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Hi Ayten,
I don't know why the pdf files would be giving you trouble, unless
the servers at iPowerWeb have been fluctuating or something. But I would suggest
that you download the pdf's onto your hard drive or a cd and then you should be
free of the vagaries of the electronic ebb and flow of the internet. Click file,
up at the top of the page, click "save as" and specify a name and a place on
your computer for the pdf's.
I agree that the launch has been rather bumpy! In fact, my own
papers aren't up yet! I just got back from a week out of town on
business and haven't had time to work on things. Perhaps this should not be
a quarterly journal, just yet. A bi-annual journal may be the most successful,
at least for a year or two? Any opinions in the group?
Incidentally, the list is invited to consider writing papers for
the next edition of the journal or submitting papers previously written which
you feel deserve a wider audience. My publication policy is extremely liberal:
You retain all copyrights to your own material; you grant me one-time-rights
only; you do not need to get my permission to republish material that appears in
BioTheory; I do not require material to be unpublished previously; etc. My main
purpose is to provide a venue to those using Rosennean Complexity Theory in some
way to solve problems. It's a place to "report", a place to exchange ideas, a
place to have your work seen in an audience drawn by the interest in Robert
Rosen's work. I deliberately made BioTheory a multidisciplinary and general
science journal so that the myriad problems facing humanity in social systems,
economic systems, weather systems, environmental systems, medical issues, etc
can all be addressed in part or in whole, directly or indirectly, by
various papers published in the journal.
Anyone who has the ambition and the interest, get in touch with me
off-list.
Judith
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, February 13, 2005 4:40
AM
Subject: Re: [ROSEN] Causality vs.
Entailment
Judith,
Thanks for your further clarification. I believe we
need to understand Rosen well. This may require repetition and repetition of
basic concepts. It is similar to what Bethoven once said, -the words may
not be authentic- "whoever perceives the depth of my music well
will never be negatively effected by the misery which the life and
living bring. But to reach this stage requires repeatedly listening
to my music, at times the same piece." I think he basically meant
his last quartets where he reveals his truth. I feel the same thing for
Rosen's work which is beyond physics and biology and deals with all aspects of
human life and living in general. We may, hence, never completely exhaust
your treasure. In this, your sending us his notes (which perhaps convey
us his breath) are of great importance. Do you intend to
send something on "measuring", especially on measuring values, in qualitative
terms.
By the way Section 1 and its sub-sections are hard to open,
when opened after a while they disappear from the scene or the whole thing is
blocked. Thus the heart of Journal is not functioning well to benefit from,
quite apart from other missing elements. To my mind Rosen's and now
your E-Journal idea was a good one, for continuity and maturing and
spreading the meaning of his work as well as securing future
implications of his work in this ever-complexing world.
What do you think?
Ayten
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, February 13, 2005 12:27
AM
Subject: Re: Causality vs.
Entailment
Ayten's notion of entailment is accurate in depicting
entailment as sort of a form of "causal potential" although there is
more here than this. All causality is just a tiny fraction of the total
potential entailed by systems and their interactions. Entailment is also
independent of time or directionality, in that separate things (parts,
components, stages, interactivity, etc) can
both entail/be-entailed-by one another in totality, but not
necessarily directly or specifically (like the chicken and the
egg). Causality is dependent on time flow, among other things, where
entailment is not.
Entailment describes relations, including potential, in
totality. Causality describes what happens. In this way, causality
can be seen as a subset of the total entailment potential of
systems and can be used to try to learn about the entailment relations
within system organizations. It is entailment that Robert Rosen was
most seeking to understand because it would include causality (and
inference, as well-- which describes the version of entailment
expressed in modeling/simulations) within it. Entailment is the more
comprehensive category.
It's sort of like a situation where your pet dog reacts to
some new stimulus in ways you've never seen it behave before. Extreme
heat, extreme cold, earthquake, weather, whatever... The entailment
was always present, but this is the first causal example.
There have been cases of organisms that were thought to be
fully understood, only to have it suddenly become manifest that what we've
seen is only a very long larval stage and the organism undergoes a sudden
metamorphosis to reach some new stage (which we presume is the adult). The
Axolotl, of Mexico, was one such organism. It developed the capability of
breeding while still in its larval stage, a fairly well-known phenomenon
(neotony). In this case, the lakes where this salamander species lived was
at very high altitude. When taken to lower altitudes, the axolotls began to
metamorphose into a fairly ordinary salamander species.
