Re: Autobiographical: in Robert Rosen's own words, Part I

["Tim Gwinn" <***>]

Judith,

That was great to read - I look forward to the rest of it!

I feel that such an autobiographical story is the kind that is not only
helpful in understanding him and his work, but I can imagine it would also
be an inspirational story for young students who are struggling with whether
they should stick to their own "calling", or should acquiesce to convention.

I also find it particularly interesting that it is the "patterns" in the
math that he considered key. This makes sense, although I had not thought of
it in those terms. In a way, it is sort of like his approach to in
relational biology: throw away the matter and keep the organization. In the
math, it might be something like: throw away the numbers and keep the
patterns.

Tim

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ROSEN Forum [mailto:*** Behalf Of Judith
> Rosen
> Sent: Friday, June 13, 2003 3:52 PM
> To: ***
> Subject: Autobiographical: in Robert Rosen's own words, Part I
>
>
> Hi Everyone,
>
> I have finally found one of my father's papers that I have been
> hunting for
> for quite a while; his "Autobiographical Reminiscences" that he
> was asked to
> write for a Systems journal sometime in the early to mid- 1990's.
> It is the
> only official thing he has written discussing the interests he
> had, the path
> he took, the reasons why, and so forth. Because it was for a systems
> journal, he said it was written with a slant towards that audience-- which
> he usually didn't do. But this was more of a personal narrative
> rather than
> about science, so he kept that in mind as he chose which things to discuss
> and what to leave out. That is the only thing I don't like about
> this paper:
> There was a lot he left out. But the fact that this paper exists
> at all is a
> wonderful thing. I'm going to post it in pieces for those who are
> interested. It's 15 pages long, single spaced, so I'm going to break it up
> over a few days, but it will all be here on the list eventually. I will
> label the installments, including  numbers, so that if any list members
> don't want to read this biographical information about Robert
> Rosen, you can
> just delete them and save space on your hard drive. One final
> note: Bear in
> mind that this material is protected by copyright and can only be
> reproduced
> or used elsewhere with written permission from me.
>
> Cheers,
> Judith
>
>
>
> AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL REMINISCENCES
> By Robert Rosen
>
> I have never enjoyed writing as an activity in itself, though over the
> course of time I have done a considerable amount of it. Already as a
> graduate student, I begrudged the time and effort it required;
> begrudged it
> because I already knew what I was merely now repeating and expositing, and
> because I felt the effort expended on mere repitition could more
> profitably
> be invested in trying to find out something new. I still feel that way.
>
> I was early persuaded to act otherwise by my mentor Nicolas
> Rashevsky, then
> my Major Professor at the University of Chicago. He did not tell me that I
> was being "impractical" in such an attitude; that my scientific career and
> status would depend on a burgeoning publication list. He must have known
> that such arguments would cut little ice with me. He did not merely demand
> it, as he was in a position to do. Rather, he invoked the Categorical
> Imperitive; he pointed out that if others had acted as I was proposing to
> act, then I could have no access to their accumulated knowledge
> and wisdom,
> and therefore could not learn from them. I had no answer to this, so I
> conceded, even while admiring his artistry in choosing that one particular
> argument to which I would have to acquiesce.
>
> So I thereby acknowledged a duty to report. That is how I view my
> scientific
> writing; as reporting. It is not proselytizing; it is not advocacy; it is
> not even instruction. And it is in that light that I have prepared the
> present article, even though it is about me, and not so much about what I
> know. I hope the reader will appreciate this spirit from the outset.
>
> Though the reporting of my scientific work, including the material to
> follow, is simply the discharge of a Kantian duty, I feel quite otherwise
> about the work itself. I have never regarded my attachment to science as
> constituting in any conventional sense a "career" or vocation or
> job. To me,
> it is an Imperative in itself, more akin to what theologians refer to as a
> "calling"; something which would be corrupted and defiled by being
> subordinated to any such personal considerations as constitute
> professional
> aggrandizement. Indeed, it has always seemed to me a kind of miracle that
> people were willing to pay me to do what I wanted to do, and would have
> done, anyway. On the rare occasions when, at  the urging of others, I have
> violated this Imperative for parochial "career" considerations, I have
> invariably come to grief. Whatever scientific powers I possess cannot be
> employed to such personal ends; like witchcraft, they can only be directed
> outward, and cannot be invoked on one's own behalf. Therein lies their
> strength, and also, in another sense, their curse.
>
> I must spend some time in explaining this Imperative, since it
> constitutes,
> as it were, the invisible steel skeleton which has guided and
> which supports
> the otherwise perhaps inexplicable diversity of my individual scientific
> activities. To me, on the other hand, these activities comprise a
> self-evident unity, each one forced on me by the preceding ones,
> and by that
> underlying skeleton, of which I am never unaware.
>
> Einstein has reported how his scientific instincts were
> galvanized in early
> childhood by a compass needle. What the compass needle did for
> Einstein was
> accomplished for me by humble living things; beetles and crickets and
> caterpillars. Among my earliest memories are walks through wild and
> overgrown vacant lots which dotted the asphalt Brooklyn landscape
> into which
> I was born. Under ever rock was a new and thrilling universe of living
> things. From these experiences was born an eternal passion, a lust, to
> understand why these things, in their separate ways, were alive, while the
> rock was not. The rocks were themselves mildly interesting, but
> in a bland,
> impersonal way; it was the life which was the compelling
> challenge to me. If
> I could find out what the life was, I would know what the rocks were, but,
> as it even then seemed to me, not the other way around.
>
> When I was five or six, I was taken to see the Disney film "Fantasia". I
> remember being mesmerized by the panoply of life through the
> eons, which the
> Disney cartoonists set to Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring". This was worth
