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Dear Ayten, welcome back.
If you want to become 'a little bit smarter',
cut me out. I can give you doubts, uncertainty and (what you call 'humble':) my
so called (cognitive) scientific agnosticism. I am a 'critic', not an
oracle. I don't even recall your "purpose and enquiry couple".
I like your onion-metaphor, although as a
former perfumer, I am afraid of some "odor" included in it. And it may sting a
bit, if someone cuts carelessly into it with open eyes.
Then again I would like to know your take
of "art in the onion",
what do you mean by art? The word is
ambiguous, from the "art-ificial" with the technical patent _expression_ "for
those, skilled in the art" (technique!) through Mozart and Tintoretto to E.
Warhol's op-art and Altimira. And don't forget Paul Verlaine.
So what is the universe's art? Certainly
not 'us'. We are silly quirks in it pretending to understand something.
Reality: I like the mximalistic version,
nature, with us in it. We can learn about the 'reality-outside-us' only by
impacts upon the mind and interpreted by it for our measly understanding (if).
About "nature-within-us" we really have no way to learn any reasonable thing
(inquiry by the target of the inquiry). However,
there is an ubiquitously used version of
'reality' within the (reductionistic) sciences, the "observed facts" we believe
to be "real". Matches in measurements constructed to match. Fitting
well together observations, explained
(maybe shaped) to fit.
'Objective truth' meaning the subjective
explanatory versions in the mind's interpretations. Or "truth" itself, the 1st
person belief we accept and carry (maybe from others' 1st person output - we
gleefully accept as 3rd person information).
The 9 blindfolded scientists in a dark
room chasing a (maybe not even existing, but imagined) cat. The smart one who
wants a Nobel cries: I got it!
The only smart people are the
'technicians' (engineers, etc.) who couldn't care less about (our type of search
for) "real" understanding, but made spaceships, deciphered the DNAs,
synthesized aspirin and teflon, built cars, microscopes, compas and seismograph,
the internet and the tax office. And some more, in holy reductionism. I was part
of it, but gave it up for our navel-gazing speculations. Do you call THIS
smarts?
To your 'science reflecting the reality'?
all do so within their (narrowly cut model i.e.) the topic and boundary-conditions into which the
appropriate "science" is identified as "reduced(!)" from the
totality - or broaded reality, if you wish.
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, July 09, 2004 10:38
AM
Subject: Re: My Wrap-Up: RR-centric
"Process" Definition?
Dear John and Pete,
Coming back from my nerve-braking
and exhausting house restoration work, the first postings (I skipped the
previous ones to save my sanity) I saw were yours on "purpose and enquiry
couple".
If the universe is smarter than
us, with which I humbly agree, I wonder what the science may
claim as different from theory and philosophy. The reality for us is an
onion-like abstraction with endless depth and unexhaustable layers, where the
purpose and enquiry work hand in hand in a practically never ending process
for finding their meeting point or unity by peeling the onion layer by
layer. In this process art is more versatile than the rest. I believe,
the art is also the closest ally of the universe with a somewhat similar
texture.
Also the following statement made
by Pete as " Any system that is truly in equilibrium is hiding out from
'the rest of the universe' and I am not even sure that is possible in any
absolute or permanent sense. " expresses well the
impossibility of sticking to one type of science or the other as reflecting
the reality. This perhaps explains the RR's agony and the continuing
efforts in reaching a theory encompassing all in one in a fluid
manner.
Could I be further enlightened by one of you or others
in sorting out the inseparable purpose and enquiry in the process
of searching the reality or getting a little bit smarter?
My best,
Ayten
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, July 09, 2004 2:24
PM
Subject: Re: My Wrap-Up: RR-centric
"Process" Definition?
Hello, Pete,
I am glad I ask that question and you picked
it up so amicably.
Thank you for taking the time for such a
comprehensive reply.
Your post is "beautiful" (in more than one
'context'!!) and I will read it several times again. (I usually don't have
the endurnce to read so long posts in their entirety and still focus on the
details).
It is "more" than one I would pick out
'quotes' from to argue.
The only startling thing in it was the
statement that "you, as a physicist" - reading your cultural logic, style
and understanding
I would add "on the side". (No offensive
purpose against physicists, but the physics-principle brainwashing in
college is bound to impose a more focussed restriction on the mind).
So let me repeat my question and add
another one to it:
what is your (more than reduct-physicist)
take on "energy" - and
if I may, add to it on "information" as
well?
And a private question: do you
have a website where I could learn more about your whereabouts/whatabouts?
Thanks again
John M
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, July 09, 2004 4:25
AM
Subject: My Wrap-Up: RR-centric
"Process" Definition?
Hi John M:
All the points
you raise are valid, as is most of what Ionel was kind enough to offer. In
fact, I would say that all of what has been offered in response to
my original question is valid from one perspective or another... that is,
within one context or another.
