Response to Joseph Schwartz

Once more, reluctantly, we respond to a discussion of our 1994 paper. In principle, and with considerable support from the literature in both mathematics and physics, we are convinced that the claims made by Dr Schwartz - that our methods, mathematical models and lines of thought are in error - are entirely unfounded. In this connection, we regret that Dr Schwartz did not take the trouble to read the many relevant original papers that specify our methods and their rationales - papers that were accepted by prestigious journals whose knowledgeable editors, trained in both physics and mathematics, had no quarrel with our methodology and the implications we drew from our results (for example, Badalamenti & Langs 1992a, 1992b; Langs & Badalamenti 1990). Had he done so, he might have better understood our approach and the ideas it generated.

At the request of the editor of this Journal, we will respond to the specific arguments made by Schwartz in broad terms. The Poisson Process we unearthed for our speaker duration series clearly calls for a thesis of tension build-up in humans with intentionality. This is an idea that makes commonsense in that the longer a person is silent, the greater the likelihood that he or she will soon speak - a tendency we were able to characterize individually for each subject we studied using specific mathematical models.

We stand by our claim to have measured the work done on the information particle whose values we traced, and we want to point out that the laws of physics hold for all natural processes. These laws are applicable to modern-day information theory and to studies of complex systems - including a wide range of biological phenomena. Further, our evidence for a communicative force field is comparable to what is accepted in physics, and the application of both mechanics and thermodynamics to our data is in keeping similar applications to one-particle systems and is supported by the link between work capacity and entropy - a relationsh