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Re: Reductionist philosophy

Judith and Tim,

As I said in my post beginning, I was expressing irritation at Rosen's labeling entire fields of science, whole classes of scientists as well as individual scientists as "reductionists" and criticizing their research strategies. My only point was to suggest that such labeling should not be propagated on Tim's list. I was agreeing with John that this blanket labeling is not fair. I don't like to be labeled as a reductionist or be told I have a "mindset" and I don't know anybody who does.

Rosen: "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].

Judith: This is turning around what he actually said.

HP: What do you mean? This is what he actually said. As you say:
 
Judith: 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.

HP: What is wrong with molecular biology? Try to understand that doing detailed experiments is not necessarily the result of what you see as "a reductionist frame of reference" or "mindset." Even if it is, so what? Consider that it may be only one aspect of a carefully thought out strategy by very intelligent and expert biologists. For example, look at the detailed experiments on Caenorhabditis elegans http://www.biotech.missouri.edu/Dauer-World/index.html the nematode that we know more about than any other organism because of over 30 years of painstaking experiments on its DNA sequence and the development of its 959 cells from a single cell. 

I do not agree with Rosen that, "the machine metaphor is what drives, and justifies" these biological experiments. The justification was much more complex, but the basic motivation is that C. elegans is a good "model organism" which is a key concept in biology, what Rosen should see as an analog system. From these detailed molecular mechanisms we have learned many things about hierarchical organization and function in human development, metabolic control, pattern recognition, ageing and death. ["You have made your way from worm to man, and much within you is still worm."  Nietzsche's Zarathustra]

Judith: 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.

HP: Do you think science requires this ideological litmus test? Why does the machine metaphor have to go?  Why do you think the detailed models of molecular mechanisms in worms are in conflict with their higher level relational models of organization and function?

I repeat what I said: There are many beautiful physics and biological models out there that answer questions that are interesting and important. If they satisfy the modeling relation, it is irrelevant whether they can be fit into a reductionist metaphysics or not.

Howard



Try reading Rosen LI Sec. 11C, D, E  where he sounds like you can't do it that way. You can't fractionate phenotype or consider it a chemical concept. He says, "In this section and the next, we will consider the identification of somatic phenotype with chemistry as mandated by the sequence hypothesis. Our conclusion will be that it is false, unless chemistry itself is redefined" (p. 263). He says it is an "astonishing claim" that biological forms and morphogenesis are ultimately chemical. It's all a "terrible mistake." I'm abbreviating, but read the whole (pp. 258-267) so you can't claim its out of context. I call this an unfair and irritating assessment.

As I said, I think it is because of Rosen was irritated that his wording was so caustic. Words have effects and his words produce a real disconnect here. Agreed, Rosen would not want to look at worms in such detail, and that's fine. But there are no terrible mistakes or false conclusions in the worm runners detailed experiments. Furthermore, the founder of C. elegans research, Sidney Brenner, has written about the complexity of this worm and understands as well as Rosen that detailed experiments are not enough to understand its organization. In fact, organization is now the focus of research. He is not a reductionist, nor are all of the hundreds of biologists who study worms.


Howard







 
 
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