Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Fractal catalytic model


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   delete. –Juliancolton Tropical Cyclone  05:17, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Fractal catalytic model

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Non-notable hypothesis, seems far off from mainstream biology. There are no sources other than those written by Christopher James Davia. Narayanese (talk) 19:41, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete, because, while it may be correct, it is essentially original research. Wikipedia -- like all tertiary sources -- does not publish novel ideas. Bearian (talk) 20:06, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete Google Scholar returns only two hits, neither of which are peer reviewed, and both by (as the nom says) C.J. Davia. Once this is covered in reliable sources, it might become notable, but it doesn't seem to be yet. Anaxial (talk) 20:39, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions.  -- the wub  "?!"  15:23, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Do not delete. This original and relatively unknown theory has been presented by other respected scholars, which is how I heard of it. Since then, I have cited it prominently in several publications. What is perhaps most telling about its originality can be seen in a contrast with conventional thinking. For instance, functional brain imaging relies on a metabolic signal, the BOLD signal, but does not propose a metabolic basis of perception or action in neurophysiology. The connection is indirect: brain works, needs fuel, gets fuel concomitant with the BOLD signal. By contrast, Davia sees a nervous system with a primary metabolic function that nonetheless integrates perception and action in autocatalytic processes working on multiple scales. Scaling phenomena of brain and body are consistent with this story, as are observable traveling waves in the neuropil. I hope these ideas keep their home on Wikipedia and inspire work to further test the validity of the basic premise. 3 March 2009 Gvanorde (talk) 19:37, 3 March 2009 (UTC) — Gvanorde (talk&#32;• contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
 * Delete - This "relatively unknown" theory is not notable because it is relatively unknown. Wikipedia is not a place for reletively new ideas to develop constituencies. Wikipedia aims to present anything and everything that is notable. Whether that thing (whatever it may be) is right, wrong, novel, commonplace, obvious, counterintuitive, big, small or whatever is immaterial. - SummerPhD (talk) 19:45, 3 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Delete. Lack of reliable sources; notability not established.--E8 (talk) 05:54, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Do not delete. I've collected together the references necessary to try and refute the criticism of "non-notable" and "too far off from mainstream biology" and in order to do so I have quoted in full (so sorry if it's a bit long in places):

The model has featured variously at the following events:

Davia, C.J. Minds, Brains & Catalysis. Seminar presentation in the Dept. of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University. March 2002 and Dept. of Psychology, University of Pittsburgh, April 2003.

Davia, C. J. The Brain as a Catalyst: Implications for Cognition, Creativity, Consciousness and Learning. Invited talk. Conference on Learning & The Brain. Cambridge, MA. May 9-11, 2002.

Davia, C. J. & Carpenter, P.  Minds, Brains & Catalysis. Presentation at the American Psychological Society. New Orleans, LA. June 8, 2002.

Davia, C. J. Biology, Brains & Catalysis. Presentation at the New England Complex Systems Conference. New Hampshire, June 10-14. 2002

Davia, C. J. Minds, Brains & Catalysis: Simplicity Theory. Talk. Toward a Science of Consciousness. Tucson AZ, April, 2003.

Chris Davia ‘The Candle and the Flame’  February 2005, E-Intentionality Seminar, COGS, Department of Informatics, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton, UK (Energy Structure and Adaption in living processes)

Carpenter, P. and Davia, C.J. ‘A Catalytic Theory of Embodied Mind’ (2006) Proceedings of The 28th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (Vancouver, Canada)

The following has been published about the model:

'''Davia C.J (2006) Life, Catalysis and Excitable Media: A dynamic systems approach to metabolism and cognition. In Tuszynski J (ed.) The Emerging Physics of Consciousness. Heidelberg, Germany: Springer-Verlag. Publication date – June 19 2006'''

'''Patricia Carpenter and Davia, C. J (2006). Mind and Brain: A Catalytic Theory of Embodiment '''(A paper that links the theory more directly to research in cognitive science and perception; as yet unpublished - draft is available)

'''Patricia Carpenter, Davia, C. J and Ram Vimal, (2009) Catalysis, Perception, and Consciousness: New Mathematics and Natural Computation, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.'''

The following people cite or support the model:

Patricia Carpenter (Lee and Marge Gregg Professor of Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University) cites the model as the basis for her research into embodied cognition (see her own wikipedia entry) and has talked on it at CogSci 2006 (see above) under the title ‘A Catalytic Theory of Embodied Mind’ - which has been reviewed as “building on the proposals of (a) Gibson and ecological psychologists concerning the role of invariance and (b) Shepard, Gestaltists and neuroscientists …”.

