Re: Comparing Rosennean Complexity

[Tim Gwinn <***>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ROSEN Forum [mailto:*** Behalf Of Judith
> Rosen
> Sent: Monday, March 22, 2004 12:57 PM
> To: ***
> Subject: Comparing Rosennean Complexity
>
>
--snip--
>
> He didn't like the term "threshold" though, which strikes me as being kind
> of funny. He could use a term like "internal predictive model" but eschew
> the term "threshold"-- why? Because "threshold" suggested that
> you could get
> there from simplicity, just by adding more complicatedness. But what else
> would you call a boundary that, once crossed over, has a whole
> new world on
> the other side? If threshold, as a term, connotes a reductionistic or
> mechanistic idea, how does "internal predictive model" not do the same?
> (That's the kind of thing I would ask him. Anybody game to fill
> in?) Anyway,
> I have found the word threshold to be necessary when discussing
> my father's
> ideas in plain English.
>
> The reason I wouldn't say there is a threshold between simple systems and
> complex systems is that, in my father's theoretical framework, there is no
> way to cross over from simplicity. In order to generate a complex
> system one
> would have to start with complex organization. No amount of complicated
> simplicity, added together, is going to yield a complex system. From his
> vantage point, he said von Neumann was saying the opposite of this.
>
> Judith

I would think he disliked 'threshold' because etymologically it is related
to "worn away" or "rubbed away", so that 'threshold' would insinuate
something that could be worn away or exceeded by enough effort. But, as you
also say, no amount of accretion of predicative or simple structures will
exhaust or exceed the limits of the predicative realm. I think also,
'threshold' might insinuate that everything else about the predicative
universe of discourse can remain the same even after crossing the
'threshold'. But, going from simple to complex is more like switching from a
smaller universe to a larger universe that has different rules, such as
fewer restrictions on organization. I don't know what word might be
appropriate to indicate the transition boundary, since it is a transition
between very unlike things.

I doubt he would have considered 'threshold' a reductionistic term per se,
but merely that it was misleading for this purpose.

Regards,
Tim