[FRIAM] stygmergy, CA's, and [biological] development

[thompnickson2 at gmail.com]

Friends, 

 

Beware.  As usual, I am trying to get you to think for me. 

 

My grandson is working on a regeneration project in his freshman biolab
(Planaria) and his sources and texts are replete with cognitive language
like "signal" and "memory" etc., which implies that as the worm regenerates
it is influenced by a guiding idea of what it is producing.  My basic
intuition, as you know, that this doesn't happen in human cognition, let
alone worm regeneration and that processes that produce a functional head
from a slice of the rear end of a flatworm have no idea what they are doing
even when they are done.  Thus I imagine an advancing edge of structure with
each new bit influencing the rules by which the next bit .  Which, of
course, puts me in mind both of stygmergy and of Cellular Automata.  So to
my questions:

 

Are Cellular Automata a good model for Stygmergy?

Is Stygmergy a good model for organismic development?  

Why? Or Why not?  Discuss. 

 

Also, is there a good website, citizen-friendly, steep learning curve, where
my grandson and I could explore the relation between developmental processes
and ca's.  I looked at  NewLogo Library and did not find there any models of
regeneration, but may not have known where to look.  I did find THIS
<https://distill.pub/2020/growing-ca/>   which deep down in the Table of
Contents seemed to have three regeneration models including one named
"Planaria", but I could no see how to go further with it.  If somebody could
have a look at it and give me some tips for how to use it, I would be ever
so grateful. 

 

Good to be back. 

 

Nick 

 

 

Nick Thompson

ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com> 

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

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