Professor Jack Tuszynski (current holder of the Allard Chair in Oncology at the Cross Cancer Institute in Edmonton, Canada having previously spent 17 years as Professor of Physics at the University of Alberta and on the editorial board of the Journal of Biological Physics) gave the fractal catalytic model a chapter in his book entitled Life, catalysis and excitable media: A dynamic systems approach to metabolism and cognition, pp-255-289, The emerging physics of consciousness, Tuzsynski, J.A. (Ed.), Springer Berlin Heidelberg.

In the introduction, Prof Tuszynski comments: “Christopher Davia in his chapter entitled: “Life, Catalysis and Excitable Media: A Dynamic Systems Approach to Metabolism and Cognition” examines how life maintains its organization and describes an entirely novel principle that unites all living processes, from protein folding to macroprocesses. Davia’s hypothesis is that the same excitable media principle applies at every scale: living processes involve catalysis, biological processes mediate transitions in their environments, and enzymatic reactions act accordingly. By pinpointing enzyme catalysis as a prototypical process, Davia identifies energy dissipation as playing a major role in biology. Possible mechanisms contributing to excitable media are identified, including solitons and travelling waves, nondissipative and robust waves, all of which maintain their energy and structure in their biologically relevant environments. Particular emphasis is placed upon the relationship between microscopic instances of catalysis and travelling waves in excitable media. Pertinently to the topic of this volume, it is suggested that the brain is an excitable medium, and that cognition and possibly consciousness correlate with the spatiotemporal pattern of travelling waves in the brain. Davia offers this theory as an alternative to the functionalist perspective that underlies much of current theoretical biology. A key strength of his theory is that the same principle applies at multiple scales, potentially explaining how many biological processes that comprise an organism work and cooperate.”

It is referenced in other papers such as:

Origins of Order in Cognitive Activity – Geoff Hollis, Heidi Kloos and Guy C.Van Orden, University of Cincinnati:

“In effect, metabolism is the primary form of self perpetuation of the brain and body. Therefore, an elegant theory would be one in which cognitive activity emerges out of metabolism and self perpetuation. Such a theory would begin to bridge the chasm between laws of physical processes and cognition. Davia (2005) outlines such a theory based on autocatalytic reactions, which are fundamental metabolic processes … Davia (2005) equates enzymes with self-perpetuating structures called travelling waves … (and) argues that the nervous system functions as an excitable medium.”

and

Architecture of a massive parallel processing nano brain operating 100 billion molecular neurons simultaneously (Unedited preprint of an article to appear in the International Journal of Nanotechnology and Molecular Computation (forthcoming in 2009), published by IGI Global ) - Anirban Bandyopadhyay (Advanced Scanning Probe Microscopy Group, Advanced Nano Characterization Center), Daisuke Fujita (Materials and Nanoarchitectronics (MANA), National Institute for Materials Science 1-2-1 Sengen, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305-0047 Japan), Ranjit Pati (Department of Physics, Michigan Technological University, 1400 Townsend Drive Houghton, MI 49931 - 1295, USA) :

“Importantly Christopher Davia’s brain model (Davia, 2006) also concludes that spatio-temporal pattern of the travelling waves inside our brain is responsible for computation. Solitons, travelling waves and non-dissipative robust waves maintain structure and energy during computation of our brain. However, according to him this condition is valid till they are propagating in the relevant environment. This particular condition enables the system to generate versatile decision-making and global co-operation in biological computation. The CCU potential profile mimics modulation of polaron/soliton length, which is equivalent to Davia’s constraint condition.”

and

Journal of Experimental & Theoretical Artificial Intelligence Volume 20, Issue 3  (September 2008) Pluralism and the Future of Cognitive Science: Peirce's abduction and cognition as we know it - Guy C. Van Orden

etc

In summary then: As it’s described as an example of an “elegant theory … in which cognitive activity emerges out of metabolism“ and that it “build(s)... on the proposals of (a) Gibson and ecological psychologists concerning the role of invariance and (b) Shepard, Gestaltists and neuroscientists …” it could probably be argued that it’s at least ‘continuous’ with “mainstream biology”. And it’s notable enough to feature in neurocomputing proposals as well as more ‘philosophical’ discussions. DerryTaylor (talk) 00:56, 6 March 2009 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.