----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, September 15, 2004 12:42
PM
Subject: Re: Could you give me your
analysis of this?
John M and all;
> Conform with your additional defining: this is a necessary, but
by far not
> sufficent description. ("one of") - IMO complex
systems (any, as everything
> else) have open connections with 'the
world outside our model', do we
> recognize them, or not. We cannot list
all sufficient causes, unless we
> restrict the topical view to be
explained. I still doubt the 'working'
> closed loops without (un)closed
triggering, maybe indirectly. "A system does
> not DECIDE by
itself."
In the discussion about atomic organization and its similarities
to the organization of living systems:
> John M. wrote: In my
reductionist chemistry, however, I can condone a "repair" of an
> atom:
- from its anion-form, ('plus' electron) by discharging that electron
>
for certain stability -reconfirmation into the more stable (?)
(neutral)
> atomic format. In certain cases it goes spontaneously as
rearrangement.
> (Indeed a stability-induced "closed to efficient
causation"). However the
> opposite process: to take 'in' an electron
from the 'environment' into its
> 'body' is metabolism at its
best.
> Restoration is repair, just as "imbibing" from the
environment and building
> it into its body is metabolism. Should we
call an atom "alive"? I may do it.
> Maybe you can paste other
'necessary' conditions into the satate of 'being
> alive' to exclude
atoms.
I believe what you are seeing is complexity. That's the
similarity. Not life. In my father's work, life or "livingness" is
an extension, a magnification, of the effects of complex organization in
a system.
The stability of atomic structure is very different from the
behavior of living organisms, even though both are due to complexity. Complex
systems do manifest a stability that is not found in simple systems or
mechanisms. However, atoms do not "repair" themselves anymore than water does
when it is displaced by an object and then the displacement is removed. That
is not repair, as the term was intended in an (M,R)-System. There is far less
entailment in an atom than in an organism and thus what I'm going to
call a "lesser magnitude" of complex organization.
Neither is "ice absorbing heat from the sun on a spring day and
melting" a description of a process comparable to "metabolism". You may
say these are just language distinctions, but language is intended to mean
something. It refers to qualities in the natural world; those qualities are
what they are, regardless of what we call them. As Shakespeare pointed out; "A
Rose, by any other name, would smell as sweet." But, if we are both supposedly
speaking English, and you tell me there is a "skunk" in my garden... we will
not be communicating very well.
Judith