Old
Kevin:
statements. This
view came under strong criticism in the late 50s and early 60s, and a
movement emerged that sought to define scientific theories in terms of
the mathematical models that define the classes
of natural systems studied by a given theory. This
model-theoretic tradition, or "semantic" tradition (as contrasted
with the "syntactic" approach of the logical positivists) of
understanding scientific theories, turns attention away from the
particularities of the formal language within which a theory is formulated,
to the mathematical structures that are defined within a given
language.
Thus, for
example, Newtonian mechanics can be understood in terms of one or
another formulation of Newton's laws of motion, but a model-theoretic
approach would focus instead on the class of formal models defined
by these laws, e.g. the mathematical structures embedded in
Newtonian state space . One currently popular version of
this model-theoretic approach to scientific theories is based on
state-space models (van Fraassen, Giere, Suppe, Lloyd, Thomson) - virtually
all of the philosophy of physics done these days involves analysis of
the state space structure of physical theories.. Another model-based
approach is based on structures defined as the extensions of set-theoretic
predicates (this is inspired by the Bourbaki approach to foundations of
math; Suppes, Stegmuller, Sneed, Da Costa and French,
...).
Tim: But all these state-based approaches inherently
limit themselves to a capacity to describe only simple systems, do they
not?
New Kevin: In Rosen's terms,
sure. I was pointing to a similarity in the way that Rosen often
describes the physical content of scientific theories, and the way that
contemporary philosophers of science do. That is, when he's discussing
classical or quantum physics, he tends to discuss it terms of the
mathematical structures that encode entailment relations. That's a
very "semantic approach" way of analyzing the content of physical
theories.
Old Kevin: Another
connection is with various forms of metaphysical and epistemological
structuralism (metaphysical structuralism asserts that all that
exists, is structure; epistemological structuralism asserts that
all we can know of the world is structure). George Kampis
noted in his review of Life Itself that Rosen had strong affinities with
structuralist traditions. This is certainly the way I read Rosen,
too.
Tim: Maybe I misundertand structuralism, but I read
Rosen somewhat differently. Primarily based upon what is in
Anticipatory Systems, where he says that
our most basic knowledge of the world are sensory impressions or
'percepts'. It is then our minds which take an active role in organizing these
percepts, in establishing relations between the percepts - relations in the
material world are not something we perceive directly. So that what we
know (if we know anything) are the sensory impressions, and that
relations between percepts are of a different order: they are creations of the
mind or "working hypotheses" we impute back to the material world. [AS
46]
So, it strikes me that although Rosen emphasizes
structural aspects (entailment structures, functional vs structural
organization), it does not seem to me that he considers structure as being the
sole, or even the most fundamental, epistemological
entities.
New Kevin: That's true, I shouldn't have
implied that Rosen is a thorough-going philosophical structuralist. As
a biologist investigating the question "what is life?", however, his answer
is strongly oriented in the structuralist direction, wouldn't you say?
Old Kevin: There's a whole tradition
in the philosophy of mathematics that goes by the name "structuralism" too
(one is known as "category-theoretic structuralism"), and though this is
distinct from metaphysical and epistemological structuralism, there are lots
of points of potential contact. I'm particulary interested in this
stuff, and how it can be used to develop an interpretive framework for
complex systems theories (Rosennean and
otherwise).
Tim: I very briefly looked
up "category-theoretic structuralism" on the web. It seemed to be largely
concerned with trying to use category theory in a foundational role for
mathematics, based on a structuralist view of mathematics. Can you speak
more about this "interpretive framework"?
New Kevin: Structuralist
philosophies of mathematics do try to give an account of the foundations of
mathematics, but they also try to give philosophical accounts of the
metaphysics and epistemology of mathematical objects. What are numbers?
vector spaces? functions? How do we come to know them, and what is the
status of this knowledge? Set theory and category theory have been
presented as a unifying language for representing all of mathematics, but
philosophical mathematical structuralism has broader
ambitions.
