Re: Teleology and vitalism

[Tim Gwinn <***>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ROSEN Forum [mailto:*** Behalf Of Ayten
> Aydin
> Sent: Sunday, April 04, 2004 9:32 AM
> To: ***
> Subject: Re: Teleology and vitalism
>
>
> Tim,
> Thank you for your clarification.  I did interprete abstracting
> as picking a
> piece out of something, a bigger whole, such as an art work or a
> scientific
> discovery. Each person appreciates the former differently depending on
> his/her level of consciousness understand its reality differently. This is
> natural and as it should be. This is its potential  to expansion both
> horiziontally and vertically. The latter is bound to be taken as it is and
> be understood as intended by the discoverer/scientist, let's say
> here there
> is no potential for horizontal expansion, but it is open to
> vertical growth
> as new and new discoveries are made and the scene is left to the
> new comer.
> In both cases the abstract is the seed of a bigger message in one way or
> another. It then grows further as circumstances permits or calls for. That
> is why I said it has a potential for expansion , in a way tacitly
> operating
> in an open system. Certainly Lawson "Closure" also have the same
> characteristics, it is also an aid for making understanding easy.
>
> I must perhaps remain with these two concepts for a while within my
> philosophical appreciation level and meditate further on your
> views before I
> clarify the concept for myself, in the first instance. Thank you
> anyhow for
> your guidance. Any further comment on this theme will be
> appreciated. I have
> Lawson's book by the way, if you refer to a specific passage or
> part in this
> regard I may consult it.
>
> This topic is important for me for my other study on an enquiry
> into seeing
> where(at what level) the art and science meet, in a way where the
> subjectivity and objectivity unite, where the time and space become one
> entity. I wonder how much all these are relevant to RR's all encompassing
> philosophy? Judith may also wish to comment.
>
> My best,
> Ayten

Ayten,

I think Lawson summarizes the distinctions between the closures of science
and art nicely in his statements at the top of the respective chapters on
science and art:
Chapter 10 "The Closures of Science" - "The success of the stories of
science stems from the abstract character of the closures involved and the
incorporation of idealised mathematical relations."
Chapter 15 "Art and the Avoidance of Closure" - "What distinguishes art from
knowledge is the acceptance of the failure of closure and the avoidance of
an attempt at complete closure."

Since mathematical objects are defined or assumed to have no other closures
possible of them other than what their definition asserts [p. 151-2], then
any given scientific model (i.e., one represented in mathematical or
otherwise strictly defined terms) will inherit that same apparent lack of
possibility of failure of closure or possibility of attaining other
closures. In Lawson's terminology, mathematical closures appear as 'complete
closures' that have no 'texture', no remaining 'openness' within the
mathematical object.

Others have phrased this notion by saying that mathematical objects (and
models) can be thought of as having limited or fixed degrees-of-freedom,
compared with a physical system. Rosen has, for example, a chapter in AS
where he discusses models as being "closed systems" - systems that are open
only to a select number of interactions and closed to all other
interactions.

By contrast art is assumed subjective and therefore closures around art
inherit that assumption that any such closure will fail to be complete, and
other closures are always possible. "Thus we can say that for the artist
closure cannot exhaust the world. Another way of expressing this would be to
say that the artist is more interested in texture than in material." [p.
206]

I hadn't really thought about it before, but from this it seems to me that
the difference between art and science revolves not so much around their
different forms of presentation as it does around the assumptions that
accompany the forms of presentation and around the assumptions about what
the activity can (and cannot) accomplish.

Regards,
Tim