Re: Topic Reminder

[Tim Gwinn <***>]

Steve,

It wasn't your one post that specifically triggered my reminder. It was more
of a general concern of where threads *could* digress to, so I thought it
prudent to comment prior to that happening. Not that such digressions are
without merit - I just feel they can take us astray of the focus of the
list.

Also, to reiterate, I am not setting the discussion of policy (which I
consider "...how to organize society.." to fall under) as off-limits.
Rather, as I stated, where science intersects with policy, then it demands -
in my opinion - a degree of scrutiny, rigor and skepticism equal to any
other application of scientific argument.If we assert that some policy X is
preferable by some criteria to some policy Y, then what is our specific
scientific justification for that assertion? Does (or can) the model on
which a policy is based avoid side-effects? What does this policy
presuppose? Etc. What I want to avoid (and I am not accusing you of this)
are policy debates that degenerate to ideological debates, or that we make
the mistake of accepting some inherent presupposition(s) unchallenged,
failing to heed the lessons learned from the close examination of the
Newtonian presuppositions.

Regards,
Tim

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ROSEN Forum [mailto:*** Behalf Of Steve
> Johnson
> Sent: Saturday, January 08, 2005 9:43 AM
> To: ***
> Subject: Re: Topic Reminder
>
>
> Tim,
>
> I agree with the need to stay on topic but I think it
> is not a political but a system theory question about
> how to organize human society so it does not have the
> collective intelligence of a bacterium colony with
> respect to its environment. RR said repeatedly that
> one of the lessons from Biology is that there are
> lessons to be learned from Biology and specifically
> for sociology. I feel that the discussion that Jamie
> and Judith are having is relevant in that regard.
>
> The reason for my last post (which probably triggered
> your reminder) was not just to say how awful it is
> that the Arctic is melting. The reason I thought this
> article was interesting and different from the general
> environmental catastrophe news is that governments are
> looking forward to this as a commerical opportunity.
>
> However, I can see that you want this list to be more
> strictly focussed on Biology and Rosennean
> epistemological paradigm so I will stick to that. My
> apologies for the spam.
>
>
> - Steve