory" might offer a cure for various psychiatric conditions. (Psychoceramics not included?)

I think it is obvious from these excerpts why the few mathematicians/biologists/physicists who have heard of "bios theory" consider it classic pseudoscience, chockfull of ecletic terminology (e.g. according to Sabelli, gravity is "unipolar", electromagnetism is "bipolar", and "nuclear forces" are "tripolar") and impressive buzzwords hijacked from a real theory (nonlinear dynamical systems). But here things take a highly technical turn, and unfortunately, as Kovacevic appears to concede in a policy page discussion at wikimedia.org, non-mathematicians will probably have to take the word of the WikiProject Mathematics members here for the following:

Louis H. Kauffman is a distinguished mathematician, best known for introducing the bracket polynomial which is one step on the easiest path to defining the HOMFLY polynomial in knot theory, and which Kauffman used to establish an intriguing connection between statistical mechanics and knot theory. Since I have often written about this topic enthusiastically in the past (e.g. old UseNet postings written long before Misplaced Pages even existed!), it should be clear that my enjoyment of Kauffman's earlier work is unfeigned. Nonetheless, Kauffman has long had a reputation for generating some pretty odd ideas, and his work with Sabelli can at best be located on the borderline between fringe and cranky. (One might recall such precedents as Isaac Newton for the proposition that even mathematicians can have some rather odd ideas!) This circumstance presents special WP:BLP problems; Misplaced Pages's track record in preventing bios of (arguably) "notable fringe figures" from becoming slanted toward wikiwoo has not been good. For what it's worth, my experience from 2006 suggests that the best approach is to keep such wikbios very short--- and protected. To avoid misleading readers, one must very briefly mention both mainstream accomplishments (bracket polynomial) and fringe claims (bios theory), and leave it at that. Protection is neccessary to avoid endless and ultimately pointless content disputes with User:Lakinekaki, spamming of very long C.V.s, and so forth.

I am sure it will be obvious to mathematicians with a knowledge of nonlinear dynamical systems (since I once wrote a diss on a topic in dynamical systems, I hope I can include myself in this group!), from what has already been said here, that Sabelli et al. are incorrect in claiming that nonlinear dynamical systems theory (real math) supports "bios theory" (pseudomath). Pseudomathematics is unfortunately a genuine and growing phenomenon, which often seems motivated by extrascientific agendas clustered around creationism/deism: I recall for example widely promoted claims that ergodic theory (real math) supports Dembski's "irreducible complexity" (pseudomath), or that statistics (real math) supports "bible codes" (pseudomath).

WP:COAT vio: In particular, this audience will recognize the origins of the so-called "process equation" in the circle map (real math) discussed by V. I. Arnold in connection with the phenomenon of Arnold tongues (real math), and this audience will immediately recognize the dynamical systems terms which are misused by Sabelli to (unintentional) comic effect. (To be fair, I point out one exception: Sabelli is using homology in the biological sense, not the mathematical sense!)

I'd like to end my extended comment by urging any mathematically literate students who don't yet know much about nonlinear dynamical systems to read some very enjoyable undergraduate level books which offer a fine overview of this wonderful subject (including Arnold tongues, time series, and many other wonderful things which are dreadfully abused by Sabelli et al.):

E. Atlee Jackson, Perspectives of Nonlinear Dynamics, two volumes, Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Robert C. Hilborn, Chaos and Nonlinear Dynamics, Oxford Univesity Press, 1994.

Enjoy! ---CH (talk) 18:04, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

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