Sent: Tuesday, January 04, 2005 9:26
PM
Subject: Re: Anyone up to a Rosennean
challenge?
Hi John M.
You will be pleased to know that you are right
in your interpretations of what Anticipatory Systems Theory says and what it
doesn't say, insofar as your post gave me a glimpse of it. More detailed
comments, interspersed, below:
John M. wrote: about
prediction: I don't vouch for an orthodox definition, but IMO prediction is
used to apply a model to calculate details of another one. Now RR had a
different idea about this, anticipation is not a prediction, I think it is
rather a facilitation of the possible ways that may happen.
This is basically true, although he did say that living systems
posess "internal predictive models" of themselves and their
environments/contexts, the contexts including multiple scales of time
as time interacts with environment. However, this is merely the best
terminology he could come up with to describe something that is not a material
thing and therefore he was actually describing qualities of some aspect
which he said must exist and be interacting in order to produce the behaviors
living systems exhibit. Reductionists find all that very inexact and
unsatisfying but life is often the same way, isn't it. If I were a religious
person, I might describe God as an Abstract Expressionist.
J.M.: Since I have not studied AS, please correct me, (if possible in
less than 60 lines). What you did in your post: you justified what I said by
contrasting it ("According to Robert Rosen...") exactly my point: RR's
definition is different from the classical scientific prediction.
You
explained perfectly why we should separate the RR-type anticipation from the
classical physical sciences' prediction. Your version of (other) anticipation
(not Rosennian) is the role of prophets or Nostradamus. Nobody in reductionist
science can 'anticipate' future events based on the observation of their
limited models, because the "rest of the world" (neglected as 'beyond
boundaries irrelevance') screws up the applied (limited) cause's
consequences.
Well, to be fair, I would argue that this is not quite true.
Reductionists can certainly predict a lot of things, with great accuracy,
based on those limited models-- even when it comes to complex systems... but
as various systems' complexity plays a role in the interactions, the accuracy
of their predictions goes down, and gets worse and worse over time. But any
model is, by nature, a limited version of the system being modeled and this is
true of the internal predictive models (in Anticipatory Systems
Theory) as well.
No way to step up in complexities from a limited model to a less
limited model (eg. from a closed map into an encompassing territory). As you
expressed it in RR's words: there are "side effects". Unaccountably. Open for
20:20 or better hindsight. Not foresight.
RR probably did not come up
to the point I deduced from having done lots of (chemical) analyses: Analysis
is a reductionist process, it considers ONLY the already known and includable
components and tries to explain everything within those.
Believe it or not, RR was very adept in the laboratory. He went
through a long experimental phase, albeit in his childhood. He was a scary
kid, I'm sure! If we ever get the chance to sit down at a pub over a beer or
something else, I'll tell you some of the stories he told me. By his late
teens, though, he had concluded that phase of his development and looked back
on things like his butterfly specimen collection with horror at his
own inability to see the horror of it as he was acquiring it. He developed a
reverence for life that deepened as he aged.
Mental or math analysis does not lead to such automatically,
because they are more open to crossing the set boundaries by open thought and
routine (wider) math-knowledge. You have to ask a critic (me) of
chemical analysis. Not a perpetrator, who is enthused by his art.
Even in
RR's anticipation (I think...) you cannot include ALL of the natural system
circumstances, (totality), so while it may be more efficient, it still may
include 'surprizes'. It is not a precise calculation of the future for the
future.
Yes, this is all true. In fact, Complex systems are never
exactly, precisely... anything. Change is the only constant so even with a
single living organism as your study subject, the observables at any given
moment are only a small subset of the potential and the observables are often
the "effects" of various interactions. Secondly, the fact that the "internal
predictive models" are not infallible is proof, to me, that they are not
linked to any sort of "real" future, but rather are based on evolutionary
past. And because they are models, they are by nature incomplete. Therefore,
precision isn't an applicable concept.
Not "about" is my point: it is: "within". And I still find it
counterproductive in the respect of another word-variation:
No such thing
in another sense. "WE" have to prove it, they will not disprove any unproven
idea. Why should they? Against themselves in an "anticipatory" (ha ha) way,
PRESUMING that it exists? I believe it is a mistake to assume that our
opponents think with our mind, rather WE should think with theirs to make a
point. Exactly what RR did in his books.
Hmmm, I think you
misunderstand what I am proposing with my "Rosennean Challenge" post.
Because... what you say, above, is what I was intending in my post: Don't
assume "they" think with our mind, instead we should think with theirs to make
a point. I didn't put it like that, but that's what I was thinking as I wrote.
I'm not suggesting we try to prove complexity from within simplicity. I'm
suggesting something more like... when in Rome, speak Roman (but
tell them about New York).
Judith