Re: Rosennean Models, Physics, Physicists, etc...

[John M <***>]

Dear Judith,
I always jump on your posts to find interesting details about RR and his
thinking (I use "theory" in a pejorative,diferent sense only).
A Hungarian wiseman wrote a letter to his friend and started it:
"Dear Steve, excuse my long letter, but I have no time".
(The other situation for the same phenomenon (JohnK?) is to pack too many
things into one post.- You did the same thing here.)
One cannot go on and on and on and derive an understanding when reading a
list-post. (At least not with my limited mental capabilities).

">One is a very basic point in Rosennean Complexity Theory that seems to be
confusing people.<"
Was I waiting to read more on this....All I learned was SOME  change in
certain physicists' reaction.

">Anyway, the point is that the physics that was being
referred to in my father's books is not quite what we are
looking at today, in 2004.<"
As far as academic curriculum goes: IMO it is: a reductionist,
model-based formalism of assemblages irrespective of their
qualia (I think: what you term as 'organization'. My reason
for terming it differently is that organization is still bound to
tha material construct itself, while the qualia of assemblages
occur (emerge) in interconnection with the 'rest of the world'
- I could say: point to RR's unlimited "natural systems".
The only place I found a 'changed' thinking in physics-related
topics is the post-post ultramodern bunch on the 'everything'
list. Thinking physicists, believe it or not. (No offense, HP! I
consider you a thinking mind who happened to be a physicist).

">What he found as he went through the process we've already discussed here
is that physics DOES apply. But it's not the physics of the mid-20th
Century. He uncovered the fundamental flaw in the history of science and it
was precisely this focus on the material "stuff" rather than how that stuff
is organized.<"
Amen.
See my remark above on 'organization'. RR must have been
thinking in more "complex" ways and format than what he
found appropriate to expose in his books/papers/teachings -
as I already said: aimed at the reductionist science-crowd.

Finally: medicine IMO is not science, it is a technique of the
use of up-to-date scientific conclusions (right or wrong).
Enginnereing of the live body. Strictly matter-based, even
the neurological medicine closes mostly in on brain-parts.
(Unconfirmed and personal opinion, open to anybody's
different ideas without argumentation.)

(Tim: in your Website there is a chapter on RR-complexity,
however spiked with too many (counter)examples and many
variations, so it is hard to decipher a definition in <10 lines).

Regards
JohnM


----- Original Message -----
From: "Judith Rosen" <***>
To: <***>
Sent: Thursday, May 13, 2004 11:13 PM
Subject: Rosennean Models, Physics, Physicists, etc...


I've been sort of incommunicado the past couple days because the sasser worm
got into my other computer and it's offline at the moment. Until I get that
situation straightened away, I'll have to use my laptop (which is a Mac).

Anyway, I've finally been able to read some of this discussion that's been
taking place on the list and there are a few points that I'd like to add.

One is a very basic point in Rosennean Complexity Theory that seems to be
confusing people. In talking about it, it's kind of important to bear in
mind that Physics and physicists have changed quite a bit since my father
was writing the bulk of his ideas down. The changes seemed to begin really
happening in the very late 1980's but the bulk happened in the 1990's, and
these changes surprised my father no end! The first "fan letter" he got in
the mail was (from my perspective) a hilarious event. Dad treated it like it
was some new species of organism that wandered into his house-- something
never before seen on Earth-- and potentially dangerous... poisonous or
toxic. He viewed it as a strange anomaly. But that kind of thing began to
happen more and more frequently over the last several trips we made before
his health really crashed and traveling became such a complicated and
expensive matter that no organizations wanted to deal with it-- not even the
Anticipatory Systems folks, in their first inaugural symposium where they
wanted him to be the keynote speaker. People at the last trip we actually
made, which was to Amiens, France, were acting like he was a rock star,
which made him extremely uncomfortable and he often quoted Oscar Wilde (When
too many people start agreeing with me, I begin to feel I must be wrong!).
One of the people at that set of meetings was Seth Roberts, who was still a
student at that point, earning his MD/PhD. Folks from the old list may
remember Seth (a very nice guy).

Anyway, the point is that the physics that was being referred to in my
father's books is not quite what we are looking at today, in 2004. When he
was first discussing these ideas, there was a violent recoil as reaction to
the most basic premises of my father's complexity theory. The notion that
biological systems are part of a continuum that begins with the basic
structural building blocks of matter, atoms, was one that Physics refused to
accept. The notion that there were aspects to the nature of atoms that
physics had gotten wrong was an outrage to most of the physicists that my
father knew. He found that to be astonishing: that physicists would react as
though they, themselves, had some personal connection to the history of the
science they were manipulating such that it reflected negatively on them if
the science was questioned.....

