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Re: Fundamental problems in Physics

So, if I can offer a summary, the matter should be settled if we can agree that Rosen's integrative statements refer to a set of practical models of behavior, whereas his strong statement here does not refer to that at all, but to the "machine metaphor" of reality itself - in other words the extremism that had developed around the concept of a mechanistic reality. Hence mechanistic models can be extremely useful tools in a practical sense, but "entirely wrong and must be discarded" as a picture of nature itself.

does that work?
JK

Judith Rosen wrote:

I think this is a good place to start:


Judith: As he [Rosen] said in Life, Itself, "The machine metaphor isn't
just a little bit wrong, it is entirely wrong and must be discarded."



HP: It is difficult to see this statement as more than an expression of
irritation. I have never heard anything like this from Rosen, and it
contradicts his long-standing concept of complexity as systems that require
multiple models. He always accepted physical models as one useful type of
model. What might save the statement would be to replace "The machine
metaphor . . ." with a phrase like, "To claim that models should be only
machine metaphors . . ."

Well, you are correctly reading his irritation, but it is far more than just irritation. He's stating it like it is, with none of the careful diplomacy that he had used up to that point, which seemed to be obscuring the message too much for it to get across clearly. What is the machine metaphor? His description of it was that Rene Descartes saw some new-fangled automata and was blown away by them. He found them reminiscent of natural systems. After giving it some thought, Descartes came out with "All natural systems are like machines." Newton came along and created Newtonian Mechanics, which seemed to explain "the machinery of the universe"...

What do you do when various hypotheses seem to be partly proved by natural events, and partly disproved at the same time? Some folks choose to fiddle around at the half-disproven end, trying to tinker with various details until it can be proven ("If we apply this set of transformations to Newtonian equations, we can get it to add up over here!")(Oops, then it's not adding up on this side anymore... Wait a minute....) Other folks choose to just work with the proven stuff, cuz it works most of the time, and you can live a whole life and win Nobel Prizes that way. My father's strategy, when he was stymied trying to use Physics to answer Biological questions, was to look at why Physics should be half proven and half disproven... what was the relation between the proven half and the disproven half? Why did people make the assumptions they did in each half? What were they looking at when they made those assumptions? What was the "state of the art" at that point in history? What were the exigencies they were dealing with? His analysis revealed that the so-called proven half was not really proving what they thought. That pissed people off-- "Hey, don't mess with that! That's working!!! Fix the other half, but leave that part alone!" His response was, in effect, "It's not working like you think it is." The reaction was a big "F___ OFF! I won a Nobel Prize with that, I'll have you know!"

But the truth doesn't go away just because we may want it to. No natural system is "like a machine"-- indeed, even machines aren't like science thinks they are. They are not free-standing systems that spontaneously self-organized; these are contraptions that humans created for a reason. This is part of their epistemology and they cannot be understood without factoring in that human element, much less be used as THE model for all natural systems in scientific analysis. Machines are really chimerical extensions of human beings just as a discarded mollusk shell is turned into a technology employed by a hermit crab to serve a purpose of its own devising.

To try and pretend a machine is not something we created for our own reasons is silly, and yet it's exactly what is at the basis of the machine metaphor and the machine metaphor is at the basis of Physics, which is at the basis of all science. People may be saying they aren't holding onto that philosophy, but if they're using the tools generated by that philosophy, the tools are flawed. I also question whether the physicists of which you speak are really aware of their own assumptions where physics is concerned. People rarely question the foundations unless they have a good reason. My father would not have done so if he hadn't been stymied by the inapplicability of the tools to Biological questions.

Secondly, I would dispute that his statement "The machine metaphor is not just a little bit wrong, it is entirely wrong and must be discarded." contradicts in any way his assertion that complex systems require multiple modes of modeling. How do you arrive at that conclusion? These things are not related.

