Re: Comparing Rosennean Complexity

[Tim Gwinn <***>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ROSEN Forum [mailto:*** Behalf Of John M
> Sent: Wednesday, March 24, 2004 4:39 PM
> To: ***
> Subject: Re: Comparing Rosennean Complexity
>
>
> Dear Tim,
>
> wouldn't it be more fruitful if we concentrate on the concepts pertinent -
> and within RR-language, ideas, vision, whatever?
> "Complex' and 'simple' are personalized qualifiers of reductionist models.
> (Convoluted is not the same for Einstein as it is for me) "simple" is a
> model
> having cut off (by boundaries?) most of its complicatedness.
> So why fill up our ideads - and this list with distraction?


It was important enough a clarification of differences surrounding the
central concept of complexity that Rosen wrote the text that I quoted, so I
do not consider it a "distraction" either for Judith to have brought up the
topic of the term "threshold", nor for me to have quoted the text of RR.


> When you say:
> > Since we, as humans, cannot step outside of the world, our interactions
> with
> > the world, and thereby our interactions with systems we identify in
> > modelling relations, are always subject to the notion of
> complexity above.
> I would change the last two word to 'reductionism'.


I was referring to the irremovable interjection of the subjective into the
modelling relation. 'Reductionism' is not the word for that - 'complexity'
is. The models in the modelling relation may be abstractions or
reductionistic, but that is not the quality I was referring to.

Regards,
Tim