Secondly, the main thing that mid-20th Century physics (which my father
refers to as "contemporary physics") was "too impoverished" to deal with
just so happened to also be THE basic tenet of all systems in this universe,
according to Rosennean Complexity Theory: That it is the organization of
systems that determines the bulk of the properties of those systems, rather
than just the material "stuff" of which those systems are made. That was the
fundamental, and very human, mistake that science originally made.
Throughout human evolution, human beings just assumed that what our senses
detect is what matters. If we can pick it up, manipulate it, eat it, use it,
whatever.... then it exists and that's what we studied-- from the moment we
had the ability to use our intelligence to generate and then answer
questions about the world around us. That basic assumption got built into
science, as science was becoming more formal and disciplined, and the
approach hasn't changed very much since the beginning of human
consciousness. The reason it persists is because it has worked well enough
to get us to this point. But my father wanted to take it further and
understand why living organisms were the way they were. If living organisms
are part of the material world, then physics should apply to them, right?

What he found as he went through the process we've already discussed here is
that physics DOES apply. But it's not the physics of the mid-20th Century.
He uncovered the fundamental flaw in the history of science and it was
precisely this focus on the material "stuff" rather than how that stuff is
organized.

Certainly, there is a great deal more to it, which is why his body of work
is so huge. But that main point is the crux of the whole situation. So, the
next issue that the current list discussion has been puzzling over is "How
does one make models from a Rosennean point of view?" What my father
basically said was, we make models the same general WAY, using the same
general tools (computers, pencil and paper, popsicle sticks, whatever) but
we make them from a different THOUGHT PROCESS. The change isn't in what you
make the model out of or what the model will look like; the change is in the
mind of the person making the model. That's where the Rosennean aspect has
to be implemented. The causal effect of creating models from a Rosennean
perspective will be found in things like: what aspects of the system you
choose to focus on in your model; what kind of information about the system
you choose to plug into your model; what details you decide can be ignored
so that the model can even be made (because they ARE reductions of the
original system)... These are the kinds of things that come from a Rosennean
approach when first studying the system that needs to be modeled.

So, in our latent project of creating a Rosennean medical model, what we
need to do is the preliminary work of making the choices, using the
perspective that Complexity gives us, which is the bigger task in making any
kind of model. The actual construction of the model is going to be
relatively easy for people who make models already (and frankly is outside
my purview). The trouble with current medical models is that they are about
the extremely complex system that is a human being, in totality, but they
approach this system from a reductionistic, mechanistic point of view that
is intrinsically unchanged from the "Quest For Fire" guys' perspective on
things (if you can see it, feel it, smell it, eat it, etc... then it
EXISTS). If we want to minimize the side effects of taking action based on
models generated by such an incomplete understanding of the human organism
as a system, we need to begin from a perspective that realizes how important
the RELATIONAL ASPECT (of all "parts" of the system) IS (to the way those
parts behave, within the system). In other words, we have to study the
organization of the total system, from that perspective, before we can model
any subsystem or part, and in modeling that part, we have to incorporate our
knowledge of the relational aspect, the role in the larger organization, of
our part that we want to model... such that the model can give us fuller
information as far as accurately predicting, or generating real
understanding, of the behavior of our total system goes. Currently, medical
models only give us (at best) partially useful information, which is a hit
or miss affair based on the aspects of the system that are not as relational
as others, or which left out details that would be safe to ignore even from
a Rosennean perspective. At worst, these models are far more wrong than
right, and the therapies generated by these models are a nightmare. Like
thalidomide as a treatment for nausea in the first trimester of pregnancy.

Now, this is not to say that medical models generated from a Rosennean
perspective are going to eliminate all side effects. My father's theory
clearly states that no amount of models of a complex system is going to be
able, as a total collection, to accurately formalize a complex system. But
it will greatly minimize the side effects of using models in science or
medicine-- which is necessarily a reductionist exercise. Furthermore, since
most of the work is in the initial study of the system to be modeled, the
Rosennean perspective used in the approach while studying the system is
bound to increase our collective understanding of both that particular kind
of system (the human organism, in medicine) but also our understanding of
complexity. That kind of understanding is applicable to other complex
systems and the whole of science is enriched by the work in each
subspecialty. Thus, my father felt that his approach would help build a far
more integrated set of disciplines that cross pollinate one another rather
than the kind of disconnected set of disciplines
scientific/medical/environmental/etc study currently is.

Judith


Web address: www.rosen-enterprises.com