You're not going to see me
defending a reductionist perspective in any kind of thoroughgoing way as a
general epistemological approach...at least not as a
superior one. But it has its utility. Operationally, I'm a
pragmatist, by which I mean that the final arbiter of the
"rightness" of any methodology is the answer to the bottom-line question,
"Does it yield useful results?",
wherein usefulness is determined by one's purpose in asking the question
in the first place.
I defend everyone's right to bring volitional
purpose into the endeavor of scientific inquiry, as long as that purpose
is subject to the overriding constraints of observation and natural
law. To state it succinctly (if somewhat quaintly), the universe is
smarter than we are.
Purpose is a motivating impetus to inquiry, but it's not a
constraint...except maybe to
the extent that, if the inquiring minds' impetus is not possessed
with a big enough burn to know, those of faint heart will wimp out at the
first substantial challenge. I like RR's way of dealing with that: let the problem guide you toward its own
solution. With that attitude, the work of discovery becomes
more like play. J. Robert Oppenheimer said it well:
"I could
solve my most complex problems in physics if I had not given up the way
of thinking common to children at
play."
The
inseparability of the purpose of the inquiring mind from the nature and
results of the inquiry itself is, by now, an unarguable aspect of the way
the universe works, as we can best perceive it or infer it. Well...I guess
there are probably some folks who would argue about that inseparability,
but I'm not one of them. Contemporary physics chased the
reductionist perspective to an epistemological dead-end in quantum theory.
In attempting to reconcile the theory with the reality it purports to
describe, the ultimate test is empirical -- exactly as it should be
-- and that's where it dead-ends:
"OK...we've got a great handle
on the velocity of the electron (actually, the momentum)...now where
exactly is the doggone thing???!!"
Well, that's the
problem, isn't it...you can't really tell; if you're going to insist on
knowing a great deal about the momentum, you're going to have to accept
knowing a great deal less about position, and it's not because nature
decided to be perverse about it. The reason "uncertainty is conserved", as
I like to state it, is that you can't drive the uncertainty out of the
model when you've built it in from the very beginning. Same thing as in
the quantum measurement problem, which is the fruit of seeds sown long ago
in the assumptions made about how we define "quantity". It worked, as long
as we didn't look too closely.
The reductionist paradigm assumes
that, no matter how closely we look, we can always look even
more closely. Heisenberg revealed that notion as a
prejudice. It's a prejudice that we can shake off as long as we
stick to a view of physical reality that's constructed from idealized
systems as its building blocks -- for example, chambers partitioned by
adiabatic walls (no such thing), or objects moving on frictionless
surfaces (ditto) -- and we get away with it in the same way that a blues
guitarist gets away with not being in perfect tune at the live gig. "Close enough for blues" is a real-world
methodology that accommodates Context "A" -- playing live in a bar on
Saturday night, where the receiving ethanol-infested minds don't much care
about an eighth tone one way or the other. But in Context "B" -- the
recording studio -- you use a different standard.
It's the
same way in science. What works for describing a system of billiard balls
or the ballistic trajectories of artillery shells doesn't work in
describing something as "simple" as a hydrogen atom with absolute
precision. There's a different purpose involved in each case. If you
assume that the same purpose applies, eventually that assumption breaks
down. It's just a natural consequence of the different kinds of knowledge
one wants to obtain in studying different kinds of systems. I would argue
that a hydrogen atom isn't anywhere near as simple as it is presumed to
be. Consequently, the nature of one's assumptions have deep ramifications
in scientific inquiry in the sub-atomic domain.
Sounds
"obvious"...right? It's anything but obvious. Christiaan
Morgenstern said:
"The
obvious is that which is never seen until someone expresses it
simply."
Along comes RR, who simply states it in a
matter-of-fact, unapologetic way, and BAM!... you'd think Giordano Bruno
had come back from his immolation at the stake to pester the conventional
"wisdom" with dangerous new heresies. But as far as I can tell, RR has
only thought his way through to the end of a chain of reasoning that
others did not have the imagination, or the clarity of thought (or perhaps
the guts) to face.
I acknowledge that one coiuld infer an implicit
assumption at the root of my original question... namely, that there is
some sort of... uh, übercontext
in which a general definition of process would be universally applicable.
Stated that way, I would find myself in rapid back-pedaling mode. I'd have
hoped that my experience as a physicist would have educated me out of such
an epistemological frame of reference. I have no evidence that the
existence of such an übercontext
is anything more than a prejudicial hypothesis -- and not a particularly
tenable one, at that. I think I know better.
Having thus qualified
my question as not being presumptive of such a prejudice, I still have
enough firm ground to stand on in knowing what my purpose was in asking the original
question:
Here on
planet Earth, in the 21st century, given the nature of the specific
kinds of complex systems I'm working with, is it possible to construct,
infer, deduce, induce, or otherwise cobble together a working definition
of "process" that captures the underlying sense of what I mean
when I talk about processes in general?
As it turned out, the
one I thunk up and posted earlier was good enough for that purpose.
