Re: Life without evolution/evolution without life

[Judith Rosen <***>]

Here are the rest of my responses to the discussion in Howard's last post:

H.: How does Rosennean Complexity Theory define when life first arose?

J: When naturally arising, self-organizing complex systems organized
sufficiently to reach the threshold of complexity where life is one of the
effects.

H:  But what if we can show that the threshold of complexity necessary for
evolution requires anticipatory behavior?

J: I'm not sure what you're asking. If you are asking whether evolution
involves anticipatory behavior, I  think it definitely does involve
anticipatory behavior-- which means evolution  requires the level of
complexity that causes life. They both seem to emerge at that threshold
level.

However, if you're asking whether Dad (i.e. Robert Rosen... I never know how
to refer to him in discussions!) would agree with the possibility that--
that threshold of complexity itself-- requires anticipatory behavior...It
almost sounds as if you are suggesting that anticipatory behavior might
cause complexity. Is that what you're saying?  I think my father's ideas
state pretty clearly that he saw it the other way around: Agreed that
anticipation is one of the properties that are involved with that threshold.
But, although he never said whether anticipation causes life or life causes
anticipation, he did say that complexity causes both.


Howard wrote:
Unfortunately, Bob never engaged his critics, (snip)

J: I understand what you are saying with von Neumann and you may be right or
not. That's the kind of thing I never asked him about (because I wasn't
interested in von Neumann, not being a scientist). He spoke of von Neumann's
ideas (and pronounced it  "von noyman"--I've heard other people say it von
"newman"... which is correct? Both?) Anyway, this morning I read through the
things my father wrote in his books about von Neumann's ideas and how they
differed from his own. It's a set of small, but my father felt CRITICAL,
points that couldn't be ignored. One of the main ones appears to be that von
Neumann defined complexity completely differently. His characterization of
von Neumann's theory is: That there is a threshold that von Neumann calls
complexity; above it, system dynamics/complexity would increase, below it
system dynamics could only decrease. My father wrote extensively about von
Neumann's definitions and how von Neumann arrived at them, he spoke of the
foundational aspects of how his ideas were from a different direction... I
can't settle this dispute between you and my father, but it certainly seems
to me that he didn't ignore von Neumann, didn't discount his ideas out of
hand, and did his homework before he made any statements that these were not
congruent with his own ideas. In fact, in Essays on Life, Itself there are
several in depth discussions on the subject.

I plan to delve into these differences a little deeper today, so if I see
exactly what it is that bothered my father in von Neumann's ideas, I'll post
it. I'm confident that I'll know it when I see it.

On the subject of "never engaging his critics" though, I'm extremely biased
in my father's favor. It seems to me that the 'critics' that had legitimate
questions or disagreement and didn't resort to uncivil behavior... he DID
engage. You've said yourself that you two didn't agree on everything, and
yet he spoke of you with deep affection and respect. So he didn't change his
mind on those issues you two apparently disagreed on, but he did engage in
discussion and he actually named you on a very short list of people he would
consider friends as well as colleagues (when I asked him). The kind of
critics he ignored were the ones who engaged in personal attack, who had
power issues, who had hidden agendas, who were not interested in the truth
but in maintaining a comfortable status quo, etc.

But von Neumann wasn't a critic of my father, was he? He died in 1957, which
was when my father was working on his PhD so it seems very unlikely to me.

Judith