Re: Rosenean theory, Nature article

[Dan Fiscus <***>]

Tim, Judith, all,

Good points in your last two posts.

Here's an draft of the letter I propose we send. I propose to
keep this simple and serve mainly as a notice or alert that
Rosen did work that could help with issues Ottini raises,
link Ottini's concepts/phrases to specific Rosen concepts
and publications, and then publicize your website and
email discussion list. (All these goals are open for
discussion, just my initial ideas.) After this is sent off, I
think we should work on a real article that could get into
the issues you have raised in more systematic fashion, like
an essay format similar to Ottini's.

See my two major missing quotes/cites needed below from
Rosen's work on unfractionability and context-dependence
(or new functions arising from environmental change).

Outline/sketch of letter...

The Concepts essay by J.M. Ottini, "Engineering Complex
Systems" (Nature 427, 399, 29 January 2004) raises
interesting and profound aspects of complexity and
complex systems as related to engineering. As people
interested in complexity, we wish to note that theoretical
biologist and mathematician Robert Rosen worked for his
entire 40+ year career to study and develop a theory of
complexity that deals with most of these same concepts.

For example, Ottini wrote "Complex systems...display
organization without a central organizing authority
— emergence..." And regarding analysis of complex
systems he wrote, "decomposing the system and analysing
sub-parts do not necessarily give a clue as to the behaviour
of the whole".

Rosen wrote: re: non-fractionable, non-divisible - quote
and cite publication - the earlier the better. Ref #1

Ottini also wrote. "...engineers are beginning to get insight
from biology. The emergence of function — the ability of
a system to perform a task — can be guided by its
environment, without imposing a rigid blueprint."

Rosen wrote: context-dependent function or new
function(s) emerging as guided by as system's environment.
give quote and citation. Ref #2

(optional section)
Rosen's general definition of "complex" is an open one that
uses the concept of "simple" as a reference. He wrote "A
system is simple if all its models are simulable. A system
that is not simple, and that accordingly must have a
non-simulable  model, is complex" (Ref #3, EL, page 292).
Rosen used terms simulable, algorithmic, mechanistic and
computable interchangeably. His work thus suggests the
need to develop modeling approaches more general than
algorithmic computation/simulation and mechanistic
science if our science, engineering and technology are to
effectively deal with complexity.

Due to a variety of circumstances including his untimely
death in 1998, Rosen's work is not well-known. We believe
that Rosen's work is unique in providing a robust basis for
understanding and interacting with complex systems, and
that it is thus of great potential value to both basic science
and engineering. To aid the process of finding and
understanding Rosen's work on complexity, we have
developed a website and email discussion list. From these
links one can find summaries and explanation of his main
ideas and a full bibliography of Rosen's work (check with
Don first?), learn of the status of his archives and available
reprints, correspond with others familiar with his work and
find additional resources. Give the web addresses of both
panmere.com/rosen and ***

References (try to cover the main ones Rosen works...)

1. ? non-fractionable
2. ? context-dependence and/or new functions and/or no
      rigid blueprint
3. Essays on Life Itself. 1999. CUP.

====== end draft letter


Any comments welcome...

Dan

Tim Gwinn wrote:
> Another avenue of reply would seem to be the ramifications of this statement
> by Ottini:
>
> "Complex systems can be identified by what they do (display organization
> without a central organizing authority - emergence)...."
>
> Hmmm, lets think about that. Isn't the identification of complex systems as
> those "without a central organizing authority" entirely incongruous with the
> Central Dogma in biology? [EL 164, LI 263] It would seem to me that 'without
> a central organizing authority' can also be stated as: there is no distinct
> partition between genotype and phenotype in the system. They must be
> intertwined, otherwise genotype would be a fractionable part, which
> contradicts Ottini's assertion of the organization as being emergent. This
> intertwining of these aspects is a property that occurs in a Rosennean
> complex systems, but not in mechanisms.
>
> Regards,
> Tim