Why did Rosen not popularize?

[Steve Johnson <***>]

As I was reading Howard's post about S. Kauffman's
having more ambition than Rosen I remembered reading
his (SK's) "At Home in the Universe". Rosen is an
incomparably more profound thinker compared to most
research at Santa Fe. 

The question that I have is why did he never use his
writing talent to write a popular exposition of his
ideas? His writing is beautiful compared to any genre
but for a scientist writing a science book it's quite
unparalleled. Given that wrting came so easy to him
why did he not follow Dawkings, Kaufman, and Gould to
write a version accessible not only to a biologist but
to general public?

- Steve


--- Howard Pattee <***> wrote:

> At 11:23 AM 1/24/05 +0200, Ayten wrote:
> [snip]
> >After having written these passages, I asked myself
> the question of how
> >close Kauffmann and Rosen in their views on this
> question of What is Life? I
> >also further asked myself if the main actors of
> this list as Tim, John K,
> >and Judith consider making a comparison of these
> two minds and show for us
> >similarities and dissimilarities .  .  .
> 
> HP: Here are some of my own comparisons between the
> minds of Rosen and 
> Stuart Kauffman. I have known them both personally
> and professionally for 
> many years. But first, since in the past Tim and
> Judith have misinterpreted 
> some of my critical opinions as a personal attack, I
> must emphasize that 
> any critical comments are only my academic opinion
> and do not in any way 
> detract from my close personal friendship and high
> regard for them both.
> 
> John M's intuition is correct. Here are two
> different types of scientific 
> minds that start from different backgrounds and work
> from divergent points 
> of view, ending up with completely different types
> of models. Kauffman 
> began as an MD but was attracted to experimental
> developmental biology. 
> Then, largely because of a single computer program,
> and with no significant 
> mathematical background, he morphed into a
> theoretical biologist focusing 
> on self-organization, origin of life, non-Darwinian
> evolution, and 
> development.
> 
> Rosen began studying wet biology in high school, but
> his instincts and 
> abilities were for mathematics rather than
> experimental biology. After 
> studying math and physics, it was largely because of
> the influence of 
> Rashevsky's relational models that he finally found
> that his deepest 
> interest was in how our epistemology and our
> assumptions about scientific 
> models influence our concept of life. As members of
> this list know, his 
> basic conclusion, developed as an analogy with the
> creative open-ended 
> "corpus of mathematics," was that (as in
> mathematics) formal (computable, 
> purely syntactic) models are too "impoverished" to
> capture the creative 
> open-ended novelties of life.
> 
> Kauffman's basic computer program (an elaboration of
> previous work by Ashby 
> and Walker in England) is remarkable for three
> things, its simplicity, its 
> initial randomness, and the richness of the
> interpretations he gives its 
> results. Kauffman originally discovered these
> computed results entirely 
> empirically and largely unexpectedly. The basic
> model is a randomly 
> connected network of random (boolean function) nodes
> started with random 
> initial conditions -- i.e., maximum disorder. The
> discrete states of the 
> network are just the current values of the nodes,
> and the next state is 
> completely deterministic (unless externally
> mutated). The well-known (and 
> now mathematically understood) result for low
> connectivity is that the 
> paths in the exponentially enormous state-space
> follow transient paths 
> collapsing into relatively few, short, stable limit
> cycles. Higher 
> connectivities lead to a finite analog of chaotic
> dynamics.
> 
> This behavior with various elaborations has been
> interpreted by Kauffman in 
> many ways: 1) as self-organization from complete
> disorder, 2) as a first 
> step in the origin of life, 3) as epigenetic
> canalization in development, 
> 4) as the self-organizing structures on which
> Darwinian natural selection 
> can operate, but cannot override, and 5) by allowing
> variation in 
> connectivities and by coupling nets, a model of
> meta-evolution where 
> natural selection (coevolution) chooses the "edge of
> chaos" as the most 
> adaptive condition.
> 
> It is fair to say that Rosen and Kauffman never
> formed more than a civil 
> relationship that is usual at professional meetings.
> Kauffman has much more 
> personal ambition than did Rosen and achieved a
> notoriety that in my 
> opinion (and Rosen's and many others) is not
> justified by hard evidence 
> supporting his imposing claims for his models. Rosen
> saw the behavior of 
> random nets as an obvious example of the generic
> behavior of discrete 
> dynamical systems. He saw Kauffman's many
> interpretations as simply 
> illustrating that the same formalism can be encoded
> any way you like.
> 
> On the other hand, Kauffman has suggested biological
> observables that would 
> allow empirical tests of his models. His books
> include biological evidence, 
> and are written with conventional language that
> biologists understand well 
> enough to critically discuss. Kauffman criticizes
> Rosen (as have I and 
> others) for his imposing claims written in a
> language that few biologists 
> understand, and that have as yet suggested no
> biological observables that 
> could allow a verifiable model.
> 
> I don't think any of these criticisms, while
> probably true, are 
> scientifically relevant. My current view is that
> Rosen and Kauffman are 
> thinking on different levels. Rosen's thinking is
> primarily on an epistemic 
> model. One might call it a general principle that
> any biological model must 
> satisfy to answer a "Why?" type of question. After
> all, the modeling 
> relation itself is a model. It is based on the Hertz
> condition that is not 
> itself empirically verified except that a model must
> satisfy it to give us 
> the answers we want.  An analogy is the symmetry
> principles of physical 
> models. These principles are not empirically
> testable. They are epistemic 
> conditions we discover we must place on empirical
> models to give us the 
> types of explanation or answer to the questions we
> ask.
> 
> Kauffman, on the other hand, has a simple computer
> simulation that behaves 
> by various interpretations like developing organisms
> and like an evolving 
> population. If I had to say it in < 20 words,
> Kauffman has empirical models 
> without a specific epistemology; Rosen has an
> epistemology without (as yet) 
> specific empirical models.
> 
> Howard
> 



                
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