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Hi John K.
I agree with part of this statement, below, but I have some qualms
about certain aspects of it:
John Kineman wrote: The very concept of "mechanism" presumes a finite
largest model
that is therefore a reality, and yet we also understand any mechanistic theory to be an approximation to reality. Both cannot be true. Hence either the entire universe is a mechanism, and there is no complexity, or there are no real mechanisms, all of them are abstractions. It is not only "any mechanistic theory" that is an approximation to
"reality"... all of science would have to be considered the same way, including
Rosennean Complexity Theory. Even a concept like "reality" is in the eye of the
beholder, isn't it? But just because our conception of the universe is an
approximate thing, that's no reason to give up on trying to learn about the
universe, right? I don't see these things as being mutually
exclusive.
It's important to remember that Complexity in my father's
sense refers to organizational aspects. So are there "mechanisms" in the real
world? Yes. Is it an abstraction? Yes. But, so is the concept that we refer
to as "the real world". Abstraction, in this case, just means "as funneled
through the human apparatus" but since we are all humans here (presumably)...
it's not a problem. A mechanism, as defined via Rosennean Complexity Theory, is
a system with an organization that is not complex. This goes back to what
Mikulecky found impossible to grasp: that there can be simple systems created
out of complex components. But a system is not defined by it's parts,
remember?
Judith
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