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Over the past couple weeks, among other things, I have been trying
to get the boxes of my father's stuff a bit more organized in my basement-- I am
donating his reference library to Virginia Commonwealth University, where
Dr. Tarynn Witten, a former PhD student of my father's, is a professor, and a
friend of mine, Carlisle Childress, is also working. I met Carlisle through Don
M's list, so I owe Don a karmic thank you for that. Carlisle put me in touch
with Tarynn. The rest, I suppose, is history in the making...
Among the things I've been finding are stacks of working notes. As
I've mentioned before, Robert Rosen's modus operandi was to warm up (he usually
got up before the "crack of dawn," made coffee, and put on Bach or some other
classical music... and sat at the typewriter, which became a computer-- right
around this time, in fact) typing stream-of-consciousness questions and
ideas, thoughts, puzzles, possibilities, etc, before getting down to actually
writing whatever paper or book he was working on. The notes I found were from
the early 1990's, so they were at his peak, before his health crashed in late
1996. I'm going to take the time to type a few excerpts in here for the list
because I find them alternately thought-provoking and hysterically funny. His
sense of humor was incredibly well-developed. Enjoy:
Robert Rosen wrote:
"Can I put the debate of semantics vs. syntactics entirely
in terms of non-fractionability vs. fractionability? Oughts and shoulds are
associated with semantics and non-fractionabilities? Non-fractionabilities deal
with acquired rather than innate?! At least, if "innate" is only
syntax.
In comparing "real" number theory to a formalization, the
non-surrogacy of the latter for the former should take the form of acquired;
added on via experience. Not predictable or even describably in terms of innates
(i.e. syntax) alone. And furthermore, there is no physical fractionation process
into innate vs. acquired in a system, although we presume a fractionation
between system and environment or ambience.
Oughts and shoulds are tied up with one's models. Which in
turn are assertions of surrogacy. Their outputs are like programs?! "I OUGHT to
behave THIS WAY now..." Why? I can ask why, but the program or behavior itself
is NOT innate. To understand the behavior, you need to know the model on which
it is based. The model answers "why?" in a unique way. And the model cannot be
fractionated from the system doing the behaving. Is it true that only innate
things can be fractionated??
Just as in perceptrons. "E-ness" cannot be fractionated
from an E.
It's going to take a while to get the hang of this new
format... I can't even figure out how to change the top
margin.
[His first computer!][He could type like the wind on an
electric typewriter...]
Instead of comparing a contemporary science and
non-science, could I possibly compare a science now with a science yesterday?
And ask about the limitations of the latter as compared with the
former?
Could these limitations pose themselves as final causation
or impredicativities in the latter? Could they be expressed as oughts or
shoulds??? These are interesting possibilities. Could they also arise in
comparing a complex with a simple system? A formalization as compared with what
is not formalizable?
Is it enough to say that science admits complex systems?
There are even scientists who don't think so. A Newtonian like Laplace wouldn't
think so.
Does complexity let you deal with oughts or shoulds
(values)? If a system acts off the future, has predictive models, you must take
the models into account. That gets you into impredicativities, and away from
pure syntax.
It gets you into final causation. That is so even if the
models are wrong (so that the behaviors they generate are
maladaptive).
Models, like conditioning itself, can be either innate
(unconditioned) or acquired. Remember my distinction between phenocopy and
"genocopy". Many models are acquired. And I have said that people fight about
models, not about "objective" present circumstances. So they fight mostly about
what is acquired.
What is wrong with science is that it has identified
"objective" with physics. It should rather identify itself with biology. Biology
cannot be "reduced" to physics. That is one characterization of
complexity.
If you try to reduce biology to physics, or arithmetic to
syntax, you will get emergence. Emergence is a die-effect of asserting a
reduction. I want to say that a science of complex systems is big enough to talk
"scientifically" about oughts or shoulds. Or downward causations. Or multiple
time-scales.
Einstein often said that the understanding of facts
requires a free creation of the intellect. Hence a mind (subjective). A THEORY.
Models are based on surrogacies between systems; the extent to which one can be
substituted for another without changing something. Surrogacy is a kind of
congruence.
A SUDDEN THOUGHT
If an organism forms a predictive model of itself, then
THE ENTROPY OF SOMETHING IS DECREASING? Because of the redundancy which the
model represents. Can I use this to connect modelling and PHYSICS in a new
way??