One of the topics that philosophies
of mathematics want to explain is the relation of mathematics to the physical
world, and the applicability of mathematics in science. All I can say
here is that different philosophies of math offer different accounts of these
relationships, and that even within structuralist philosophies of mathematics,
there is more than one account. One of the things I'd like to do in the
essay I'm planning to write is investigate how Rosen's answers to
these questions compare with these other accounts.
Tim: " I
have also been intending to write something relating Rosennean ideas to some
of those of Nancy Cartwright. Are these the kinds of relations to existing
thinkers that you are speaking of (with the proviso that the level and depth
of my writings are most likely substandard for academic
philosophers)?"
Old
Kevin: I'm not quite sure what you have in mind. Cartwright holds lots
of views on lots of subjects. For example, she analyses scientific
theories in terms of their mathematical models too, and she likes to talk
about the complex tangle of causal relations in the world, and how physical
theories abstract away from this complexity. That's not unlike
Rosen. But she differs from Rosen in several respects, I
think; she believes, for example, that science reveals the real,
true causal powers of substances in the world (she's a realist about
what she calls causal "capacities"), the reality that lies behind the
structural relations described by models. I've never read Rosen as
being this kind of metaphysical realist about properties or
substances. Rosen is an Aristotelian in terms of his account of
theoretical explanation, but not, as far I can tell, in terms of his
metaphysics. Cartwright is an Aristotelian in terms of the metaphysics
of real substances and their properties.
Tim: I'd have to go back and look at Cartwright's
The Dappled World and her older books again, to
recall exactly what struck me about her. It was many months ago that I was
considering this. I recall her use of nomological machines, which struck me as
akin to a model in a modeling relation. Her "capacities" were interesting in
that I felt there was some relationship with Rosen's concern with what he
called the "gravitational" aspects of a system, rather than the "inertial"
aspects. I also thought the ceteris paribus stipulation she
emphasized were interesting. I forget if there were other notions of hers that
interested me.
I agree that their metaphysics differ, and that
the above similarities are not of the kind that necessarily support each
other. But I am not really interested in authors that say the exact same
or similar thing, as if truth were proportional to the quantity of one's
supporting citations. I am more interested in whether the differences
in Cartwright's ideas can enrich/enlarge the Rosennean
view.
New Kevin: That's very much my own attitude to comparing/contrasting
Rosen with other philosophers.
Tim: I'm not sure who that peer group for Rosen
would be - even today. Biologists? Not likely. Category theorists? No.
Physicists? Should be, but not. Systems theorists? Doubtful. To
me, philosophers of science seem a likely group. But I wonder
if Rosen would be considered enough of a philosopher of science to taken
seriously as a peer.
New Kevin: In my
experience, Rosen is regarded as something of a god among systems theory
types, even when they're not doing systems theory in the way he might
have wanted. But the natural community to appeal t to promote interest
in Rosen's work, is, I think, philosophers, and philosophers of science in
particular.
Now, Rosen wouldn't be regarded as a
"peer" philosopher (if I can use that term in a non-elitist way), but he could
be regarded as a scientist whose work had strong bearing on philosophical
issues, and who tried to address them in ways he thought appropriate in his
work, and who may have insights that stimulate new directions of thinking on
classical philosophical topics. Einstein is a good example of someone
whose work had deep philosophical import, and who wrote on philosophical
topics, but who was not regarded as a peer "philosopher" by philosophers
(or himself! Abraham Pais, a physicist and biographer of Einstein, once
was asked whether he thought Einstein was a philosopher. He replied, "At
his best, no."). Same for David Bohm, Kurt Godel, Niels Bohr,
etc. Or going back, Newton, Darwin, etc.
Now, the advantage that these guys have
is that their names are associated with scientific developments or theories
that made an impact on their respective fields, so there is a natural
interest in their views on foundational topics. Rosen doesn't have that
advantage.
Gotta run. Thanks!
Kevin