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Howard,
I find this an interesting discussion. I have a few comments on
your comments, below:
HP: I disagree with your blanket opinion of science. I know many
scientists. Most of them are well-aware of the modeling condition. They
consciously do not limit their thinking to any paradigm. They use every
conceptual trick or strategy to escape whatever abstraction is popular because
they know that is how novel discoveries are made.
In my opinion, [Judith's statement] is not a fair picture of how
the scientists that I know do their work. You may have individual scientists in
mind, and I might agree about these individuals, but not scientists
generally.
I was speaking of "science" generally-- it's much harder to
generalize about "scientists" than to generalize about science, because
scientists are more than just their "science" aspect. I am of the
belief that human beings are, in general, impossible to generalize. (Yes, I'm
teasing you.) Obviously, my father was a scientist and he was not trying to make
living organisms fit into the model of a machine. So I believe there's hope for
science, but not if it remains an inbred, closed orthodoxy built on
machine-metaphor-based physics.
HP: Rosen's ideas are known to some of them, but as yet it is not clear how
these ideas can apply to empirical models.
How is it not clear?
It seems to me that Biosemiotics is a step in the right direction.
Modeling of relationships within organization would be a consequence of
what they're trying to learn. However, what needs to happen is that the paradigm
of "science" itself must expand because physics still states that all
relations are figments of human imagination. In contrast, Rosennean Complexity
states, among other things, that human imagination is a consequence of
relations and science is a creation of human imagination.
Matter and causality, as we experience them, could not exist
without the interaction of time and space. The interaction of time and space is
already a complex system, whose organization is the basis for most of the "Laws
of Nature". Therefore, any matter-based science trying to learn about the Laws
of Nature is already involving organizational matters, yet pretending the word
"organizational" doesn't exist.
HP: We agree, as do many biologists, at least since Jakob von Uexkull
(Theoretical Biology, 1920) who recognized that what any organism can measure or
encode determines what that organism's model of the world (Umwelt) will look
like. We are no exception. The field of biosemiotics is based on this
recognition. Most of the money and time resources in both physics and biology
are spent trying to extend by instrumentation what we can observe or encode
about nature beyond our natural senses.
My concern about Biosemiotics and about bio-informatics and about
various other types of "complexity" is all due to the fact that none of these
"newer" disciplines question the underlying assumptions in
Physics/Science... They ignore them. So those assumptions are allowed
to stand-- and I think that's both foolish and dangerous. Medical research
is a biological pursuit and yet is modeled on Physics. Ecology is also modeled
on Physics. Physics sets the standard of what is "scientific", even in
Biology, therefore the assumptions of physics (that every system is a
machine, is fractionable, and can be learned about reductionistically, etc) must
be questioned. The alternative is an assumption that the universe is relational
and that relational constraints determine both matter and causality.
Judith
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, December 13, 2004 8:02
PM
Subject: Re: [ROSEN] meanings of
model
At 08:27 AM 12/13/04 -0500, Judith wrote:
Howard, could you enlarge on this
statement, please:
HP: I am a Constructivist, so I would phrase
your question conversely: when do the limits of physical laws impinge on the
capacity of formal symbols to
have meaning? That is, when do the purely
syntactic expressions of formal
mathematics go beyond what can be
measured or encoded by nature?
[snip]
Judith: My main area of concern
is your phrasing; "the limits of physical laws". Do you mean physics-based
laws? Or do you mean what my father referred to as "Natural Law" (meaning
whatever consistencies are involved in generating/constraining the universe,
whether we know about these consistencies or not)?
HP: In
addition my belief that the "strategy of constructivism" is the safest for
model-building, I am, along with Rosen, a metaphysical realist. We both
believe that the universe follows natural or physical laws that we try to
discover by any means we can imagine. If we haven't discovered the exact laws
or if we at present missed some laws, we still believe there are real laws
running the universe that would exist whether we exist or not.
Judith: Another area of concern
is the phrasing; "what can be measured or encoded by nature". I doubt that
even my father would say he could tell you the limits of what nature can or
cannot do. He could only generalize and say that natural systems cannot
behave in ways inconsistent with Natural Law.
HP: We
agree
Judith: Science in general is way
behind; a small subset of all there is.
HP: We agree
Judith: Science has deliberately
limited itself by adopting the machine metaphor which is the same as using a
machine to model nature and forgetting that it's a model.
HP:
I disagree with your blanket opinion of science. I know many scientists. Most
of them are well-aware of the modeling condition. They consciously do not
limit their thinking to any paradigm. They use every conceptual trick or
strategy to escape whatever abstraction is popular because they know that is
how novel discoveries are made. Rosen's ideas are known to some of them, but
as yet it is not clear how these ideas can apply to empirical models.
Judith: So now they are trying to
make nature into a system that "realizes" their model and only the evidence
which seems to fit is allowed to be called "scientific".
HP:
In my opinion, that is not a fair picture of how the scientists that I know do
their work. You may have individual scientists in mind, and I might agree
about these individuals, but not scientists generally.
Judith: On the other hand, just
because WE are natural systems which measure and encode, that doesn't mean
we do it well or accurately in any terms but our own. In other words, our
choices of what to measure and how to measure (in terms of what and how
other natural systems are measuring) may not reflect much useful reality
according to those natural systems. Their modes of measurement and encoding
may be beyond our ability to perceive, much less quantify or qualify. So how
can we say what can be measured or encoded by nature? To do so would
require that we measure their ability!
HP: We agree, as do
many biologists, at least since Jakob von Uexkull (Theoretical Biology, 1920)
who recognized that what any organism can measure or encode determines what
that organism's model of the world (Umwelt) will look like. We are no
exception. The field of biosemiotics is based on this recognition. Most of the
money and time resources in both physics and biology are spent trying to
extend by instrumentation what we can observe or encode about nature beyond
our natural senses.
Howard
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