Re: Rosen, Kauffman and compatibility

[Tim Gwinn <***>]

Dan,

It seems to me that Kauffman's inquiries are at a different level of
analysis of the organism than Rosen's. Rosen's focus in "Life Itself" is on
organization of biological functions. Kauffman is focusing primarily on two
things: thermodynamics and chemistry. In your point #1, the two men may
sound superficially similar, but the grounds each of them uses for making
such a remark is completely different. Kauffman's rationale is based on the
idea that if persistent (and probably spatially confined in a membrane)
autocatalytic networks can possibly occur naturally, then there is a
possibility that such collectively autocatalytic chemical networks may be
found to occur generally.

The idea of the collectively autocatalytic network is interesting, both as a
mechanism for organism's normal operation and as part of the origin-of-life
problem, although I simply don't know how widely or seriously the idea of
collectively autocatalytic networks occuring in organisms is taken. It is
not clear to me how they would map to Rosen's (M,R)-system (or the "closed
to efficient cause" facet of that model) because a collectively
autocatalytic network is not thereby necessarily organized into biological
functions, and conversely, if biological functions utilize catalytic
processes, it is not necessary that the collectively autocatalytic networks
involved generally map in any meaningful way to the organizational layout of
biological functions. Maybe in the ecological networks you mentioned there
is a more direct relationship between the analogs of "function" and
"autocatalysis" as they are defined there.

As to "order for free", which as best I can tell is based on his work with
Boolean networks, seems to be a far cry from Rosennean complexity. The
Boolean networks are entirely "Newtonian" in the sense that they consist of
"forceless" syntactic symbols pushed around by state-transition rules. The
regularities which arise and pass for "order" suffer from an inability to
sustain themselves; instead, the "forces" maintaining the "order" are
external to the network: they come from the simulator. Rosennean complex
systems, on the other hand, will generically be rife with forces coming from
within the system itself (hence the impredicativities). All those kinds of
approaches which don't incorporate the dual nature of matter (what Rosen
called the "inertial aspects" and the "gravitational aspects" in Essays) as
capable of both imposing forces as well as having forces imposed on them are
doomed when they finally have to ask: "but how will it stay together!!??".
This seems to be what lead to Kauffman's use of the "edge of chaos" notion,
and his concern with the "work cycle" as a means of avoiding a systemic
deterioration into thermodynamics equilibrium.

Regards,
Tim


> 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