Re: models, sensory perception

[Judith Rosen <***>]

> > John K. wrote: Also concepts like "appropriate and useful in context"
> > seem to
> > unavoidably imply some function or purpose, so function seems to be
> > defined in the hierarchical relationship between a system and a
> > context.
> > The fact, formalized by Rosen, that there are causally-acting
> > feedbacks
> > from context to sub-system, is the essence of  organization. So
> > function
> > and organization are related and it is impossible to speak of one
> > without the other, except in a trivial or degenerate case (i.e. the
> > material view).

This is exactly right. The amazing thing to me is that so few areas of
mainstream science are either willing or able to SEE it. The proof of
it is everywhere, yet it is denied-- As a non-scientist, I find this
situation incomprehensible, even though I know (intellectually) why the
situation exists. But I've always had trouble understanding why my
father got so much flack for saying what John K. so elegantly stated
above. And my father even went to the trouble of "showing the work"
(i.e. how he arrived at those statements). From my perspective, the
statements are obvious truths and all that's required to see it is
simple common sense.

Function is one of the concepts that is absent or camouflaged as a
causal influence in systems that are not alive. Life and function are
two qualities of living systems that are either co-emergent or
connected via the kind of mutually causal relationship that is rampant
in complex systems. To put it another way; either "life" and "function"
are both caused by the dimension/level of complexity that defines
living systems or they cause each other, at this dimension/level of
complex organization. I suppose it could even be both. But the fact
that this functional aspect is not apparent in a rock or a
gravitational phenomenon or an electrical event-- and these are the
systems physics has a good handle on-- I think makes it a habit for
physics to view all systems, including biological phenomena, as being
"free from" any functional aspect as well. Function is viewed as an
observer overlay that taints our ability to understand "what's really
going on"... However, the way my father viewed it; function is simply
the relational nature of complexity taken to a new level of causal
influence, which cannot be ignored in scientific study of biological
systems. I personally feel this is why it took a biologist to see this
particular mistake in contemporary mainstream science... But it had to
be a biologist who had as solid a grasp of contemporary physics as any
physicist. Because he had both perspectives, he was able to see the
mistakenly juxtaposed concepts at the root of the contemporary
scientific paradigm. The COMPLEXITY of biological systems is the common
thread that ties all areas of science together, not the material
particles that can be found in all systems. Physics has had it
backwards from day one.

Judith