Further discussion might be interesting, but by definition such discussion
serves a different purpose than the one that motivated my question. In
other words, a different definition of "process" addresses a different
context. That's perfectly valid, as long as one is clear about how that
context relates to one's purpose in extending the inquiry further.
Since my original purpose was satisfied by my definition, it's
end-of-impetus for me... in that specific
case.
So, in the end, Judith
nailed it right out of the gate (as usual): Ultimately, you can draw the
criteria by which you define "general" as widely or as tightly as you
like, but no matter what scope or range of real-world conditions those
criteria establish, the very act of specifying them automatically defines
a context, and we're right back
to the way RR most likely would have answered my question... with another
question: "In what context?" The
imp. [Him, I mean...well, actually, her too. ;-) (Judith, you know
exactly what I mean, don't you?!)]
As to my mention of
"far-from-equilibrium" systems, that's my Prigogine influence showing
through. I typically use the term in a much more general sense than
Prigogine did (I think), so you have to take it with at least a tablespoon
of salt. If you want my official, real-world physicist's position on the
subject of "equilibrium" here it is: "Boring." ...by which I mean, not
interesting for most of my purposes. It's also not real. Any system that's
truly in equilibrium is hiding out from "the rest of the universe" -- and
I'm not even sure that's possible in any absolute or permanent sense.
Gravity is pretty pervasive, you know.
Some have equated
equilibrium with death, but if death is the termination of all life
processes, then the very thing called "the system" isn't even really the
same system any more once it's dead. In that case, the system doesn't "go
to equilibrium"; rather, it ceases to exist as a coherent system. After
it's dead, it exchanges energy and information with its environment in
entirely different ways...all of them just as irreversible as the ones it
used when it was alive, except that now it cannot maintain coherence; it
dissipates its own structure, not
just the available energy & information it finds in its environment.
That's a very different kind of "dissipation" than what Prigogine referred
to in his concept of "far-from-equilibrium, dissipative structures".
Anyhow, I don't have any problem with the concept of "equilibrium"
as Prigogine used it. Like the rest of our conceptual tools, it's
context-dependent. All equilibrium "states" are, as you have correctly
pointed out, really just snapshots of continuous processes. For example,
the concept of punctuated equilibrium in evolution is a tool by which we
can view speciation as a kind of quantized process, with relatively long
periods of little change, punctuated by discontinuities that occur over
much shorter periods of great change. The living systems that reside in
the long-duration periods are hardly in "equilibrium" with their
respective environments, but that's not the context in which the concept
of "punctuated equilibrium" is useful. IOW, it's not congruent with the
purpose for which the conceptual tool was created.
So we're back
to context-dependency as an epistemological absolute. Like everything else
in science, equilibrium is a concept that can be used as a tool by which
comparisons can be made. It's a reference point... an anchorpoint for
discussion or description within a given context. If we don't bother to
define the context, we don't really know what we're talking about. We have
to start somewhere. We keep the parts that work, jettison (or stash for
later retrieval) the parts that don't, and hope we can find them later
when we (invariably) realize that our very concept of "what doesn't work"
is a decision based on imperfect, incomplete information about whatever
we're studying. No tool is perfect for all tasks; if such a tool existed,
my workshop and laboratory would look very different...very sparsely
accommodated, very simple. As it is, they are...er, "very richly
entailed", as RR might say.
Of course, my predilection for
stashing all the stuff that "didn't work" contributes to that effect.
(heh)
Best regards,
Pete
John M wrote:
Hi, Pete,
as I indicated in my reflect to Ionel, I
have some 2nd thoughts upon your general (process, that
is).
"process (general): The sequence of energy or information
exchanges that effect or define a system?s transition between an initial
state and a final state."
I cannot refer to this "en. or info
xchngs" since I have no idea what you mean by "energy" (used, however,
all over physix).
Info is also a term to be identified in
this usage. Finally I may suggest to ponder "changes" for "exchanges" -
can be 1 way.
I accept 'something' that "effects
or defines". That's more than what I scribbled (influencing only).
However I strongly objected
in the first reading to restrict the "process" concept to changes
between (the system's) initial and final state. You correctly identified
this point in the subsequent text - so no objection.
"System in a different context" and
"process space" seem to me as pertaining to (reductionistic) limited
topical model-systems.
while I am all for the practicality of
reductionist endeavors, I like and use the result of such: our
technology, in cleaning up the theoretical meanings I would keep away
from the cut-off, limited models and their discussion. A 'natural
system' (as I understand RR's wording - and so far nobody objected over
many months I asked for it on this list) meaning the 'maximum model'
with unlimited connections - has no 'different context' or 'process
space'.
One word on 'far from equilibrium': a
reductionist snapshot called equilibrium is an artifact in a world of
ceaseless changes.
It shows the XVIII-XIXc primitive
(scientific) view of "the world as a THING". Complex is everything,
unless we cut it into boundaries, when the formed model 'seems'
less complex.
Where do we go from here?
Regards
John M (previous content snipped)
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