|
Tim was right on the mark in his assessment of how I was using the
word "natural" as a description for "system" in my post. My wording was
actually "naturally occurring system" which meant that these systems did not
spontaneously self-organize and yet they were being used as models for systems
which DID.
However, this discussion got me to thinking of the
duality present in the potential use of the word "natural"...
My father's work tends to use the word "natural" to refer to any
real system in the universe, as opposed to "formal" systems (models).
"Let us suppose we have a natural system "N" which has a Formalism
(model) we will designate as "F"..." However, in the machine
metaphor, one is using a human-made system (natural in that sense, or
not) as a model for other "natural" systems. He, of course, felt this
was inappropriate, for several reasons. The main reason has to do with a big
difference between human-made systems and systems that "Nature"
makes.
If we accept the designation that a machine is also a "natural"
system; a real system in the universe, then what is it about
machines that makes the use of "machine" as a model for
other "natural" systems inappropriate? Is it, perhaps, that the
appropriate-ness is connected to whether the natural system it is intended
to model was a spontaneously self-organized system or a constructed system...?
To use a constructed system as a model for a self-organized system
may represent the modeling relation that does not commute. There is too
much of a difference, in relational ways (or entailments) within
one--- to compare it with the relational entailments in the
organization of the other.
However, I think it is also possible that there is more going on
here than just that (even though that ought to be sufficient to dispence with
the machine metaphor as a model for all natural systems). Constructed systems
are different in origin from ones that naturally occur as a spontaneous
phenomenon. I think that constructed systems, whether they are constructed
by humans or beavers or hermit crabs, are not fully entailed systems but are
chimerical add-ons to the systems that created them. All tools, technologies, or
other constructions are of this nature, and cannot be divorced from their
relation to the system which constructed them without losing essential
information. In fact, I would argue that such a system could not be understood
very well at all without including the relational information,
which utilizes Final Causation in a prominent way.
In the talk I gave at Asilomar last summer, I used the example of a
violin (and bow) as a system that could not be analyzed usefully via a
reductionist mode and/or the machine metaphor. No amount of
analytical study of the violin and bow is going to tell us anything about
what a violin is for-- or what it can do when played by a skilled musician.
In fact, I posit that all human constructed systems have the "stench" of human
entailment patterns all over them and this is precisely what has muddied the
scientific waters: We try in science to divorce the human-ness from the
machine metaphor and it is not possible.
Judith
From: Tim Gwinn
To: *** Sent: Thursday, February 10, 2005 6:06 PM Subject: Re: Humans and nature JohnM, I think the term 'natural' (as in "naturally occurring") often carries a connotation derived from the first definition of 'nature' in Webster's Dictionary: "1. the material world, esp. as surrounding humankind and existing independently of human activities.". Thus, 'natural' can imply: "independent of human activity". This connotation is commonly used not only with regard to machines not being 'natural', but also to things like ecosystems, in the sense that the presence of humans is sometimes considered to alter or harm some otherwise 'natural' ecosystem. Another definition of 'nature' encompasses all the material world, including humans. With that definition, machines are thereby products of 'natural' activity and so are "naturally occurring", as would anything else in the universe. It depends on the definition used at the time. I think Judith clearly meant the former definition. Regards, Tim |