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Re: Rosennean Complexity, real models/needs

Jack,

You raise great points and challenges to this group and are also
a living demonstration of the value of reductionism. So I would
grant that right off. You suggest that what we need is not another
either/or battle, to try to overthrow the reductionist ruling class
with another perhaps equally narrow complexity ruling class. I
agree on this too. So the search becomes for a theory and practice
(not just words as you admonish) big enough to include both
reductionism and Rosen complexity. I think on the theory Tim and
Judith and others have shown how Rosen complexity theory is
big enough - complexity is general, mechanistic models are highly
constrained subsets within that. But on the practical side the
reverse seems true - mechanistic reductionism is of wider general
utility (so far), and complexity has little (so far) to show in the
way of hard evidence of value to humanity.

Now enters the issue of the global environmental change we are
living through. In some circles (Herman Daly and ecological
economics) this has been characterized as a threshold crossing
unique in all Earth history - the flip from an "empty world" in
which humans could assume infinite resources and infinite waste
receiving capacity, to a "full world" in which now neither is true,
both resources and the waste assimilation capacity of the world
environment are clearly finite and actively limiting. In other circles
(American Geophysical Union and related science) we have moved
into the Anthropocene Era (or Anthrocene?) - a Earth age in which
the dominant force structuring all Earth dynamics is humanity.
Other terms include The Great Transition (as in to sustainability,
hopefully), The Great Turning (from the deep ecology tribe), and
I am sure there are others. In this unique period the major thing
that strikes me is paradox. For example, we humans have incredible
powers of technology, yet we threaten the most fundamental basis
of our own life support in drastic and potentially irreversible ways.
Perhaps worse, most people do not even see this, don't even see it
as a problem at all, let alone have started to work on it. More
paradox - while Gleevec can save or extend your life (I hope for
very long) most breast milk is now laden with a heavy "body
burden" and crazy potion of myriad heavy metals and
bio-accumulated toxins. How can we continue the good advances
of the one type while decreasing or reversing the bad effects of the
other? Locally, microscopically, organismally, molecularly we are
great; systemically, as integrated in a planetary biosphere we
ourselves display characteristics not unlike a cancer.

I would not want to argue for either one or the other, but I think
it very fair and highly urgent that we work to fix the systemic
dysfunction. And I think mechanistic science - as good as it is - may
be cause of both our powers and our problems. What good will it
do if we can cure cellular cancer but we destroy or poison our own
atmosphere? What good is a pill if the water you take it with is
poisonous? How can we have the best of both worlds and not a
case of one step forward, one or two steps back?

Also, what the hell is 10C-6?

I cannot show much more than anyone else for real evidence or
a tangible demonstration of a Rosen (or Ulanowicz or Rashevsky
or semiotic or etc.) model applied to real needs. But I can tell
you some of what I think such models ought to look like, be like,
function like. They ought to work like life itself. One of the
systems I have tried to model is a science facility devoted to the
functional purpose of solving environmental problems and helping
to achieve sustainable human-environment relations. I work in
a lab that is supposed to be working on solving environmental
problems, but as with much of
what I see in the reductionist/mechanist mainstream, it is frought
with hypocrisy and self-defeating contradictions. For example, my
lab has not a shred of environmental savvy embodied in its building,
architecture or systems. It may as well be a smoke-stack industry.
Runs on fossil fuels and lots of 'em, pollutes, no recycling, toxic
materials inside, etc. etc. So my first principle for a model of a
science facility for sustainability is that it ought to be sustainable
itself. This in a way might be like closure of efficient and/or
formal and/or final cause - its ends and means are the same, it is
self-causing, self-forming, self-purposeful. Another Rosen-like
aspect of my thought experiment/model is that the modelers have
to live inside the model. So there is self-reference and
impredicativity always. Another principle I play with borrowing
from what I see in life, and maybe like Rosen's "no largest model,
need more than one model", is that since we cannot have 100%
certainty, one way to act anyway is to form two models and
implement them both as coupled and complementary. This admits
complexity and that surprise is certain, but anticipates this by
building both a plan A (our best bet model/implementation of it)
and a plan B (based on the certainty that there is uncertainty that
will effect plan A) that are synergistically compatible and mutually
causal. My main examples of this principle in life are 1) autotrophs +
heterotrophs, 2) males + females, 3) dual hemispheres of brain,
4) binocular visions and 5) bilateral symmetry.

The resulting sustainable science facility would run at better than
break even - it would not cause more problems than it solved. In
this way, if this could be achieved, it would mimic life's amazing
power to make the environment better as it goes. This is exactly
the 180 degree turn humans need now, and fast, as our indirect
effects of making the world worse as we go cannot continue
without systemic disaster - a full system failure that could obliterate
all the micro-gains made so far.

Some thoughts...

Dan Fiscus

PS - what kind of software/programming do you do?



Jack Park wrote:

In any case, my point is that he, and others, speak *about* modeling, as
evidenced above, but don't actually articulate examples from which
others can start down that road. It's entirely interesting to me that
the only known dissertation directly from his work was, as memory
recalls, about death and dying, the final functor, so to speak. The only
other dissertation findable in google that uses the term "relational
biology" is on "fuzzy relational biology." There is one woman in Israel
who goes by the name "Zippie" who is actively engaged in modeling
cognition using category theory. Not much else comes even close, as far
as I can tell. 10C-6 is about the (M,R) system, but, nowhere, does
anyone go beyond that (that I have found). Rashevsky was looking for the
canonical organism, one on which organismic entities could be studied.
If his goal, when cast in Rosennean terms, is to find the irreducible
architecture from which a synthesis can follow, then, I suppose, the
goal lies outside the bounds of RR's world view. In my view, we are
engaged in wordsmithing, and not engaged in modeling. Part of that
wordsmithing is involved in tribal immunity rather than holistic
exploration. Indeed, consider applying Rosennean Complexity to the
Rosennean tribe itself.

And, Judith, Gleevec kicks serious butt, medically speaking. I no longer
feel that I am dealing with a nasty visitation; one magic pill a day
keeps the doctor away, so to speak. It is amazing to me that, when I was
diagnosed in 1989, my personal physician and business partner told me
not to worry, that in a couple of years, they would have a pill. That
pill didn't show up until 10 years later, but it did, indeed, show up.
It's also interesting to me that the chromosomal damage that is the,
excuse me, cause of my particular dx was the first one discovered (1959)
following Watson & Crick, and the first one to submit to active-site
blocking by a small molecule. All that from science as it was practiced
without benefit of Rosennean Complexity. I don't think the holistic
tribes are justified in knocking the reductionists. At some point in
time, methinks, the tribes need to understand that they are all rooting
around in the same space and that there is room for all. That Robert
Rosen ran into serious funding pathologies during his lifetime and
career, is a sign of the same tribal behaviors, but is no excuse for
flame throwing. My view is simple: show your stuff and stop talking
about it. Either we know how to apply Rosennean Complexity to complex,
urgent problems facing humanity, or we do not. If we do, then let's do
it. I stand ready to hack software in that service. If we do not, then,
let's see the program necessary to get there from here. If there are
problems with the mathematics, then, rather than raise an immune
response to the mathematician, sort out the mathematics.

Jack

--

Dan Fiscus
Ecologist/Research Assistant
University of Maryland
Center for Environmental Science
Appalachian Lab
301 Braddock Rd
Frostburg, MD 21532
301-689-7121 (phone)
http://al.umces.edu/~fiscus/research