Re: Rosen & Ashby & Rose

["James N Rose" <***>]

Hi Judith, welcome back,

> Judith Rosen wrote:
>
> My take on the enclosed thread is that different aspects
> of this need to be treated differently. On the one hand,
> I totally agree  that my father's language and definitions
> are extremely difficult ...   to decipher and comprehend.
>  ...  And yet, a lot of the true meaning does still get
> through. To me, it seems almost a miracle that it does at all.

:-)  welcome to the miracle of human communication.  Reminds
me of that wonderful running comment that percolates through
the film "Shakespeare in Love" ..  with all the chaos and
shenanigans and entwined involvments the question keeps coming up
about how in the world does a final production of a play
ever happen when so many going-wrong things end up producing a
really-right thing? ... "Nobody knows," says Geoffrey Rush's
non-plussed character in one instance of many, "it's a mystery!".  :-)


> [Rosen]
> On the other statement here: [By J.K.] "Simple systems aren't
> realizable, they are imaginary in some form of logical system" (snip)
>
> We had a huge argument on the old list over this very thing.
> The above is identical to a statement made by Don Mikulecky.
> I said my father would disagree with it. I will say the same
> thing now. My father spoke often about simple material systems.
> He used solar systems and car engines and machines and all
> sorts of things as examples of simple systems. We have discussed
> this fairly exhaustively in the archives of this list too.
> If anyone wants me to reiterate, email me privately. (If I get
> emails from everyone, I'll just reiterate on the list!)
>
> Judith Rosen


I hope its ok to just continue on-list, knowing full well I'll
probably be retracing old discussion points that came before me,
but begging indulgence for a newbie.

I rely on the thought-meme of Martin Buber .. I-thou. He was
taking about people and the world .. that each of us 'is', not
someone or something independent of the world around us, but
who/what we are in constant commeradship and involvement with
the world around/in/through us.   Rosenetics (of similar others
but none so well put as by Rosen), extends that to all 'entities'
and all systems.

One of my own examples uses the imagery of a platonic ideal apple.
A person can image anything here, all sorts of apples, abeing all
sorts of shapes .. and colors.  But I take a moment to juxtapose and
ask a question here.  Let's see if Godel and Plato fit together or not.

Generalized godel incompleteness says that a system is what
it is up to but not exceeding its boundary, however that
boundary may be defined as or taken at at some juncture.

If we overlay that on platonic idealism, then an 'ideal apple'
exists only up to the extent of where the skin is but no
further.  But look at what this means.  It means that 'color',
which 'exists' only out where the 'ideal apple' does not,
is not any part of the platonic set-entity 'apple'.  Apple and
color are separate and mutually -exclusive- 'ideals', if we
are to be rigorous.

But that's not the world we are attempting to comprehend.
Apples have color, albeit that it requires the companionship
of the entire rest of the universe to complete, actualize,
and make whole the entity 'apple'.  ANY entity for that matter.
In the Buber/Rosen/etal thinking.

So 'system's as some complete independent entities are more
like physical instantiations of gestalts.  Like a visual illusion
of a circle as being circlish, even if you erase sections out
of it around the circumference and look at it again with pieces
missing.  It's still a 'circle'.

A living cell with stomata/holes peppered along its surface,
where material moves through, in and out, of the cell, is
tantamount to the same thing.  In one sense the cell is a
local competent individual, but in process and function,
it only exists that way by being in active -open- involvement
with the soup of chemistry its embedded in.  In terms of
'process', there is no perfect closure or disconnectedness.

There is no perfect 'thingness' in the physical world;
and there is no perfect 'thingness' in conceptual worlds
either.  There is necessarily supportive co-extancy.

Relative simplicity is one thing, closure something else.

And as far as indefinite languaging, I take it to be a
very positive thing (which high specificity science takes
annoyance with, but so what, they are wrong   :-)  ).

Nuances and alternative associations are like the open
novelty of a worldspace, they are the stuff to be explored
and enthused in.  They are like open terrain to be explored
for new relations and econiches.  They are the mindworld's
version of an extended biota where evolutionary involvements
can produce new species, new thoughts, new skills, new
expressions of things hanging latent within the geneform,
which only awaited new and novel worldspaces to move
in to and to blossom within, that might not have been
available under prior circumstances, previous physical
or previous thought associations.

Life THRIVED/THRIVES on opportunism and openness.
Science survives on perfect repetition and prediction,
life survives on that PLUS the competence to handle
the unknown. The health of LIFE goes that last sentence's
remark even one better, actually.  LIFE hungers for
non-repetitive stimulations and challenges. Systems
are tested and morph in reponse to the novel and the
different.  Potential is unleashed in the presense of
the new and the different.

Simple systems are just less complicated versions
of complex systems, not imaginary at all.  The key
is to throw away the conventional old-logic dichotomy
of closed v. open.

Jamie
11/22/03

ps.. before I forget .. Happy Thanksgiving, to
all the USAers onlist.  jr