*I was away from the list for most of yesterday, and so missed the explosion. I have to say, I think Tim is entirely justified in his decision, especially on the basis of one sentence:*
** Howard Pattee wrote: Why does the machine metaphor have to go?
**
*All of Robert Rosen's work was generated because the scientific tools he needed to answer his own questions in Biology did not exist. He tried using the tools "on the shelf" (physics/mathematics/chemistry/etc), making sure he educated himself as to what they had been used for and what they COULD be used for... and it was not possible. Once he ascertained that it was not possible to deal with foundational questions in Biology with current scientific methodology and approach, it was time to turn to the foundations of that scientific methodology and approach and examine IT; looking for the reasons why Biological systems should present such an impervious territory to science, at anything deeper than a superficial level. *
** *He documented all that he discovered, including his thought process, his conclusions, and his proofs. He then used the tools he created to answer not only his own foundational questions, but achieved a great deal more than that, into the bargain. *
** *Before he died, my father said to me that the written body of work had, within it, all that anybody needed to continue the work. "It's all in there," he said. Clearly, his mode of writing can be difficult to follow. However, I have discovered that using a different mode doesn't help with that and I think Howard's post is a case in point. All of Robert Rosen's work /answers that very question./*
** *How many times have I rephrased these same ideas??? Just in the last couple weeks I found a new way to depict what is lacking in the entailment patterns of machines.... sheesh! I'm done! I remember once having a discussion with my Dad about his response to attacks on his work. He was so unafraid-- and he never got mad. He said, "I'm not out to convince anybody of anything. This isn't a religion. I'm not an apostle. I don't care whether people believe it or not; that's not what I'm here for. I'm doing what I want to do and I'm fulfilling a duty to report what I find. End of story." He said that there comes a time, after you say things once, then say them twice, when you have to recognize that someone does not want to see it, does not want to hear or let the ideas in. Howard is one of those who cannot let go of long standing belief structures. I don't understand why he would subscribe to this list! If my father, himself, couldn't get Howard to see what he was talking about, what chance do I have???*
** *After the Center at SUNY Buffalo was dismantled, and Dad went to Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, he wrote Anticipatory Systems and Fundamentals of Measurement, in that order, although they were published the other way around. This was a major breakthrough, and was the culmination of the insights that began two years prior to the move, during that sabbatical year he spent in Santa Barbara, at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions. In retrospect, it appears that most of Dad's work at Buffalo was just a prelude to the really huge breakthroughs, and those breakthroughs led Robert Rosen in a direction that old friends and colleagues could not always follow. I find it rather sad and I'm relieved that my father is not here to know this. It would hurt him. He considered Pattee a /friend/. *
** *"I come, not to praise Caesar, but to damn him."*
** *"Et tu, Brute?"*
** *Robert Rosen would say, "Hey, guess what, old /friend... /I'm not Caesar. And what do you think you're going to achieve now, with that knife? I'm already dead! You can't kill the work. "*
*Judith Rosen*
----- Original Message -----
*From:* Howard Pattee <mailto:***> *To:* *** <mailto:***> *Sent:* Thursday, February 03, 2005 5:52 PM *Subject:* Re: [ROSEN] 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.
Reduction/ism,/ in contrast, is the general belief that all
SYSTEMS are of this type. Indeed, Reduction/ism/ 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