Re: Paper by Landauer and Bellman

[Judith Rosen <***>]

>From my understanding of the paper by Landauer and Bellman, their original objection or 
>misinterpretation comes from a misunderstanding of the concept of function as my father 
>saw it. They felt that "function" must be specific and therefore my father's use of one 
>mathematical symbol to represent function was incorrect. If I am seeing this clearly, 
>then I can lay that entire paper to rest with the following:

In organisms, the role of function is an innate aspect and affects everything about how 
life manifests itself. Function appears to me to be what drives the organization of 
complexity beyond what is seen in lower "levels" like the atom. In fact, it may well be 
the "threshold" that pushes the organization of a complex system into the level that 
manifests "life" as a new or emergent property. The behavior of living organisms, which 
is what biology studies, is therefore not possible to be understood without including an 
analysis of the role of function. In this sense, function is not a specific aspect, but a 
general one, and can be represented mathematically with a single symbol.

In contemporary science, it is precisely this vision of function as a concept that is 
what causes so much distress. It is seen as "unscientific" because it seemingly implies a 
"need" and/or a "purpose" for something on the part of organisms. Function is, therefore, 
dismissed as a quality that is imposed on a living system by the observer rather than a 
real quality. My father said everything we say about organisms (in fact, all of science) 
is an imposition by the observer, but that doesn't change the fact that those concepts 
also can refer to a real quality or behavior. He believed that it was the artificial 
imposition of a limitation on how these systems can be discussed that was unscientific.

Judith Rosen
PS: Jannie, would you please forward my email on to them? I think direct discussion is 
probably most useful. It need not be on the list if they would prefer a less public 
discussion. I will, of course, post to the list the outcome of such discussions.

-----Original Message-----
From: Jannie Hofmeyr <***>
Sent: Feb 25, 2004 8:36 PM
To: ***
Subject: Re: [ROSEN] Paper by Landauer and Bellman

On Wed, 25 Feb 2004 13:28:10 -0500, Tim Gwinn <***> wrote:

>I have cleaned up my critique of the LB paper, and have put it on my
>website. Comments/corrections appreciated.
>http://www.panmere.com/rosen/landauer-bellman1.htm

Thanks Tim. It is an excellent summary of your and Aloisius's responses
thus far. But John's comments again point out the clear fact that this
stuff is difficult to understand and easy to misinterpret. The great
beauty of category Ens, as Aloisius so eloquently pointed out, is its
spareness and abstractness. But the pull to add structure to it is
incredibly strong: I, as a biochemist, immediately want to interpret the
(M,R)-relations in terms of real metabolism, enzymes, protein synthesis,
etc.; mathematicians want to interpret them as systems of functional
equations; alifers probably think in term of agents. Therein lies, of
course, the danger - it is not that you now fail to see the wood for the
trees, it is that you have planted trees on what was a beautiful open
plain, so obscuring the clear vista that obtained before.

Chris Landauer kindly sent me a copy of this paper. I shall point him to
the website. Meanwhile I continue trying to get a grip on all of this.

Jannie Hofmeyr


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