Re: Howard's challenge #1

[Judith Rosen <***>]

I was out of commission mostly yesterday, one of the main nurses who works
on my little daughter's "case" was ill. Consequently I wasn't able to answer
much email yesterday-- I have a lot of writing to do! I'm going to paste all
the comments by a single writier into each email response for that person
(and use numbers, so as not to put anyone's name in the subject line):

> Howard Pattee wrote:
>As a consequence no one responded to my central question that was: What
happened to the need for multiple complementary models?
>
The biggest problem my father had with von Neumann's theory was not the
secondary stuff, which as you mentioned, seems to agree quite a bit with
"Rosennean" findings-- it's the primary concern that made my father reject
the whole shebang. Von Neumann's basic premise was what he disagreed with
entirely and wanted to distance himself from. He wanted people to hear the
the foundations of what you build the rest on top of MUST be different from
the mechanistic foundation. His assessment of von Neumann's work was that it
came from the same old foundational idea and therefore avoids the discomfort
of a shift at that basic level. But my father strongly believed that science
will not be able to fully understand our universe without making that
fundamental shift.

>Howard wrote: The more complex a system, the more questions are needed.
That's why we like Aristotle. His causes are simply answers to four
different classes of questions: What is the house made of? Who built the
house? Who designed the house? Why do you want a house? One could add more:
What is a house? How do houses evolve? Why do houses decay?
>
The house metaphor doesn't stretch that far, for me. A house is a simple
system unless you include the human mind, which is certainly the context at
the very least. In my father's opinion, the human need for a house/the
function that the house was designed and built to serve-- which hold the
answers to final cause-- were the main issues one had to address in order to
understand the house as a system. If you don't address those issues, you can
never even approach issues of evolution. I also contest that it isn't
consistent to say that houses "evolve". The humans who are using the house
change it to suit their needs, but that's not about the house it's about the
humans. The decay of the house has to do with human neglect for human
reasons, and with the house becoming part of the raw materials for the
larger ecosystem, which colonize the house and dismantle it for their own
purposes. If humans don't need it as a "home" anymore, it's no longer being
maintained. Simple systems don't have the coherence/resilience of complex
ones

> Howard wrote: I'm trying to get across the idea that modeling complex
systems should not be a competitive sport. I know it is an easy trap to fall
into, egos being what they are, but if you try to simply compete with
reductionist models or the common sense of the likes of von Neumann you have
already lost.
>
Howard, with all due respect, this discussion didn't get competitive until
you threw down the gauntlet and made some very critical statements that were
unwarranted except around the edges. The point my father was making was
about the paradigm, not about one scientist's models. It was about realizing
certain basic facts a complex system, even while using reductionist) models
to solve problems in that system. It was about showing that some
reductionist models would be better than others in that they don't commit
the most grievous damage that can be done when the assumption is made that
living systems are as simple as the models being used to represent them.


> Howard wrote: I think we need to acknowledge the fact that other people's
models may indeed answer their questions. If you want to ask different
questions and their models don't answer your questions, you have no reason
to criticize their models. The same goes for different definitions of the
symbols and words, like constraint, complexity, causality, etc., used in
different models.
>
Everyone here DID acknowledge the fact that other people's models may answer
questions. My father wrote similar statements all through his work. His
problem was only with the theoretical foundations for the science driving
the work. As such, his distancing from von Neumann's theories was merely his
own right to create "different definitions of the symbols and words". I am
puzzled by your intense opposition to the notion that von Neumann's
definition of complexity was completely unlike my father's at the
foundations. You can build two houses to look alike on the surface, but one
has a basement and the other doesn't. How would you know?

> Howard wrote: To some degree I think [that the founding assumptions of a
world view not being directly testible] was the case  with both quantum
theory and both relativity theories. But the new assumptions were about the
observable world (discreteness of energy levels, speed of light, inertial
mass).
By contrast, Rosen's worldview is apparently based only on the limits of
formal models (including formal Newtonian dynamics). This appears to many to
be an old world view, i.e., Platonism, with new limits places on the forms
by Goedel.

Do you really think that all my father's work is based ONLY on the limits of
formal models?????????! I find that really difficult to believe! He said
himself that OBSERVATION is the first step in doing science.He said that
science cannot (and therefore MUST NOT) divorce the "observable world" from
that science. He said that science must not ignore what the observable world
(which is a whole lot more than the issues you mentioned above) is showing
us just because of prejudices based on old modes of approach... You knew him
better than this, didn't you? He certainly THOUGHT you did. His main
interest was the "observable world", not in "how to build a better model".

> Howard Pattee wrote:  What is most important is a persuasive example or
question that the established worldview can't touch. My problem is that the
views that I share with Rosen are not, in my mind, enough to constitute a
new worldview. What am I missing?

So in your opinion, all of the stuff my father wrote does not constitute a
"persuasive example" that there is far more in reality than the "established
worldview" accepts? I would say that THAT is what you're missing.

> Howard posted this quote by Eckhart:  What is truth? Truth is something so
noble that if God could turn aside from it, I could keep to the truth and
let God go.

That is why God didn't want Adam and Eve tasting the fruit of the tree of
knowledge.

Judith