Distortions on Wikipedia entry for Robert Rosen

I wanted to note that the current entry (as of 21:26 28 Sep 04) for Robert Rosen at Wikipedia.org (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Rosen) contains what I consider to be, several glaring distortions. I want to make some entry corrections, but I wanted to toss this out to the listmembers prior to doing so.

1) That his book Anticipatory Systems is "mainly concerned with what he termed the modelling relationship".

This statement utterly misses the point of AS as a study of anticipatory systems and their models.

2) That "organization" is not captured by "differential equations but using category theory. This study, Rosen says, must be independent from which constitutes a living system."

I cannot tell if this is just badly mangled English or confusion, but it misrepresents the role of relational models with respect to organisms, and it does not make clear why different formalisms (diffeqs and category theory) are required for different types of models.

Unnecesary conflation of final cause with teleology has been one of the reasons final causes (and anticipatory systems) have been repulsive to science. 'Function' for Rosen need not imply telos:

4) "The notion that life can be described as correspondence between some kind of ideal form independent of observable entities (organization) and an abstraction (a mathematical structure) is remarkably similar to Platonism."

This incorrectly tries to make relational mathematical models appear to be somehow less credible than dynamical mathematical models. elational models are no more Platonic than mathematical models. Also, the idea that it is "independent of observable entities" is incorrect (what it does do is change what our notion of an observable must be to include functional processes and organization) and misses the distinction between a model and a material realization of that model.

5) Regarding evolution, it states: "The proposed solution for this problem is embracing entailment in evolution, citing the works of Ernest (sic) Haeckel and his idea of ?ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny?, René Thom's Catastrophe Theory and D'Arcy Thompson's On Growth and Form."

This phrasing suggests that Rosen's "proposed solution" (in LI sec. 11G) includes promoting Haeckel's and Thompson's ideas. This is not at all the case. They are instead used as historical examples of attempts at understanding entailment in evolution.

6) "Questions about Rosen's mathematical underpinnings of "relational biology" have been raised in a paper authored by Christopher Landauer and Kirstie L. Bellman which claims that that some of the mathematical "proofs" used by Rosen are dubious."

One the one hand, myself, Aloisius Louie, and Don Mikulecky all rebut this paper as one which fails to even comprehend Rosen's concepts and therefore is a bogus charge. So I am inclined to simply delete this remark. On the other hand, I don't want to erase debate, so I could link to my rebuttal. But then again Wikipedia is not really the forum for exchanges of ideas.

7) "Moreover, the idea that is possible to establish a correspondence relation between languages and ideal or abstract entities different but related to physical objects has been repudiated in a broad sense from disciplines like lingustics and philosophy of language."

I have no idea what is the basis for this assertion. Nor does it specify what it is intended to refute. My guess is that it intends to refute the modeling relation. However, science is predicated upon being able to make mathematical models of the physical world. I am inclined to strike the remark entirely.

Several of these statement almost seem to be willful attempts to discredit Rosen's work by use of misleading or incorrect portrayal of his ideas. I wonder if others here get that same impression.