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Hi Steve,
The hard part about definitions is that they are used differently
by different minds, even when you try to specify the meanings. I
interpret the first quote to mean that how words are arranged in context is
what generates meaning. The organization of all aspects which go into the
creation of language including the mechanical rules of alphabet, letters and
pronunciations, grammar, etc. plus the evolved set of words with their meanings
and connotations, differentiated by contexts and so forth-- It's a
complex system, which is why dissecting language is of limited value and it's
also why computer geniuses are having trouble creating one artificially that
will work in the machine we call a computer.
The second quote is actually an interpretation of what "Rosen
says":
"Rosen says that
organization (or form or relation) is as much
or
more a part of reality as particles."
What Rosen said did not use the word "form". The notion
of relation or "Relational causality" is, in my father's
view, something fundamental in the universe. It both implies, and is
implied by, "organization". The actual quote has a great deal more to it than
the interpretation:
Robert Rosen said; "The organization of a natural system
(and in particular, of a biological organism) is at least as much a part of its
material reality as the specific particles that constitute it at a given time,
perhaps indeed more so."
Let's analyze this sentence:
The organization of a system refers to all aspects of the system,
not just its structure or its energy potentials or time or subsystems or
functions or relations between any/all of the above... It refers to some
unifying configuration of all of the above and whatever we're missing with
our human limitations. It's a concept that is trans-dimensional.
Does all material reality depend entirely on material particles?
What is "Matter"? Not all systems are particle-based, you see... Not all
relations are between particles, either. In fact, relations-- in and
of themselves-- are not "material" things yet there is
causality-potential inherent in them. The material particles in a living
organism are constantly changing due to metabolism and repair. We talked about
this once, I seem to recall; that the particles completely change over some
interval of time, but the organization remains. You're still you, even though
the matter you are made out of has been cycling over and over every 8 weeks or
so. Does that mean that you could retain your organization without any material
particles at all? No. Material particles are a non-fractionable aspect of your
organization. The types of material particles also is important, because
the behaviors and potentials of variously organized atoms, molecules, etc, are
part of the organization too. But the specific individual particles? No. As he
put it, if you chase the specific particles themselves, you'll follow them right
through an organism and miss the organism completely. What he believed was that
we need to follow the causality, not particles. Causality can reveal
non-material aspects of organization like "relational" interaction, etc.
Does that clarify?
Judith
PS: The word "form", to me, is not a synonym of "organization"
unless you specify that (like the Star Trek usage of "life form").
Otherwise, it tends to read as a more limited notion than the word
"organization" does.
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, December 02, 2004 10:31
AM
Subject: Re: [ROSEN] Operational
Closure
I apologize for a stupid question. On this list people
often
use the word "form" in a way whose meaning is
often elusive to me. Just in
this thread Howard and
Tim used multiple times. Can someone define what
is
the precise meaning of the word "form" in the
following
sentences. Two are from Howard's last email
and one if from Spencer-Brown's
Laws of Form.
"My own favorite analogy is natural language
where
only form generates
meaning."
"To
experience the world clearly, we must abandon
existence to truth, truth to
indication, indication to
form, and form to void." p.101, Laws of
Form
--- Howard Pattee <***>
wrote:
> Tim,
>
> I'm not sure where or if we disagree.
Let's leave
> Plato out of it, since we may disagree on how he
>
thought.
>
> What do you think Rosen means by "material
reality"
> if it is not, as you say, what we impute back to the
>
natural system from our models? Rosen says that
> organization (or form
or relation) is as much or
> more a part of reality as particles. I am
quite sure
> he means that there exists in reality (that is,
>
ontologically) something that corresponds via
> encoding to the
mathematical model of organization,
> and that this is what is
important. Of course, this
> is in addition to other encodings that
model
> particles. It makes no sense in his epistemology to
>
speak merely of "alluding to the relative importance
> of a model," as
you say, without the necessary
> implication of the corresponding
importance of what
> the models encodes. Only a solipsist can omit
such
> an implication, and Rosen was not a solipsist.
>
>
The reason I am quite sure of this is that
> epistemology and the
requirements of the modeling
> relation were central to our discussions
at Buffalo.
> In fact, that is where they were developed,
>
stimulated primarily from reading Hertz's Principles
> of Mechanics. The
central idea is based on the
> limitations of what we observe, what
Rosen called
> encoding, and what is also called measurement or
>
pattern recognition. To put it bluntly, we say what
> our models tell us
depends entirely on how we encode
> our observations.
>
>
One of Rosen's favorite examples was the active site
> of an enzyme
where an ontological form is recognized
> by the enzyme, leading to its
specific catalytic
> action. One way of encoding this site is by
x-ray
> diffraction leading to a molecular (particle) model
> of
the site. But it is known that different
> molecules can produce the
same site and the same
> action, so it is not the particles but the site
that
> biologically is the more important. Physical
> observables
do not measure or encode such an
> organized form.
>
>
Rosen explains this in LI, pp. 272-275, but here is
> a much earlier
quote:
>
> "If you take something like an enzyme, which
you
> feel is carrying out some kind of measurement, it's
> got a
particular mode of functional activity which
> has a description. That
description, as I said, is
> very far from the description of the
molecule which
> carries the site."
> [snip]
> "Again, I
suggested that the kinds of observables
> that were involved in the
action of such a thing as
> an active site were not the ones that
were
> conveniently measured in physics; that the
> biological
systems saw each other through different
> eyes than we would use if we
were looking at these
> systems. So, I suggested that there were
other
> observables that were involved explicitly in these
>
biological interactions, biological measurements."
> [Rosen and Pattee
on CBC-FM IDEAS. Published as A
> Question of Physics: Conversations in
Physics and
> Biology, Paul Buckley and David Peat, eds. Univ.
of
> Toronto Press, 1979]
>
> My own favorite analogy is
natural language where
> only form generates meaning. A sentence, like
an
> active site, cannot be fractionated, and the same
> meaning
can be expressed in words of thousands of
> different languages.
Studying individual words
> (reductionism) is utterly useless. This is
the view
> that motivates the new field of Biosemiotics that I
>
think Rosen would appreciate.
>
> Howard
>
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