John Kineman wrote:
This tells me I am behind in my reading. I would have preferred a quote
saying that complexity is indeed a property of a given system, and that
it can be distinguished from the complexities the observer provides.
John, the quote I posted elaborates on the statement such that it is the way
you would prefer. Here it is again:
Robert Rosen wrote:"We are going to relate our capacity to produce
independent
encodings[non-equivalent models] of a given natural system with the
complexity of it. Roughly speaking, the more such encodings we can produce,
the more complex we will regard the system. Thus, contrary to traditional
views regarding system complexity, we do not treat complexity as a property
of some particular encoding. Nor is complexity entirely an objective
property of the system, in the sense of being itself a directly perceptible
quality which can be measured by a meter." [snip]
"In the sense of being itself a directly perceptible quality which can be
measured by a meter." In other words, complexity is not just one
description, one aspect, one quality-- which can be measured by a meter. It
is, however, a property-- in totality-- of a given system. These two things
do not conflict. Does that make sense to you?
And the observer part of the quote:
Robert Rosen wrote: " Rather, complexity pertains at
least as much to us as observers as it does to the system; it reflects our
ability to interact with the system IN SUCH A WAY AS TOMAKE ITS QUALITIES
VISIBLE TO US [emphasis, Judith]" [snip]
Remember, he is talking about science here. Science is a human pursuit of
knowledge and scientists are "observers" in that sense. Scientific
observation involves more than just watching a system do its thing in its
natural habitat/context. It involves doing that-- and then perturbing the
system in various ways and observing the differences. So he's talking about
ways we can perturb (interact with) the system such that we "make its
qualities visible to us"-- scientifically. Why scientifically? Because we
want to make models of the system:
Robert Rosen wrote: "INTUITIVELY SPEAKING [emphasis, Judith], if the
system is such that we can
interact with it in only a few ways... " [snip]
Translation: If the system is such that there are only a few system
qualities that we can tease out of this system via perturbing it and
observing its behavior... then:
> Robert Rosen wrote: "...there will be correspondingly few
distinct encodings [Translation: non-equivalent models, meaning models that
are not reducible to one another] we can make of the qualities which we
perceive thereby,
and the system will APPEAR TO US [emphasis, Judith] as a simple system. If
the system is such
that we can interact with it in many ways [translation: if we can tease out
many non-equivalent system qualities via our perturbations of the system],
we will be able to produce
correspondingly many distinct encodings [non-equivalent models], and we
will correspondingly
REGARD [emphasis, Judith] the system as complex."
So, your analysis as follows:
> John Kineman wrote:
To wit: If I can produce two different encodings [snip]
DISTINCT encodings, not "different". Non-equivalent encodings, remember...
> J.K. wrote: ...of the nature of a rock,
say its physical dynamic properties when thrown at a particularly
annoying colleague, or its chemical properties and usefulness for making
poison (just kidding about the latent antagonism), then to that extent
the quote SEEMS [emphasis, Judith] to say that the rock is complex"
Are you beginning to see what I'm driving at here?
> J.K. wrote: But I would call that
complexity of the observer, not the rock.
EXACTLY. This is exactly what my father's point is. Furthermore, he said
many times that rocks are not complex because the organization of the
"system" we call "rock" is not complex organization. Hence, all models you
make of the rock-system itself, via your scientific perturbation of it-- as
a system-- and observation of its reactions-- as a system-- to that
perturbation, are going to be equivalent to each other in some way and are
going to add up to a complete formal representation of the system. Bear in
mind that if you reduce the organization of the "rock-system" down to
components or constituents, that's not a perturbation, that's reductionism.
As such, you are not dealing with the same system anymore. A
non-reductionist approach must not change the organization of the system
with its perturbations if the system is what you want to learn about. So
your "interactions" with it are going to be limited to those which don't
destroy the system's organization. The quote above of my father's already
specified that the interactions are similarly limited to "interactions which
reveal essential qualities" of the system that can be modeled. The
importance of the organization is what he's getting at, and it is the
scientific modes of description (models) that he is referring to as
"encodings". For greater detail, I refer people to my father's books because
the explanations that go into greater detail get technical. But these are
the basics.
Judith