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Hi John M.
I have a few comments and questions:
in 1997 the NashuaNH Complexity Symp did not even
allow Don M's lecture about RR - so he delivered his talk at an 'apocriphal' dinner-meeting, where I for one heard the RR name the first time in my life - It is quite possible that the reasons for the resistance to Don
M.'s lecture had less to do with Robert Rosen's work and more to do with Don M's
reputation. It is also possible that Lewontin, et al, were connected to (or part
of) the organizing committee, in which case my father's name is Mudd, just
like Rashevsky's.
I wonder if I remember right that RR deemed the "what is life" the wrongly formulated question? he rather identified 'living process'? Not quite. He said the question "What is life" is both incomplete
and conveys the impression that life is a "thing". He preferred the question
"Why are living organisms alive?" because it's a more comprehensive question. In
fact, he said that most "what" questions are actually "why" questions, at the
core, or they end up becoming "why" questions, eventually. Also, I tend to think
he wouldn't have defined life as a process. He would be more likely
to say that life manifests itself to the observer as a process, in
a living organism... but everything in the universe can be viewed as a process
to some degree-- space/time plus relational interaction equals endless
(continuous) change.
Atoms are complex systems and every bit as continuous, equally
a constant, unending process within their organization, as organisms. So why are
atoms not alive but organisms are? That was what he wanted to find out. His
answer was that life is a collective effect of a certain type of complex
organization (closed to efficient cause... unique, multi-level relation with
time... functional entailments... model-based behavior which he described
as "possessing an anticipatory mode of control", etc.)
As he wrote in the Prolegomena of "Life, Itself" (page
11):
"This book represents a continuation, an elaboration, and
perhaps a culmination of the circle of ideas I have expounded in two previous
monographs: "Fundamentals of Measurement and Representation of Natural Systems"
and "Anticipatory Systems". Both of these, and indeed almost all the rest of my
published scientific work, have been driven by a need to understand what it is
about organisms that confers upon them their magical characteristics, what it is
that sets life apart from all other material phenomena in the universe. That is
indeed the question of questions: What is life? What is it that enables living
things, apparently so moist, fragile, and evanescent, to persist while towering
mountains dissolve into dust, and the very continents and oceans dance into
oblivion and back? To frame this question requires an almost infinite audacity;
to strive to answer it compels an equal humility.
Ironically, the idea that life requires an explanation is
a relatively new one. To the ancients, life simply was; it was
a given; a first principle, in terms of which other things were to be explained.
Life vanished as an explanatory principle with the rise of mechanics, when
Newton showed that the mysteries of the stars and planets yielded to a few
simple rules in which life played no part, when Laplace could proudly say "Je
n'ai pas besoin de cet hypothese"; when the successive mysteries of nature
seemed to yield to understanding based on inanimate nature alone; only then was
it clear that life itself was something that had to be
explained."
On page 15:
"As a first step in our assault on the problem What is
life? it will be well to get some idea of what we are up against. Specifically,
we will try to understand what it is about the problem that has rendered it so
refractory to the combined resources of our contemporary scientific wisdom. This
will provide one way of sensing the shape of the void we need to fill and at the
same time will help set the stage for our further, more technical
developments...
Let us begin by noting the very form of this question; we
are asking why. We shall find ourselves asking "why" very often
as we proceed. The answer to such a question (and indeed there are in general
many ways to answer such a question) is to assert a "because." As we shall see
abundantly later, to ask why is to enter the realm of causality, and to propose
an answer is to posit something, to make a hypothesis. Although every physicist
must believe in causality, this attitude towards positing a "because" was set
long ago by Newton, whose proudest assertion was "hypothesis non fingo". Indeed,
as we shall see, causality in contemporary physics has evolved into a very
different kind of thing than that originally envisaged by Aristotle, a thing
geared essentially to deal with the question "what?" and to provide answers of
the form "this".
Ultimately, he concluded that while life is not a "first principle"
in the universe... complexity definitely IS. So, what John Kineman refers to as
"life" in that sense, my father referred to as "complexity". Life is a
consequence of complexity.
I hope this answers your questions? Provoked some new
ones?
Judith
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