Re: Rosennean "Cookbook"

[Tim Gwinn <***>]

Jack,

JP:
> Yabut...
>
> I don't want to sound like a complainer, but, dammit Tim, this field is
> *never* going to mature to the point of the kind of toolkit of
> approaches I asked for unless some people who have used it begin to
> explain how they used it. Right now, this list is focussing on the
> nity-grity of this or that aspect of some or other detail of this or
> that facet of ..., and few contributors, if any, are suggesting, per
> your own request, how the sayings of Doctor Rosen apply to this or
> that... (sorry for the outburst -- my keyboard made me do it).


TG: I hear ya. I think part of the reason is that this list serves multiple
purposes, and not just the creative and technical generation of mathematical
models. A list with a tighter focus specifically on explicit modelling
methods for Rosennean complex systems would be nice to have, but I am not
sure there is yet a critical mass of people for that. Maybe there is...it'd
be very interesting if there were. I imagine there is probably also some
hesitations with discussing techniques which someone understandably wants to
retain as "their own" for professional publication.  That means that most of
the explanation of previous modelling uses will have to come from reading
books or papers previously written by others. I had already emailed
Aloisius, for example, to see if it is possible for him to provide those
earlier papers that he referenced.


> I fully agree that the threads on this list are enormously valuable. At
> the same time, I salute your quest to have contributors tie the science
> they discuss to relational modeling.
>
> Consider this. Google mereotopology.  I don't know what you get when you
> scan the hits there, but I get that the remnants of the AI camp, those
> who use ontologies to model various universes of discourse, are creeping
> in the back door to relational modeling.  Barry Smith, one of the prime
> contributors to that literature, is applying the edges of relational
> modeling to medical informatics. To what extent can that literature
> serve as a kind of "tie that binds" Rosennean thinking to existing
> practicioners in parallel fields?


TG: I looked at several of Barry Smith's papers (see:
http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/). I dunno - I just don't see much meat on
all those bones. There's alot of talk in them about how wholes are made up
of parts, and parts have boundaries....but I see no productive models
arising from that. Maybe others will prove me wrong.


> Consider this. You have a small tribe right here. To what extent can the
> interactions and other relations associated with this tribe be modeled
> with Rosennean thinking?  Articulate a recipe for doing that and you've
> got an enormously useful first cut at a cookbook.


TG: What relations and what interactions specifically? Or to put it another
way, what are the observables of interest? Oops, I just saw you reply to
Judith about this paragraph....I'll respond on that filament of this thread.

Regards,
Tim