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Building on the post of
Dan+Judith:
Where Judith ends her message with a
statement, as my interpretation of it, " apply the
Rosennean thinking to Life/Living, as a whole, you will be converted totally
with your mind and soul, perhaps also with your body, which in turn you will,
per force, infect all what you do, personally-professionally and people around
you. Then, there is no escape its seeds spread naturally and flourish, as each
of us will be empowered to help that to happen. I guess we are already infected
to varying degrees and indecting our environment, luckily with good/healthy
viruses, rare these days.
I am wondering if Judith's post means
and leads us to concentrating our efforts first on Rosennean
Thinking, reflected into the Complexity Theory for scientists and the like,
and applying it as interpreted into the specific area/professional work and
report their test/applied research findings as they appear to the Forum. This
aproach may perhaps produce growing undertanding of the principles of the
Rosennean Thinking/Philisopy/Scientific Theory. Another thought that the
right hemisphere of my brain suggests to leave it to naturally
flourish within a self-organizing process, in a way as it is now. What
Judith feeds, now and then, into the growing thoughts may
keep the context guided, in any case. Both may go side by side, as
well in a pervious manner.
My best,
Aydin
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, February 02, 2004 7:17
PM
Subject: Re: Rosen as philosopher, his
delayed impact
Dan managed to sum up below very well what I
believe to be the truth regarding my father's work. One of the reasons I
signed up to an internet discussion group that focused on Robert Rosen's ideas
was to assess where the development of these ideas stands currently. Frankly,
I didn't think I would be very much help to people-- I planned mostly to lurk!
I guess I had an unfairly negative view of my own level of understanding
regarding complexity. I thought I just had the bare bones... the basics.
My education in Rosennean Complexity turns out to be rather more comprehensive
than I realized. I've been trying to analyze why that is... Why did I absorb
so much of the theory? And why did I think I hadn't?
Personally speaking, I think mainly it's the common sense bedrock
in these theories that has made it so comprehensible to me. Much of Quantum
theory, for example, defies common sense and therefore my brain balks at
contemplating it any further. The universality of the basic ideas in Rosennean
Complexity and the applicability to every and any other area of inquiry
just make sense to me. The ideas are all logically connected and
support each other rather than contradicting one another. That
makes the whole group of ideas easy to absorb--especially when the one
who developed the ideas was always explaining them in general terms
rather than the dense scientific/mathematical language he used to communicate
them in writing.
That's the issue, though: That's where I had the wrong idea about
what was ahead of me. I thought "the devil" was going to be in the science and
math particulars (as in that's where the difficulty would be in promulgating
these ideas). If it was, then I would probably not be much help other than to
provide access to the original work. However, it turns out that the
"devil" is still mostly the general attitudes, the basic understanding of
my father's ideas, and the general landscape of scientific thought. There
is still a lack of exposure to these ideas and a lack of comprehension
about what the ideas mean. Lucky for me that this is the area where
I'm strong, because that is what needs to be addressed before any widespread
activity of the sort Dan mentioned (turning potential into application, etc.)
can take place.
In the meantime, I hope all of you guys are going to be the ones
to benefit from my father's ideas and written work right
now. You already know about it. So? Use it! Solve problems with it.
That's the best test of any scientific theory there is. Results will
hopefully win more converts than all the talking in the world could
do.
Judith
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, February 02, 2004 8:30 AM
Subject: Re: [ROSEN] Rosen as philosopher, his delayed
impact
> Part of my interest in Rosen's work is that it
seems to be a resource
> or contribution or legacy or corpus that has
not yet been fully
> appreciated, applied, understood, tested or
extended. Thus there is
> this huge "potential gap" between the quality
or power of the work
> he left us and the fruition or actualization of
that power as in real
> world structures, functions, ideas, systems able
to do work. So maybe
> his impact on his field and others has not yet
"happened"? It is like an
> untapped reserve of oil or gold or some
valuable resource that is
> waiting "underground" for conditions to be
right for its harnessing to
> do good works for the betterment of humans
and life itself (maybe
> oil and gold are not good examples - I am
thinking "resource" able to
> do work or create value). Part of this gap
between the potential and
> the actual Rosen impact comes from his own
style and mode of work -
> how he wrote, who he wrote for, etc. Maybe
some comes from the
> world not being willing or able to deal with the
full implications of his
> work. His life was also cut short. For
whatever combinations of
> reasons, this work goes largely
under-utilized and until we take it out
> to the world and extend what
he did, we can't know about the full
> range of what the actual impact
can be.
>
> Dan
>
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