Re: Relational space

[Howard Pattee <***>]

I am quite sure that in the context of contrasting physics and biology Bob
took a very broad view of measurement including any pattern recognition or
perception of natural events. Here is one of Bob?s typical thought-
provocations from Anticipatory Systems:

[Rosen, AS, p. 319]: ?Perhaps the most unassailable principle of
theoretical physics asserts that the laws of nature must be the same for
all observers. By this is meant that the laws must be invariant to the
position and state of motion of all observers . . . but if the observers
themselves are not identical; i.e., equipped with precisely the same
meters, there is no reason to expect their descriptions of the universe to
be the same.?
[snip 5 lines]
?In an important sense, biology depends in an essential way on the
proliferation of inequivalent observers; it can indeed be regarded as
nothing other than the study of populations of inequivalent observers and
their interactions. These remarks lend a profound significance to the view
that biology is the science of mutability; i.e., the science of error.?

Note however, that this quote is from Rosen?s pre-Halifax era when he was
still engaged with colleagues and students. As Judith pointed out by her
quote, evolution is an essential concept in Anticipatory Systems. But there
is a total change of view in Life Itself:

[Rosen, LI, p. 255] ?Ever more insistently over the past century, and never
more so than today, we hear the argument that biology is evolution; that
living things instantiate evolutionary processes rather than life; and
ironically, that these processes are devoid of entailment, immune to
natural law, and hence outside science completely. To me it is easy to
conceive of life, and hence biology, without evolution. But not of
evolution without life. Thus it is that the word ?evolution? has hardly
been mentioned in the preceding pages.?

Howard