Re: inequivalent complmentary models

[Judith Rosen <***>]

I haven't been following all of this discussion but in Tim's latest post,
there was a statement by Howard Pattee that requires me to comment:

> > Howard Pattee wrote:
> > Rosen agrees that physical laws are inadequate to explain life,
> > and we agree for essentially the same reasons. What puzzles me is
> > why in LI (not in AS) Rosen charges that theoretical physics has
> > "beguiled itself" and "shirked its task" when I know of no
> > evidence that shows any basic disagreement.

My father stated that "current" (prior to 1998) established/accepted laws of
"Contemporary" Physics were inadequate to explain life. The qualifiers need
to be present in any statement of "what Rosen said" because they provide
context for why he said it.

Speaking to another issue raised in the above post; The reason "Life,
Itself" speaks of the artificial limitations within Physics with so much
more ire than can be found in "Anticipatory Systems" is due to two main
factors. The first of these is the fact that LI is a far more comprehensive
book. Whereas AS deals with subject matter mostly limited to biological
systems, LI is the primer for Rosennean Complexity Theory. That means that
LI lays out the whole enchilada, including the realization that complexity
is a primary aspect of all systems in the universe, not just of biological
(living) systems here on Earth. Which brings me to the second of the main
factors: In the span of time between the writing of AS and the writing of LI
(roughly a dozen years), there was a great deal of development of his
Complexity Theory as well as a hell of a lot more reaction from science in
general and physicists in particular. As Indiana Jones said of  the causes
of fatigue: "It ain't the years, honey. It's the MILEAGE." In short, my
father's tolerance for the constant attempts to morph his complexity theory
into just more "complicated" physics had worn very thin. He was just plain
sick of it.

This brings me to the third aspect of the above post that I feel a need to
comment on: If you truly do not know of "any basic disagreement" between the
Theoretical Physics of the final 25 years of the past century and Rosennean
Complexity Theory.... then there is something really wrong here. Either you
were not privy to enough of the kind of reaction that I was, on the part of
"accepted science" to my father's work...which would be surprising to me, or
else perhaps the situation is that you do not fully comprehend the extent of
what my father was saying. In that light, your anger over my father's
rejection of Von Neumann's version of "complexity" makes far more sense to
me than it did in the past. It strikes me that a post on the basic areas
where Rosennean Complexity Theory is radically different from the current
paradigm might be useful. I will look into crafting something along those
lines, tomorrow.

Judith


>
>
> Tim Gwin wrote: I would say he meant that a preoccupation with seeking
physical laws as
> being only those that apply universally and inexorably is to avoid a great
> deal of physics. And that how successful and useful these limited laws
have
> been ought not let physics be lured into thinking that only laws of that
> type are possible or useful. If the inadequacy of these laws is widely
> acknowledged, then it should propel physics (and other sciences) to expand
> not merely by adding more of these same type of laws, but by also relaxing
> the restrictions as indicated above.
>
> Tim
>