Does the Aristotelian idea of science ("the why of
things") involve any kind of "reverse engineering"?
Reverse engineering does indeed seek to answer "why?" -
questions about a system of interest.
Could I "reverse-engineer" a mathematical
theorem?
Or an anticipatory (complex) system?
What is the relation of a universal set (like a basis
set), which lets me build or simulate anything, to the reverse engineering of a
system? The fact that I can fit any piece of a curve with polynomials, or any
planetary orbit with epicycles, I have called an "extraneous mathematical
artifact". So I can "reverse engineer" a curve into polynomials. But 6that
doesn't mean that's how the curve was generated. There is no forward causal
relation between epicycles and orbits, for example.
Could I "reverse-engineer" a conditioned
reflex?
I must presume that the process of reverse engineering,
applied to a system, "loses no information" about the system. IT'S A FORM OF
FRACTIONATION; REDUCTIONISM. And it's reversible.
But where does this bear on limitations of science? Well,
at least via the idea that all systems can be "reverse-engineered". I SAY THIS
IS AN ASSERTION THAT ALL SYSTEMS ARE SIMPLE. If not "all systems are simple",
then (a) we can have anticipation and all the rest of it, and (b) not leave the
precincts of science. We can have the action of mind on body (conditioning,
placebo effects, etc.). We can have functions, we can have intrinsic values, and
all the rest of it.
This seems to hark back to my paper on Commensurability,
where I explicitly related measurement of intervals to their construction. If
commensurability fails, then the two processes become different. I cannot
"reverse-engineer" [mathematical symbol, which looks
like a check-mark and the number 2], say, into a finite
family of intervals of rational length.
WHY DO PEOPLE HATE SCIENCE SO MUCH?
a. IT'S REMOTE. (hence, limited away from what is concrete
and near).
b. IT PERTAINS, AT BEST, TO ONLY ONE WAY OF KNOWING.
(hence, limited away from what is inaccessible to that way of
knowing).
c. IT'S RESPONSIBLE FOR OUR PRESENT PROBLEMS; PROBLEMS
WHICH CAN ONLY GET WORSE AS SCIENCE PROGRESSES. (hence, limited away from the
roots of those problems, limited away from solving those problems; indeed, a
cause of those very problems; making the world increasingly worse as it
advances).
Re (b): Hutchins felt that scientists were in fact
insufferable; arrogant and impudent; confusing reality with objectivity, facts
with understanding or principle. Remember his remarks about the Great
Conversation. He held that the real question was "what should I do now?". "What
should we do now, why should we do these things?". The Great Conversation was,
he felt, about politics and religion.
What I am trying to argue is that science is characterized
by what it is about, not by any method or way of knowing. Something becomes
scientific not by means of a particular way of knowing, or of doing, but by what
it is about. It is about truth. It is about finding the consequents of
hypotheses: IF a, then what? IF b, why b?
Is A true? (observation).
If A is true, what else is true?
(prediction).
Why is A true? (causality).
Pretty benign. In this context, a "limitation" of science,
would be something like: (a) an inherent inability to tell whether A is true or
not; (b) an inherent inability to find out what A implies; (c) an inability to
find out what implies A.
Still pretty benign. Why then is science perceived as so
dangerous? What did e.g. Frankenstein do that was so terrible? Which of these
questions was he trying to answer?
[My father always felt the mob was the monster in the
Frankenstein movies. His feelings towards Dr. Frankenstein could best be summed
up as utter contempt for the man's total lack of the notion of
"should"...]
Could I analogize Frankenstein's creation of a monster
with, say, Fermi's building of a nuclear reactor in the heart of downtown
Chicago?
Well, the both created, along with their specific
creations, an unforeseeable risk to those around them. And in the case of
Frankenstein, an unforeseeable risk to their creation as well.
SIDE-EFFECTS?!"
OK... that's enough typing for now. I see dates on some of these
pages. All around January 1994.
Sorry for any unintended typos! There are some weird
words in the above... I've never seen the word "perceptrons"... but I left
it as it was, because his vocabulary was a whole lot bigger than mine... If
anyone needs help sorting this stuff out, lemme know...
Judith
BioTheory: An E-Journal of General Science in the Rosennean Complexity
Paradigm http://www.rosen-enterprises.com/RobertRosen/BioTheoryLaunch.htm
Website address: http://www.rosen-enterprises.com/ |