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To be honest, my
feeling is that the person truly at fault here is the author of the paper you
excerpted. It seems to me that the author never bothered to
do her own homework for what was apparently her Master's thesis according
to the URL!! In the list of references, she does not list any from
Rosen:
Instead of doing
her own research, she relied upon three papers she most likely just
culled by surfing the web. Two from Don M.:
and one from
Fioretti:
In his first
paper, Don does include a (slightly edited) quote from FM (p. 112)
of Rosen's definition of complexity at that time (1978). In the second
paper, Don has a definition that is - to my mind - an attempt to combine the
definitions of complexity in FM and AS. He does not ascribe his definition
of complexity directly to Rosen. But then he states "Rosen spent his life
refining this idea." which certainly implies that this would have been
a phrasing Rosen would have agreed with.
Fioretti cites
AS as the reference but the definition he gives (which is not a quote)
also seems to be an attempt to combine and condense the definitions from FM and
AS, and yet he ascribes it to Rosen.
I don't agree with
Don's or Fioretti's wordings, although I understand how both are intended to
convey the notion of Rosennean complexity. But to someone not familiar with
Rosen already, I think they do mislead. I also note that all three papers are
prior to 2000 and so they did not necessarily have the more concise definitions
of complexity in Essays available to them to quote.
My feeling is
that there are ALOT of incorrect/inadequate/misleading/etc. "definitions" of
Rosennean complexity strewn across the web if one looks for them. Some seem
to be misunderstandings, others are off-hand mischaracterizations, others are
willful misconstructions to suit some agenda. I don't think you can ever amend
that situation. Not that it justifies the errors, but in some part
confusion exists also because Rosen himself rephrased and refined his
definition of 'complexity' over the years, giving the world something of a
moving target to try to characterize.
I think that the
only way to counteract incorrect definitions on the web (and elsewhere) is to
prominently provide a correct one. If people are willing to read someone else's
characterization of Rosennean complexity (or anything else, for that matter) on
the web, and take it as if it was authoritative without checking first
sources, then there is little one can do. But at least by providing an
alternative - a characterization of Rosennean complexity that is in fact
authoritative, then there is some chance that you'll counteract the inevitable
misinformation that has, and likely always will, exist.
Regards,
Tim
As I was researching various definitions of complexity on the
web, I came across something that needs to be addressed by me. The issue in
the excerpt I include below, and the link to the larger document, is that
another person's characterization of my father's work is what is taken to be
representative of the work itself. In this particular case, it is Don
Mikulecky's characterization, which is incorrect and is skewed by his own
definitions of what complexity means. I was afraid this might happen, and it
has.
What does the group suggest I do about this? I can't find a
current email for the writer, who is clearly a very intelligent person and who
is also on the right track in defining complexity. But there needs to be some
means to redress the stupidity ascribed, unfairly, to Robert Rosen, here.
It's infuriating.
The second
definition of complexity, as relative to the observer, is that provided by
Mikulecky (1999: 2), who defines complexity as ?the property of a real world
system that is manifest in the inability of any one formalism being adequate
to capture all its properties?. This definition requires that we find
distinctly different ways of interacting with systems, in that the formal
systems of successful models are not derivable from each other (Mikulecky
1999). Thus ?a system is complex to the extent that we have more than
one distinct way of interacting with it? (Mikulecky 1995: 4). The spirit of
this formalism, although ascribed to the work of Robert
Rosen, can also be found in the writings of George Klir (see
1988: section 5.8). A system is considered simple if one description is
considered sufficient to describe the interactions of the system, it is
complex when this fails to be true (Mikulecky 1995). Mikulecky (1995: 7)
notes that ?Rosen points out that even a stone, which seems
simple to us, will be a complex system to a geologist, merely because of the
myriad of ways the geologist has of interacting with the stone?. Thus
under the Newtonian paradigm the world appears complex as we discover the
aspects of it that the Newtonian paradigm failed to capture (Mikulecky
1999).
As with Mikulecky (1995 and 1999), the third
definition to be described is also based on the work of Robert Rosen, ?who
argues that an observer sees a system as ?complex? when he has more then one
single description of it, and these descriptions cannot be reduced to one?
(Fioretti 1996: 3). Thus according to Fioretti (1996: 4) ?a system is
seen as ?complex? by its observer when, due to the presence of a
self-referential loop, the observer can never compile a finite list of the
behaviours the system will exhibit?. Fioretti?s definition of complexity
is specifically aimed at the social sciences. Under Fioretti?s (1996)
view the system does not possess ?complexity?, that it is not an intrinsic
property of the system, rather it is the adjective that the observer attaches
to it.
Link:
http://www.geog.umd.edu/gis/literature/theses/Jochen's%20students/Femke%20Reitsma/Complexity%20Masters%20thesis/4-.doc
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