Re: Description of evolution

[James N Rose <***>]

Interesting set of reactions Judith/John.

I think I got over enthusiastic in my word-substitution
word-play ; that led to both of your interesting interpretations.

ok, try this on for size [particularly Judith because I
see my ideas paralleling your father's ; you saying they're
antithetical, blows me away  :-) ] ...

the most general thesis of that paragraph of your's that
I lifted Judith, I took to be: 

How to describe human explanatory connection with: systems
that transform according to rules (known or unknown).

Your phrasings focussed in inanimate systems and/or human
interactions with them - where incomplete models are used
and 'entailment' is difficult to apply (in contrast to    
natural systems and RR completeness).

I attempted to substitute living systems references into
your description structure, to show that that would have
worked just as well, because, living or non-living, you 
were inherently describing: 

..systems that transform according to rules (modelled or unmodelable).


And - effectively - my living systems spin-depiction of -your-
relations-phrasings, ends up being a depiction of raw entailment
in its basic incarnation.  For that's what evolution is: entailment
in operation.

The differences show (animate v inanimate ; entailed v non-entailed) when
it become obvious that models organize -known- information, and weaken
to the point of failure when the RR high-standard of holistic completeness
is used as a measure guide for any model's reliability and accuracy.

The lines blur, if one accepts that - the activity - of 'states then 
responces' is the rule-of-process ... for both modelled (linearly/
limitedly entailed) systems as well as for natural 
(completely/complexly entailed) systems.



John, existence is systems responding to 'living together',
intricately involved in a tapestry of intertier connections;
involved/entailed in more ways than any one model can account for.

For the past few years in America, a large segment of the USA
population has labored under the 'model' that President Reagan's
leadership against the 'evil empire' was the sole pile driver
that collapsed the ideological economic behemoth called the 
Soviet Union.  Cause celebre', and all that;  firm convictions
held by the politically devout.

Three nights ago I watched a History Channel show that described
the conflict that went on wholly inside the Soviet Union during
and after WWII under Stalin's reign -- inside the prison system.
The presence of rival gangs, impacted by their call to fight 
during the Great Patriotic War, the decimation of their ranks 
as freedom fighters, the internal decimations when they were
forced to return to jail rather than allowed to remain free,
the policies of the Stalin regime toward them .. and ..
the organizations the prisoners congealed into during those
years and took to the social streets with them .. becoming
members of the KGB and other political arms .. and bringing with
them hardened gangster mentalities and ingrained systems of
corruption which ... eventually ate away at the entire internal
social structure of the Soviet Union.

A wholly unaccounted for factor here in the "West".  Self adulation
that the 'great bastion of democracy and capitalism' defeated the
Soviet Union .. a myth of wholecloth proportions .. still remains
to this day.  The completely and wholistically 'entailed' truth, only
now just coming to light .. where both factors (of many) contributed
to the historically/outwardly obvious.   But likely not to have 
an impact on the comfortable mythos perpetrated here.  Nor to stand
as a warning as to what social policies might be convenient and 
easy in the short term, but ruinous in the long, as this nation too
builds more prisons and biforcates its population internally ..
the (im)morality of imposed dis-enfranchisement [politically, morally,
economically].

Humanity suffers the short coming that all high life-systems suffer:
each generation has to learn all over again and will always make
the same mistakes all over again.  

Genealogy recapitulates conceptualizations.
[genealogy recapitulates gno-ology]
[generations recapitulate the social knowledge-body]

anyway,, you get the drift.  :-)

Jamie