Re: Guide to Life Itself

[Judith Rosen <***>]

I have been seriously thinking about doing something along these lines, and even 
organizing a symposium in Rochester such that my father's reference library would be 
accessible to participants. After the symposium, the papers would all be published in a 
book form as the first product of BioTheory. If there's anyone who does not know about my 
father's plans to launch BioTheory and want to know about it, I can send you his 
preliminary workup on the notion-- but it will have to be deferred until March 2 because 
I'm actually travelling right now and can't send it until I get back to my computer.

Anyway, perhaps it's good that Kevin brought this up because I would like to know who 
would be interested in participating and whether the preference is for just doing the 
book or the symposium plus book.

Let me know what you all think.

Judith

-----Original Message-----
From: Kevin de Laplante <***>
Sent: Feb 20, 2004 1:50 PM
To: ***
Subject: Re: [ROSEN] Guide to Life Itself

what about pitching a book that would collect a selection of papers written
by folks who have been influenced by Rosen's ideas in one form or another?
You could have the first half of the book just be on analysis/exposition of
Rosen's foundational contributions.  The second half could be on
applications, or possible applications.  This would require a call for
papers, but it would give some of us who are interested in writing on Rosen
both a forum and a kick in the pants to get it done.  And you might be
surprised who you'll find crawling out of the woodwork.

Kevin



----- Original Message -----
From: "Tim Gwinn" <***>
To: <***>
Sent: Thursday, February 19, 2004 8:31 PM
Subject: Guide to Life Itself


> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: ROSEN Forum [mailto:*** Behalf Of Jannie
> > Hofmeyr
> > Sent: Thursday, February 19, 2004 4:23 PM
> >--snip--
> >
> > What is of course a topic worthy of discussion is what you add on:
> >
> > > A "Guide to Life Itself" might be a useful book or booklet.
> >
> > Now this would be a worthwhile project! I agree that gaining a deep
> > understanding Rosen's ideas is a major task that few are willing to
> > undertake, not because the ideas themselves are necessarily difficult,
but
> > because they are spread out across many papers and books.
> >
> > Writing such a book is something I have been thinking about myself...
> >
> --snip--
> > Jannie
>
> When I've mused about writing books related to Rosen, I find it difficult
to
> delineate a range of ideas and concepts that would be manageable (both for
> author and reader) and yet still portray the profundity of it all. So,
that
> is why it occurred to me that a much more confined work, focusing
> specifically on being a kind of overview of "Life Itself" might be less of
a
> struggle, yet still very useful since "Life Itself" is such a central
work.
> The idea being to paint, in less technical yet still reasonably precise
> language,  the "story" in "Life Itself", the motives and key points for
each
> chapter, and stringing together for the reader the interrelationships
> between those key points and their consequences. Something like that.
>
> I can also imagine that another viable approach would be a more panoramic
> view of Rosennean concepts from the point of view of science as a human
> activity, a subjective foray into the unknown that surrounds us all, and
how
> the progression of thought that leads to subjective paradigms also
> simultaneously leads to subjective limits. And so on.
>
> I've also thought that a book, such as "The Secret Guide to Physics",
would
> be nice. This book would tell you all the things they usually don't teach
> you about how non-generic certain formalisms are, the restrictions of
system
> description in using conservative systems only, and so on. Of course,
> threading in the Rosennean ideas along the way, and leading to a broader,
> more generic physics. This book is sorely needed.
>
> It would be fun to write a Tractatus-style book of Rosennean concepts:
>    1.1 The world is the totality of modeling relations, not of things.
>    6.44 It is not how things are in the world that is complex, but that
our
> subjective limitations make it so.
>
> Anyway...enough musing for now. :)
> Tim
>


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