My father was fascinated by the axolotl because he said it had
far more biological capability in its larval stage, which it lost when it
metamorphosed. For example, in the larval stage it can breathe air or use
its gills in an aquatic environment. It can completely regenerate an
entire limb if cut off. In its natural environment, the axolotl never
actually fulfills its entailed metamorphosis from larval stage to adult
stage, living its entire life in the larval stage. Thus, entailment and
causality diverge in the same species.
My father actually wrote a fictional short story based on this
phenomenon, entitled "What Really Happened To Jeff" or something like that,
where the main character is a college student whose roommate was
experimenting on axolotls and developed a theory that our current human form
may just be a case of arrested development in the larval stage. He
figured out how to trigger it and disappeared without a trace with no clues
as to what could have happened to him (except for the dessicated
sea squirt found lying on the floor of the lab...).
Entailment is what is responsible for side effects; the so
called "hidden variables" or unknown relations within a system being
studied.
Judith
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, February 12, 2005
3:23 AM
Subject: Re: [ROSEN] Causality vs.
Entailment
Dear John,
I reflected on your following query-cum-conception on entailment as
expressed in your sentence:
"I was inclined to
read entailment as the 'effect' (consequence?) end of a causality-based
process (pair?) where 'cause' is the originating
end."
I may not be saying anything
new to you but still my query-cum-conception for 'entailment' is:
It occurs as an entanglement of many ingredients in nonlinear
processes, that is it happens in complex systems to bring about something
new - never existed before - out of several existing things.
In this sense, poetically thinking, "entailment" is
the 'magic wand' which looks for suitable matches and
potential connections among them and weld them to produce
an emergent thing. This process should
be self-organizing. It needs diversity gradually which increases
as the system's complexity increases, and thus it goes away from simple
systems where the cause&effect chain operates. There, there is no need
for entailment, it is a direct cause and resulting
something/effect.
Certainly I need confirmation
or correction as this concept is one of the foundational stones of
Rosennean Theory, I guess.
On our second
query:
"I still hope that
somebody (JK? DF? AA?) has an idea what circumstances prompted (not caused
- as in a narrow model-view) the 'change' from the genderless procaryotic
mitosis world to evolve into an (eucaryotic) bisexual
proliferation."
Is it not questioning the
initial conditions for the emergence of life, thus directly related to the
question of "What is Life?" and the chain of evolution also fro simple
cell to gradually complexing -both physically and psychologically- living
bodies.
I am however naively
wondering whether we are not going back to querying initial conditions of
the appearence of both simplicity and then gradually complexity on earth
in general?? A revision may not be a bad idea!
My best,
Aten
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, February 11, 2005 1:45 AM
Subject: Re: Causality vs. Entailment
> Dear Steve,
> I
always had my linguistic problems with 'entaliment', so I looked up
my
> li'l dictionary which said: "entail": 'involve, as a necessary
result',
> while "cause" is the other end: 'something that brings
about a result'. I
> was inclined to read entailment as the 'effect'
(consequence?) end of a
> causality-based process (pair?) where
'cause' is the originating end.
>
> I still hope that
somebody (JK? DF? AA?) has an idea what circumstances
> prompted
(not caused - as in a narrow model-view) the 'change' from the
>
genderless procaryotic mitosis world to evolve into an (eucaryotic)
bisexual
> proliferation.
> The idea of "genders" had to
appear (plurale tantum<G>)
> The eucaryotic appearance proper
is not enough - I think.
>
> John M
>
>
>
----- Original Message -----
> From: "Steve Johnson" <***>
> To:
<***>
> Sent:
Thursday, February 10, 2005 9:50 AM
> Subject: Causality vs.
Entailment
>
>
> > When I read Rosen I always have
the feeling that when
> > he uses the words entail/entailment he
does not quite
> > mean cause/causality in the normal sense of
the word.
> > For example, I feel that in Judith's quote
below it
> > would not make sense to say that "each gender
causes
> > the other" but it does make sense to say that
"each
> > gender entails the other".
> >
> > Am
I correct that there is a distinction between
> > entailment and
causality/causes in the way Rosen uses
> > these terms? If so,
can someone share their
> > understanding of the
difference?
> >
>
>
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