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James Rose wrote: But what is it you want to
achieve? To find an alternative way to
phrase entailment and
relational causality into conventional vernacular?
Would that help Rosennean
complexity achieve acceptability? Or do
you see something that your Dad
didn't appreciate about his own work?
It isn't so much "phrasing in conventional vernacular" that's
important as it is showing various disciplines what it means, using each
discipline's own language and context to do it with. The phrasing I would use in
medical applications would be different than the phrasing I would use in social
sciences or in physics... The way Robert Rosen's work is written was, he said,
"as if I'm talking to myself", but not really... it's more accurate to say it's
as if he's taking people on a tour of his scientific mind, with nearly all the
other parts of "the house" shut. So it is a more formal (as in hospitality, not
physics "formalism ) kind of situation, where you straighten and tidy
things up and are very polite. He didn't carry on conversations the way he
"spoke" in his books.
As for your question about whether I see something he didn't
"appreciate" about his own work; No, I don't think that's it. He knew what the
work was capable of, which is why he pursued it and wrote it down. But he wasn't
interested in "convincing" anybody beyond that. I think I've probably mentioned
that he was an inordinately self-directed individual... it was both a gift and a
curse, depending on the context. So the way you put it: "But if
you want to say he had the seeds of paradigms coordination
in his writings,
and that you will give them voice, then you have
to show he knew that his
system had that eventual/inventive capacity
and that he was moving there
himself." Yes, that's essentially what I'm saying. I am
different in my motivations than he was; not that convincing
people is my goal, but convincing is part of the means to achieve
my ultimate goal, which is to prevent the kind of wholesale destruction of this
planet that I foresee if current limited scientific models are used to make
decisions about everything we do.
It's personal. I have three children. My father's work could help
our species generate a much healthier future environment, and my children are
going to inherit whatever environment we leave them. I also
have the littlest daughter's medical issues and physical handicaps to contend
with which bring us into far more proximity with medical science--and its
limitations-- than I would like . Just as my father was frustrated with the
constant application of physics-based models on human physiology while dealing
with his diabetes, I have to deal with the inability of most specialists to keep
more than one aspect of human physiology in their head at the same time and they
make decisions which affect my baby! So there's the added issue of my
maternal instinct, which is bigger than I am and goes positively ballistic
when doctor's say (as they did, in the N.I.C.U.); "Well, we can always
catheterize to get a urine sample if we want to measure _______..."
Ooooooooh!!!!! (I persuaded them to... change their minds on that
one.)
So this is something that will be positively affected too, by
adopting a wider scientific paradigm at the foundations. In effect, what Robert
Rosen was advocating was sort of like adopting the Centigrade/Celsius system
along with the one we already use, rather than dispensing with Fahrenheit and
switching. Having familiarity with more than one mode of approach gives us more
options and more capability. I think it boils down to what I call "common
sense".
Judith
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, January 05, 2005 12:08
AM
Subject: Re: [ROSEN] Anyone up to a
Rosennean challenge?
Hi Judith,
I haven't been doing much writing in quite a
while but would
like to step from my hibernation to get in this
conversation
if it's alright.
> Judith Rosen wrote:
>
> Hi Everyone,
>
> One of my father's main tenets was that
the physics-based models don't
> accurately describe even the systems
they were created to describe.
Sometimes, minds and thoughts are
constrained to the experiences
they have had and the patterns they inure
to. The concept beneath
your 'challenge' asks the question of whether
your father's insights
are up to the task of besting the existing criteria
of science ..
the capacity to extrapolate and predict .. to specify an
example in
event-space that was unconsidered before .. or not.
He
confronted the weaknesses and deficiencies of 'modeling science'
but can
his ideas not just stand as anarchy, but be even-handed
and even-minded
enough to laud and surpass 'modeling science's
best notable quality: ..
the capacity to predict ..?
And then more recently, you ask if its
possible to find words within
the exiting languaging of science, to get the
job done.
:-)
Quite an effort .. on all counts.
But what
is it you want to achieve? To find an alternative way to
phrase
entailment and relational causality into conventional vernacular?
Would
that help Rosennean complexity achieve acceptibility? Or do
you see
something that your Dad didn't appreciate about his own work?
To stand
on a mountain peak and talk about a far reality that
friends waiting in the
valley beneath can't see, let alone
verbalize is one thing. To
additionally chart a path through
the novel territory so that everyone can
arrive at that
far place together and appreciate the wholeness of
not
just the original vision, but to live and know the reality/ies of
getting around and among the perceptions, back and forth, and
bathe in
the appreciation of all the views and each of their
respective values and
realities .. is something else.
Does a system, any system .. in its
most pure nascent stages ..
'know' its eventual capacities? Is a
seed privy to the achievement
'tree-hood' .. or hold within itself the
eventual quality of what
it is to behave as a tree in a windstorm or within
an ecology?
Does a pen .. in the words of a modern songtress from India
..
'Know what is exciting, what is writing, on a page?"?
Can a
predicative science statement be generated from the
observed notion of a
process at once identifiable as 'entailment'?
:-)
RR took a
class-vision, a paradigm of percepts, and identified new
aspects, alternate
aspects. The importance of those aspects can't
be diminished because
they didn't conform to the testing criteria
of the previous standards that
were/are in use and which remain
in juxtaposition to his
new-thoughts.
But if you want to say he had the seeds of paradigms
coordination
in his writings, and that you will give them voice, then you
have
to show he knew that his system had that eventual/inventive
capacity
and that he was moving there himself.
If you can't then you
just might have to admit that a piece
of the puzzle eluded even RR at his
highest genius. Again, not
detracting his achievement, but using his
very own standards
to show a country yet awaiting fulfillment.
Any
word - voiced - , any notion - expressed - , precludes the scope
of
possibilities that existed in the image of possibilities that
were/are
present in the time -before- instantiation and coming-into-being.
Once
you 'prove' and bring into existence a child from noosperm
cells
conjoining, how do you 'predict' all the other lives and
personalities
that were precluded by that one life 'becoming'?
Yet
you know - from hard scientific realism - that the scope of
that
option-space, that all those other persons/personalities
were/are
part of the 'natural holistic and vast' system of being that
RR
and others now appreciate as the true 'complexity' of being.
So
the goal's scope of predictiveness needs a re-directed shape, Judith.
You
have to think in new directions and new qualia and new criteria.
The
nature of prediction has to mature and morph. If the grand scale of
holism is to be handled -- to the point of being all inclusive even
of
old-form models now out of vogue -- then you have to image a
whole
different class of predictions. Ones that fit RR's
standards. :-)
Jamie
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