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From: Judith Rosen
To: ***
Sent: Thursday, August 28, 2003 1:18 PM
Subject: Re: [ROSEN] [life] MR as ontological; 3 kinds of
life Hi Everyone,
I guess I'm coming into this discussion late (again)--
sorry! I do have a few comments:
What I think I'm seeing here is that John K. seems to
be putting the term "life" into sentences that my father would have put the term
"complexity" into instead. John is right that my father felt that all of this
theoretical work WAS applicable to many other areas of inquiry than just
biology. But don't forget: Biology was his main focus. All rest were tools he
acquired and developed to approach his main focus in useful ways. He once
confided to me that people (colleagues) often saw him in terms of their own area
of interest (ie; mathematicians thought he was a mathematician, systems
theorists thought he was a system theorist, physicists thought... etc.), but I
think it was more likely that people who didn't know he was a biologist
would see all that math and physics in his published work and make assumptions
based on that. People (even now) rarely label him or think of him as a "life
scientist" and yet that is exactly what he was.
Complexity--according to his own definition-- is
what my father believed was applicable to all other areas of inquiry. Life
is (so far) the province of organisms--which is what makes them "organisms".
Life is an effect (or offshoot or progression--my words) of complexity-- or
putting it another way; (Rosennean) "Complexity" causes
Life.
CAVEAT: I think that as this work progresses and is
developed further, some of what my father believed may prove either incomplete
or even incorrect. There is no blasphemy involved in saying that. He wasn't
perfect, he wasn't omniscient, and he wasn't infallible. The work he did was
simply the best he could do at the time he wrote it. Therefore, it is entirely
possible that John K will find that "Life" (in the scientific sense) has much
more to it than the preliminary sketch that my father drew up. In fact, it
wouldn't surprise me at all. Robert Rosen was only looking for the
answers to HIS own questions. And his life was cut short-- right after he had
found his answers, but hadn't had enough chance to really play with them
much. He was only 64 when he died. He should have had another decade or two and
then many of these preliminary findings would be fleshed out or changed or
what-have-you.
So, my final comment is: If this disagreement is
about what my father MEANT-- then I hope I have satisfied some of that in
the first two paragraphs. If it is about other ways of using the approach my
father developed and seeing things slightly differently... That's exactly what a
discussion group is FOR. I would simply say the phrasing ought to be clearer
when the ideas are being laid out: "What if Rosen was looking at it from the
right angle but interpreted it in too limited a way? What if life isn't the end
result of complexity but a component on a continuum? ..." Etc. No one's gonna
shoot valid thoughts like that down, right? This discussion list isn't here to
"glorify" Robert Rosen. It's here to discuss openly ideas that are received
somewhat inhospitably in many "mainstream science" venues. If John is suggesting
alternate possibilities for explaining how "complexity works", more power to
him.
Judith
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