Re: Time/Life/Science

["Tim Gwinn" <***>]

Hi Judith et al,

In my view, all material systems in the external world are innately
dynamical. "Time" arises as part of a human scheme for tracking that
dynamical behavior. That is, time is a mental construct that sits on the
formal side of the modeling relation. As your father said, a clock does not
"measure" anything; instead, a clock is a natural system which generates
percepts which serve as the basis for labels. [AS 51] These labels can then
be applied to percepts from other systems that are deemed to satisfy the
relation of "simultaneity" with the clock percepts.

It is possible to define a natural system as "static" given the appropriate
definitions for the system so that, within those definitional limits, the
system does not have perceptible movement. So, given a certain definition of
a rock as a natural system, it is static. However, from another, more
perspective, the rock is interacting with other systems around it, so that
it has dynamics. Or from the view that the rock is floating on a continent
slowly drifting, or on a planet spinning or in a solar system moving along
in a galaxy.

>From the viewpoint that all material reality is innately dynamical, time is
(at least to me) more easily seen as just a human construct. As it is with
space. "Space" is something that seems readily obvious, yet as science has
come along we have gone from a Cartesian-Newtonian idea of space, to
Minkowski space, to Reimannian space, etc.Some applications use a space with
a Euclidean geometry, some use a non-Euclidean geometry.

In all cases, these are formal frameworks within which to situate certain
kinds of relations among percepts. "Time" is likewise such a formal
framework within which to situate relations between percepts.

I think this also makes talk of "the flow of time" as being just a primitive
human metaphor. And "time-travel" as being an empty concept, since "time" is
not something that one travels on, in or through - instead 'time' is just a
formal framework.

I think that the formal framework called 'time' is an almost inevitable
consequence of first partitioning material reality according to some notion
of "space". The question that arises is whether or not this 3+1 dimension
framework is 'the' way the world actually works, or that if it is not, then
it is _at least_ general enough to encompass the innate dynamical nature of
material reality. My view (and I imagine, Rosen's view) is that this 3+1
framework does not satisfy that latter criteria. And, therefore it does not
satisfy the former, either.

So it is that just as Rosen speaks of the inability of fixed functions to
describe some dynamics of complex systems, he also speaks of multiple
incommensurable timeframes as being necessary for describing some complex
systems, including some biological systems. To me, this - along with the
multitude of 3+1 framework schemes being used - is likely symptomatic of an
inherent inability of any 3+1 scheme to adequately act as a framework for
the dynamical nature of material reality.

To come back around to my first statement ("In my view, all material systems
in the external world are innately dynamical."), it should now be clear that
"dynamical" is here only a metaphor for what actually occurs in material
reality, couched in the language of 3+1 frameworks. By this I do not mean
that material reality is not "dynamical"; but rather that "dynamical" is
itself an inadequate term because of its conceptual basis in an inadequate
framework.

>From this viewpoint, it does however open up the possibility that there are
more "organic frameworks" that might be more inclusive and comprehensive and
representative of the innate "dynamical" nature of material reality than are
_any_ of the 3+1 frameworks.

Regards,
Tim


> -----Original Message-----
> From: ROSEN Forum [mailto:*** Behalf Of Judith
> Rosen
> Sent: Thursday, October 02, 2003 12:21 PM
> To: ***
> Subject: Time/Life/Science
>
>
> With all the discussion about my father's theories about Anticipatory
> Systems and what Biology reveals about Time, etc. I thought it might be
> useful to open up a discussion about Time, itself, as a concept.
> Biology uses time in many different ways, some of which are intuitive
> and observable; from population mechanics and rates of growth and
> taking things like RATE into account when analyzing statistical
> date.... Time is not separable from the other aspects of  any
> biological investigation, which also means that it's not separable from
> any discussion about Rosennean Complexity. If my father was right that
> his definition of complexity is the generic organization of the entire
> universe, then this relationship with Time is endemic in all things.
>
> Why is a "dynamical system" dynamical? I think it is because TIME is
> one of the ingredients. It's moving, it's in motion, the rates of
> interaction of the parts are every bit as integral to the organization
> of the parts (in other words the rates of one part influencing another
> part are as important as the fact that one part IS INFLUENCING another
> part-- that's as much a "relationship"...) as any other aspects of how
> the system is organized. The atom is a dynamical system. The whole
> premise of why complexity won't yield to reductionism is because
> reductionism wants to remove the relationships from the parts and study
> the parts. If my father was correct that time is one of the ingredients
> in these relationships-- in fact a relationship itself, then
> reductionism is the process of removing/divorcing TIME from the system
> on order to study or describe it in a state outside of time. In other
> words; fractionate the atom and look at the parts. Kill the organism
> and look at the parts... What my father said was that you can't do that
> and still hope to understand why the system (ie: the atom) behaved as
> it did before you fractionated it, and the reason you can't is because
> it no longer is an atom. Something about the organization of it when it
> was intact is responsible for the behavior of it. When you alter the
> organization, you no longer have the same system. My intuitive grasp of
> my father's concepts is what leads me to see the effect of killing an
> organism or splitting an atom as "taking that system out of time", or
> separating time from the other aspects of the system in order to study
> the other aspects. Conventional "experimental" science regards TIME in
> a particular way, but why should that definition of time be accepted as
> correct by people who are following my father's other theoretical
> ideas? The accepted definition of time is even more obscure and
> incomplete than the definition of life was when my father tackled these
> ideas. His investigations led him to see how integral the concept of
> rate is to all things and then how integral the concept of future
> acting on present behavior of living things is in biology. Thus,
> Anticipatory Systems was written. To discuss the rate of something
> happening is the same thing as saying that something is happening
> across time.
>
> What I'm wondering, or in fact challenging the list subscribers to do
> is define time as seen from my father's theoretical perspective. What
> is it? What isn't it? And why wouldn't that be seen as a valuable
> addition to science or, indeed, to our collective human understanding
> of the universe as well as of ourselves as organic systems?
>
> Judith