Judith

----- Original Message ----- From: Howard Pattee
To: ***
Sent: Wednesday, December 15, 2004 12:43 AM
Subject: Re: [ROSEN] Fundamental problems in Physics


At 10:10 AM 12/14/04 -0500, Judith wrote:
>I am perfectly willing to believe that you personally know physicists who
>don't subscribe to the machine metaphor as a philosophy of how the
>universe is, in fact I know a few myself. But if they aren't changing the
>basis on which physics is predicated, then nothing changes.

HP: My only point was that most physicists are no longer reductionists.
I also doubt that you understand the basis of modern physics, and why
should you? It is not easy to state precisely even if you have studied it.
An important point is that its models are not restricted to any type of
preconceived metaphor. As an ideal physicists are looking only for that
type of order in the universe that is inexorable and universal. This means
nothing can violate these laws, no matter where or when or in what context
or situation they are observed, or in what type of organization or system
they are observed in. Any violation means its not a law. Of course the
models describing these laws must also pass the Hertzian test.

Universality is often misinterpreted to claim that the laws can describe
all observables and all systems. That is not the claim! The laws describe
the relations among only a very small and weird set of observables.
"Quantum mechanics does not describe a tea party" (Bohr). Life obeys
physical laws but is not describable just by these laws. An analogy (with
obvious flaws) are traffic rules. In all civilized countries their
existence is universal and (ideally) inexorably obeyed. However, they tell
you almost nothing about where traffic is going, why there are rush hours,
or who is driving.

>Judith: As he [Rosen] said in Life, Itself, "The machine metaphor isn't
>just a little bit wrong, it is entirely wrong and must be discarded."

HP: It is difficult to see this statement as more than an expression of
irritation. I have never heard anything like this from Rosen, and it
contradicts his long-standing concept of complexity as systems that require
multiple models. He always accepted physical models as one useful type of
model. What might save the statement would be to replace "The machine
metaphor . . ." with a phrase like, "To claim that models should be only
machine metaphors . . ."

In any case, this has nothing to do with the basis of modern physics models
as I explained above.

>HP: On the other hand, I don't know any physicist that does not believe
>that there exists completely general physical laws that every living
>system must follow in detail at all levels of complexity.
>
>Judith: I think the physicists are wrong about sentence number one [above].

HP: As I explained to John K, what I mean by physical laws is what Rosen
calls natural causes. Physicists and Rosen believe that everything follows
natural causes.

Judith: Physics, as a science, is less than helpful in analyzing any
system which has an organization where the organization supplies more
"causality" than the parts alone do. Frankly, I see this as being true even
in "simple" systems, like chemical reactions, but you can pretend it isn't
and get away with it.

HP: I agree, and so do physicists. They regard chemistry as requiring
different models. Nevertheless, no fundamental physical laws are violated
by chemistry. In the traffic-rules analog, you might think of physical laws
as the stop signs and chemical reactions as the traffic.

New topic:

>HP: "The concept of Biosemiotics requires making a distinction between two
>categories, the material or physical world and the symbolic or semantic
>world. The problem is that there is no obvious way to connect the two
>categories. . . In fact, how material structures serve as signals,
>instructions, and controls is inseparable from the problem of the origin
>and evolution of life. Biosemiotics was established as a necessary
>complement to the physical-chemical reductionist approach to life that
>cannot make this crucial categorical distinction necessary for describing
>semantic information. Matter as described by physics and chemistry has no
>intrinsic function or semantics. By contrast, biosemiotics recognizes that
>life begins with function and semantics." (Pattee, J. Biosemiotics 1, in press)
>
>Judith: Again, what the above doesn't acknowledge is the foundational
>issue of how these two "worlds" (material/physical and symbolic/semantic)
>interact to make each other possible.

HP: The above paragraph is only the first paragraph of the paper, the
subject of which acknowledges: "the foundational issue of how these two
"worlds" (material/physical and symbolic/semantic) interact to make each
other possible."

I will send the whole paper if you wish, but I do not claim to have the
whole answer!

Howard