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It occurs to me that if members of the group are going to do any
kind of philosophical analysis of Rosennean Complexity, the place to
start may be with my father's notion of "The Natural World" (as
compared to the "material world") and "Natural Law".
There has been some confusion, even here on the list, about
what my father meant by terms like reality, material world, material
existence, and his use of the word "Natural" when applied to scientific
laws or constants, etc. He believed that the relationships that exist in a
complex system, which have no material weight themselves and are therefore
rejected by reductionist approaches, are every bit as real as the
particles that DO have material weight. He believed that the relationships are a
crucial aspect of the organization of the system. He believed that the
relationships exist as part of something larger than material reality--
which he then defined as "The Natural World". AND, he felt that we could
learn about these things using SCIENCE because these things behave
according to universal constraints that are built in. Those constraints are what
he referred to as "Natural Law". The material world is only a subset of
the larger universe, and he actually came out and said so. This is why he was
accused of being a mystic rather than a scientist. But what he said was that the
Natural World is knowable by science, we just have to develop new methods of
approach. Causality was the logic by which he arrived at many of these
conclusions. If these relationships are having causal effects, that is the proof
that they exist. When one has eliminated all other possibilities, the one that's
left is your answer.
Incidentally, he felt that consciousness was one such
"non-material" reality that exists as part of the Natural world. In making that
statement, he meant that consciousness is something real, which exists according
to Natural Laws, and is therefore knowable by science.
Judith
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