> spending a lifetime with. Though I did not even know the word at
> the time, I
> had already determined to become a Biologist.
>
> By that age, I had long since learned not to ask complicated questions of
> the adults around me, either family or teachers, because they didn't know.
> Although I had no idea then where they came from, books seemed more
> authoritative, so I began reading anything I could find dealing with life
> and the living. Unconsciously, I was casting about for
> information, not only
> about this life which fascinated me, but on how one best went about
> understanding it; information on how to be the kind of Biologist I
> increasingly aspired to be.
>
> As I read, and assimilated, and integrated, my perspective continually
> shifted. At first, I thought I would be what was then called a
> "naturalist";
> continuing to study and observe organisms in themselves. But lots of other
> people had been doing that for a long time, and they did not know (or even
> care) what the life was; perhaps the answer was not there,
> however much fun
> such studies might be. Then I thought I would be a paleontologist, going
> back and back to the historical beginnings. That phase lasted somewhat
> longer, until I realized the answers might not lie in historical records
> either. By then I was reading about genetics and biochemistry, about
> metabolism and physiology and embryology and the intriguing possibility
> disclosed itself that, in the inner workings of what was alive
> would reside
> the best way to get at what made it alive.
>
> Thus, I entered into a prolonged empirical phase, essentially a
> reductionist
> phase, dominated by biochemistry. Although it may surprise some people, I
> acquired a fairly extensive laboratory capability during those years. By
> this time I was in high school, a "Biology major" at Stuyvesant, taking
> elective courses in analytical and organic chemistry, and using the
> laboratory facilities for my own purposes when they were unoccupied. I
> became rather notorious for these activities, but became good enough to be
> utilized informally as a laboratory assistand at faculty demonstrations of
> techniques.
>
> It was the attempt to understand what I was doing in these empirical
> activities (basically, to understand what a molecule was) that led me to
> instruct myself in physical chemistry, and then to the physics which
> underlay it, and then, fatefully, into the mathematics in which
> the physics
> was expressed. I somehow came quickly to the conclusion that, wherever the
> life was, the avenue for finding it was somewhere in there. That abruptly
> ended my empirical phase, and I decided that henceforth, I must become
> proficient enough in that mathematical language to understand, to
> the root,
> what realities were being, or indeed could be, expressed through it.
>
> Up to that point, I had had only the most perfunctory interest in the
> sciences of the inanimate; these were the rocks again, and not the life.
> Suddenly, it now seemed a matter of urgent necessity to master
> these things.
> To facilitate acquiring such a mastery, it seemed the most
> natural thing in
> the world to change my major. So I blithely shifted out of
> biology and into
> mathematics. It felt perfectly right to do so, and I regarded it as the
> merest tactical device in the service of the unchanging strategy I wa
> groping for.
>
> I couldn't explain to anyone that I was not "abandoning" biology for
> mathematics. I well remember vainly trying to explain it to the Guidance
> Counselor, who regarded us as high-strung, unstable adolescents,
> and to whom
> any change in behavior patterns was an ominous portent of
> disaster. Somehow,
> I managed to convince her that there was nothing sinister in what I was
> doing, but henceforth I had the feeling of being watched closely.
> I did not
> like it.
>
> Thus began a long period of total immersion, in both pure
> mathematics and in
> mathematical physics, which lasted almost unbroken until the end of my
> student days. I was accepted by these constituencies as one of
> them, but at
> the cost of not disclosing my ulterior motivations for being there. I felt
> much like the Englishman who visited Mecca during the Hadj;
> disguised as an
> Arab, and knowing he would be torn to pieces if his true identity were
> disclosed. Indeed, except for the required year of college biology, I took
> no more formal courses in the subject until almost done with graduate
> school, and then only to satisfy formal degree requirements. But
> to me, this
> posed no hardship; biology was "my" subject, which I could pick
> up again at
> any time, whenever my extended tactical detour was through. In any case,
> there was nothing in any of those college biology courses which I didn't
> already know,  many times over.
>
> I quickly came to recognize that my instincts had been correct; that the
> mathematical universe had much of value to offer me, which could not be
> acquired in any other way. I saw that mathematical thought,
> though nominally
> garbed in syllogistic dress, was really about patterns; you had
> to learn to
> see the patterns through the garb. That was what they called "mathematical
> maturity". I learned that it was from such patterns that the insights and
> theorems really sprang, and I learned to focus on the former
> rather than the
> latter. More of this in a moment.
>
> After a few years of such acclimation I came to focus my interest on the
> theory of operators and of operator algebras. This was beaugiful
> in itself;
> but it was also the language of quantum mechanics, then the last and  most
> exciting word in theoretical physics. The science of the rocks, and hence,
> it was impressively argued, of everything. I resolved to do my
> graduate work
> at the University of Chicago, because its Department of
> Mathematics was then
> the strongest in the country in this field; get my PhD there; and
> then would
> turn back to my Imperative, apparently in the form of getting the life to
> emerge from the rocks.
>
> As it happened, I did not go to Chicago immediately after graduating from
> Brooklyn College, for familial reasons. While growing up, I had
> come to love
> New York and its infinite diversities, and was fond of boasting that there
> was nothing which could not be found in that city, if one only knew where
> and how to look. My parents, who were somehow terrified of my "abandoning"
> New York for Chicago, threw these words in my teeth; why go to
> Chicago when
> everything was already in New York? We came to a compromise: I would spend
> my first graduate year in New York; if I found it unsatisfactory, I could
> leave for Chicago unopposed.
>
> ******************************************TO BE
> CONTINUED**************************************
> Website address: http://www.rosen-enterprises.com/