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I share much of Jack's frustration with certain aspects of
discussion on this list, and some of it has been earned by Jack, himself, for
mischaracterizing what I've posted. However, I have concluded that this kind of
irritation is an unavoidable component of discussion amongst a bunch of
intelligent, free-thinking human beings, and the only way to avoid it is to
either use the delete button more often or unsubscribe from the list. I suggest
using the delete button. To unsubscribe would ensure that you toss out the good
with the bad and this list has generated some fantastic discussions which may
prove inspirational to people via the archives, for many years to
come.
Much of my own frustration, since we are airing our frustrations,
comes from having to rephrase arguments because certain accusations keep coming
up as if they were never discussed. Howard's latest post is a case in
point.
Howard, how it can be that you managed to spend so many years,
early and middle of my father's career, in close contact with him and yet you do
not understand him at all.... baffles the hell out of me. You impute to him all
kinds of attitudes that are not applicable, you characterize his ideas that
disagree with yours as being unreasonable (and worse), and you pull quotes out
of context and then mischaracterize what he meant. This is when you begin to
resemble Salieri, to me. For example:
Howard wrote:
To wit: In the Preface of LI Rosen attributes blanket reductionist views to both physicists and biologists. He calls Rutherford a reductionist and contrasts him with anti-reductionist Hutchins (both noted for their hyperbolic quips) and concludes, ". . . they cannot both be right." Why not? Based on another quip of Rutherford's, Rosen's attributes reductionism to physics in these words: . . . "there is no other science than physics; everything else we call science is ultimately a special case of physics" [LI, p. 3]. This portrayal entirely misses the point of his comparison,
Howard. In comparing and contrasting Hutchins and Rutherford, he (Robert
Rosen) uses them as diametrically opposed viewpoints, to illustrate the
animosity between "hard" (quantitative) science and "soft" (qualitative)
science. His point is that there should be no animosity because science
needs them both. Just as he felt that science needs both experiment
and theory. Indeed, he was being facetious when he said "They cannot both
be right."!!!!! He wanted the reader to respond exactly as you did, above--
except I'm sure he would expect you to know that he was in agreement with you on
the issue! It's obvious that they can both be right, just as it's
obvious that they are both incomplete on their own. It's an issue of balance.
He also makes the point, as the book progresses, that what is
considered "hard"science is based on the machine metaphor and the reductionist
frame of reference. What has been considered "soft" scientifically is anything
that cannot be empirically measured in isolation, and yet complex organization
is precisely of that category. His main argument was that in order to study
complex systems, we need to add some new modes of approach that are every
bit as rigorously "scientific" as empirical measurements, but are more
useful in studying complex systems.
HP: He also attributes reductionism to molecular biologists in the following words: "But above all, the machine metaphor (supported of course by the corpus of modern physics) is what drives, and justifies, the reductionism so characteristic of modern biology" [LI p. 21]. This is turning around what he actually said. He attributes the
huge explosion of molecular biology development to a reductionist frame of
reference. He's calling it like he sees it. You apparently don't agree, which is
fine. But I see the evidence every time I take my littlest daughter to a
specialist. A reductionist frame of reference is one which seeks to take a large
system apart into ever-smaller components/parts/pieces... always going from
larger systems to smaller subsystems to smaller components to smaller parts, to
pieces of parts, to pieces of pieces.... Whereas the relational approach goes
from any system into system context; from a system to a larger system. So,
while modeling will always have aspects of reduction involved,
relational modeling gives us ways of approaching complex systems in ways that
preserve the relations. His whole point: Science needs to expand
beyond what it has already developed (not "get rid of it"). In
order to do that, the machine metaphor has to go. Period. It's a mindset that is
not applicable, even to machines, really.
HP: Reductionism is not a property of a model!
Actually, it is (if we leave the "ism" off the word). Even of a
relational model. Even of an "internal predictive model". Any model is a
reduction. But it's not reduction-"ism". That resides in the modeler, who would
then create models that are "reductionist".
HP: Reductionism is a relation between two or more models.
It can be this, but I think the statement would be more accurate if
it said "Reductionism is a relation between human perspective and the universe,
such that the human perspective mistakes the sum-total of what it perceives for
what there is." A reductionist model would be one that is labeled "all
there is" and includes the name of some complex system.
And while I'm on the subject, I would like to dispell the notion
from Jack's post that Robert Rosen viewed reductionistic science per se as "a
form of cancer". I've never said that, nor did he. What he said is that the
machine metaphor makes the reductionist mind-set equatable to "science" and
everything not in that mode is considered "soft" or unscientific. His point was
that this limits science to a study of simple systems, which leaves most of
the universe outside its purview. He felt that kind of attitude was stupid,
frankly, and I agree.
I have posted many times that Robert Rosen didn't view
"reductionism" as a "dirty word" or think it should be banned, etc. His
attitude was inclusional; we need all approaches. Just don't limit your mind...
He was accused of "trashing physics", here on the list, and my response was that
he was actually out to "save" physics, and keep it the general science it
purports to be, by expanding it to include notions of relational causality and
the importance of organization in governing such relations in the
universe. Someone coming along, reading the archives, may not see
those posts and I feel such statements about Robert Rosen must be
rebutted, in the same form in which the statements are made. Hence, my
frustration with the need to repeat such things again, here-- because these
statements keep being made.
HP: Rosen uses reductionism as the general metaphysical belief that all
models are formally derivable from, or reducible to, what Rosen calls a "largest
model."
Rosen defines what you have described above as the
outcome of modeling simple systems. Their organizations are
computable. Reductionism, in contrast, is the general belief that
all SYSTEMS are of this type. Indeed, Reductionism is the belief
that organization confers no important information that cannot be reconstituted
from a throrough study of the parts.
HP: This "hard" reductionism is often associated with Laplacean determinism
that assumes everything can in principle be predicted and explained by basic
laws of physics.
I think you misunderstand what his beef is, Howard. His view was
that all models are a "reduction" but of course, the use of modeling in science
is not what makes a scientist "reductionist". He came out and said as much, over
and over again, in his work and I have said it here on the list many times as
well. A reductionist approach is a mind-set; one which presumes that you
won't lose critical information that you can't get back, in taking a system
apart. That's directly a result of the machine metaphor, which is alive and well
in the foundations of science today. The foundations are what he said have
to change. The fact that many scientists today are actively looking for new ways
to address some of the aspects Robert Rosen was seeking to address is a nice
development-- except they are not questioning the foundations. They don't even
look at what's there, or question the reasons why certain things are considered
"unscientific". There will be very negative consequences to leaving
the flaws in place.
HP: Many postings on this list have apparently taken their
cue from Life Itself and misuse the phrase "reductionist model" dismissively
referring to physical and biological models.
It is clear that you do not like the material in Life, Itself,
Howard. You made that obvious quite some time ago. In fact, once Dad moved
to Nova Scotia, in 1975, you and he saw very little of each other and his main
scientific development was really just taking flight. So, the biggest
discoveries were yet to come, when your "conversation" waned. It's
a fact that his realization that the foundations were at fault had several
consequences. Among them, it meant that he completely discarded the notions of
complexity built by von Neumann, for example-- and you seem to find that utterly
intolerable. To me, it looks perfectly logical and justified. Dad's work
was mostly foundational, after all. Von Neumann's work is a causalty of the
consequences of leaving the flaws in the foundation in place; they get
incorporated into the logic of one's work.
Judith Rosen
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