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Re: Rosen, Kauffman and compatibility

At 05:47 PM 1/25/05 -0500, Judith wrote:
But wouldn't it bother you that these two sets of ideas [Rosen and Kauffman] are coming from entirely different, incompatible explanatory directions?

HP: One must be careful here. If we are bothered by incompatibility it is usually because our naive intuition enjoys consistency and because Aristotelean logic has culturally indoctrinated consistency into our logic. It is true that a single formal model of a system must be internally consistent, but an "adequate explanation" of a system may require two or more complementary models that are formally inconsistent with each other. Rosen often used the example of a gas that can be modeled by reversible microscopic dynamics and also with irreversible statistical dynamics.

The same is often the case even with informal conceptual models. The continuous wave image of light is not compatible with the discrete particle image of light. 

Judith: If I was coming to these ideas with skepticism and ran into a situation like that, where the logic in the foundations of some Rosen/Kauffman hybrid theory were inconsistent... I'd walk away. Nature is not inconsistent.

HP: Certainly Nature is not inconsistent, but some models of Nature certainly are.

Rosennean Complexity Theory negates the basis on which Kauffman builds his theoretical structure. The logic underneath one of them is, therefore, suspect.

HP: Not necessarily. I have to think about this more. It is more likely that  the logic of Aristotle is suspect.

Howard
----- Original Message -----
From: Dan Fiscus
To: ***
Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2005 3:22 PM
Subject: Re: [ROSEN] Rosen, Kauffman and compatibility

Judith,

I am not sure that there is no way to merge them. The
big, general, synthetic ideas I have gleaned from
Kauffman's work seem very compatible with Rosen, and
even if the foundations differ the results are more alike
than different and together perhaps stronger to help
challenge and overthrow the "entrenched orthodoxy" of
mechanistic reductionist objectivist universalizing science.
Kauffman talks about:

1. Life is not miraculous or a "long shot" with very low
odds of emerging but is to be expected. This to me is
akin to Rosen saying 1) complexity is general and 2) life
and complexity are closely related.

2. The central organization of life is "collective
autocatalysis". This to me is akin to Rosen saying that
organization is key, life is closed to efficience cause (it
is its own self-making active agent) and unfractionability
is key - remove an integral part of the "collective" and
you no longer get the autocatalysis of life.

3. "Order for free" comes from getting past a threshold
in "complexity". Granted that maybe Kauffman's
complexity is more akin to complicatedness or
combinatorics, but the "order for free" part I think will
someday be seen to be compatible with the role of
organization or topology and both of these linked to
Fantappie's syntropy which we need to balance the
current over-emphasis on entropy being the only
tendency or natural direction to change.

These concepts are also compatible with work coming
out of ecological network analysis by Bob Ulanowicz
and Bernie Patten. They have found importance in
network properties such as indirect mutualism, which
Bob U. links to autocatalysis - loops within ecological
trophic webs. Bernie Patten and colleagues have
developed an idea of "network synergism" that shows
how locally seemingly negative interactions -like
predation by alligators on frogs - almost always turn
out to be beneficial even to the prey when all links,
transformations and flows are analyzed and
integrated. It is like syntropy or order for free in
ecological networks, also like collective autocatalysis,
also like the networks are closed to efficient cause,
unfractionable, topologically and organizationally
different than machines, etc.  Still Ulanowicz and
Patten don't share all of Rosen's foundations. These
two from ecosystem ecology even differ on very
fundamental opinions. Yet I see their work as having
more power in concert than alone. Like having and
using two distinct, incommensurable models for
ecosystem networks instead of just one.

Some ideas on trying to find the common ground and
compatibilities, partly so as to build and add allies even
if not perfect matches in all respects.

Dan



Judith Rosen wrote:

> *From the various summaries and quotes so far, my intuition is that
> while both sets of ideas talk about organization, Kauffman tacks the
> concept of organization onto the current scientific foundations, which
> is where his inconsistency comes from, I suspect. In contrast, Robert
> Rosen concluded the foundations were at fault in the inapplicability of
> models from physics to answer questions in biology, and he basically
> re-imagined the foundations-- /around /matters of organization. So, he
> would say that Kauffman's notion of organizational principles does not
> have a sound foundational basis to explain those principles. *
> **
> *Because of that, their work is actually incompatible even though they
> are both talking about the importance of organization. There is no way
> to "merge" them.*
> **
> *Judith*
>