I was trying to explain to a friend of mine
this recent conversation on the list. the result was
the following, which I want to share with all of you,
to get your feedback. please focus on my remarks
about RR and the science community at large; I want
to know if I captured the essence of the situation
accurately or well or not.
thank you ... Jamie. July 3, 2005
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there's no public url for the Rosen list I know of and I tried but
couldn't forward recent postings without losing html highlights
that separated the conversants properly. but I did cc you my
last night's reply, which I think cut-to-the-chase explanation
wise. Robt Rosen had a thesis about life dynamics and all
the different layers of organization inter-involved, that
essentially is the urobos, applied everywhere without
exception, including events and process-relations that
are/were present but just not yet discovered through
inquiry. And its those missing 'specifics' that make the
difference between his theory and other theories explaining
how/why things happen. He set the standard that the only best
depiction of existence -must- include those unknowns .. which
any tried models would necessarily miss and exclude, and therefore
make the models incomplete and inaccurate.
['no matter how good, you'll never be right'] .. which infuriated
and continues to infuriate every scientist and researcher who ever
gives/gave over their life - committed to conventional inquiry practices;
both them and their ideas.
Rosen was the ultimate Godel-ist .. applying Godel's Incompleteness
Theorems to the topic: real world processes. [whether he consciously
did that or not]. And what's strange, is that Godel's notions
are universally revered as high and infallible; but Rosen's extension
of them, application of them, are rejected with a venom.
From my own viewpoint, I - in a way - take Rosen's side and flip
it back to evaluate Godel, instead of the other way 'round.
When the criteria is 'all inclusiveness', then a new standard
of modeling is required, one which satisfies the goal of making
and having as valid .. 'a' model, some model (concise explanatory
depiction) .. and yet allowing such a depiction to be resilient enough
to accomodate [without falling apart when results don't match
some initial projections or expectations] .. variations and
flow-throughs not expected/considered.
Godel intimates -- from extention of his math-only
applications/reasonings -- that life is a knowledge bubble
inside a never-get-outside-of domain of information
yet-to-be known .. that we can't evaulate from this
stuck-inside place. We can, over time, enlarge the bubble and
bring inside more knowledge ... which will cause us to adjust
and make new models to evaluate what we did before with prior
more-limited information .. but it will always be a carrot
on a stick dangling in front of us. The imagined goal
moves away with every step towards it. It can-never and
will-never be reached.
Rosen says the same thing, but!, he ventures that there -are
processes- present even in that un-illuminated darkness,
and that they really need to be consciously accounted for ..
at the very least, the potential of their being their given
a seat at the table of idea-information we cope with right now.
And he attempts/ed to describe the nature and relationships
involved altogether .. regardless of known/unknown.
My work zeroes in on accomplishing the same thing, with the added
goal of stating a formulaic depiction of Rosen's tag relation
called "entailment". My situation being that, RR and my paths
never intersected, and we arrived at the same plateau from
separate routes, bringing different specific notions and verbage
with us; different focusses and ways of speaking, even though
sympatico in core visions and a singular appreciation for the
nature and qualia of existence.
So, while considering the same relation structures that Godel did,
RR and separately myself are actually leapfrogging Godel. Trying
to not just make a new science-policy or science-philosophy statement
about being and existence and our capacity to engage existence wholly,
but to make that capacity tangible in new and creative ways; establish
new level or levels of comprehensions/appreciations.
Resistence is fierce however, people committed to conventional
thoughtlines can't/won't disavow their own lives and time
spent, now irretrievable, on smaller-scoped ideas.
Plus, they can't see how to pragmaticaly apply RR's ideas;
he talks about their inadequacies but offers no immediate
remedies; that leads to frustrations and to rejecting him,
at least in the current millieu of an: 'identify and repair'
efficiency mindset .. which is what modern science is
currently all about. ['no solutions ... no 'use'.']
Anyway, that's it from this Nevada plateau ... :-)