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Dan Fiscus wrote: it also reminds me
of my single, ongoing beef/gripe/difference with Rosen. He talked of the unit of life as organism, but I see it better-depicted as community or ecosystem. I think I may have found a way to illustrate the difference, as my
father viewed it. The same essay on the dualism between qualitative and
quantitative science (an excerpt of which I recently posted to the list)
also depicted a parallel between the mathematical version of the duality
(semantics vs syntax) in a tidy little package:
(From page 4 of "Life, Itself") Robert Rosen wrote:
"Let me begin with a few words about the relations
existing between the mathematical universe and the perceptual one. It is a fact
of experience, for instance, that
2 sticks + 3 sticks = 5 sticks.
On its face, this is a proposition about sticks. But it is
not the same kind of proposition as, say "sticks burn" or "sticks float." It
differs from them in that it is also about something else besides sticks, and
that "something else" takes us into the world of mathematics."
My father concluded that essay by saying that the various
dualities he was discussing, including those
between quantitative/qualitative science and syntax/semantics, were based
on too simplistic a view. He believed that the integration of these
seemingly opposing views can be achieved via a relational perspective,
which is what complexity offers. In other words, it's "Yin AND Yang",
not "yin OR yang": the only way to have either of them is to
have them both. I see this as being a mini-example of what the relations
between organism and ecosystem are like. Just as Yin has Yang entailed in
it as part of its context (and vice versa)-- in a sense, they are as much
defined by each other as by what they are, themselves...
Similarly organism has ecosystem entailed within it, and ecosystem,
likewise. As soon as you have organism, you have ecosystem. It's a mutually
interactive, complex relation. It's not fractionable.
These relational properties are what he illustrates so
perfectly with that little mathematical equation. There's a whole lot
of information to be realized from studying that seemingly simple phrase and it
has almost nothing to do with mathematics...
Let's look at what we have there:
2 sticks + 3 sticks = 5 sticks.
To begin, we can define the equation as a system. If we
want to study this system in a way that isn't reductionistic, we have to
look at more than just the parts-- as parts. We have to consider what the parts
mean to the rest of the equation and what the rest of the equation does to the
expressed nature of the parts. (This also tends to
help illustrate how organization, as a concept, is full of
subtleties.)
So, let's start somewhere... We can identify a
qualifier (sticks) and quantifiers (numbers)... Obviously, we will lose
information if we try to fractionate the qualifier from the quantifiers or vice,
versa. The definition of "sticks" is quite a different kind of
information from the quantifiers, and, conversely, the number 2 has nothing
about it intrinsically which has to do with "sticks". Furthermore, there is
information created by the association of those two entities in relation to each
other which cannot be specified/discovered from any amount of study
of either/both of those entities individually.
There is also a process of change inherent in this
equation, which is equally relational and cannot be separated from any
of the other aspects of the statement (or from the statement,
itself), without irreparable loss of information... A certain number
of something PLUS a certain number more of the same something
EQUALS some total number of these things; again, there is
information created by the "+" and "=" signs which is not specified by
either the numbers (2,3, and 5 could have any number of other relations
specified between them) or the qualifiers. What's more: we can further see
that the information created would be different in any different
relational configuration among each of them For example, we can say
2+3=5 and this is true. It also conveys a process, etc... but there is no way to
infer anything about sticks from any amount of study of that equation. We can
also say sticks + sticks = sticks... and this is also true... but doesn't convey
anything about the process or the nature of the process.
In addition to the information created by the interactive
presence of the plus and equals sign, there is the information
created about time/sequence in the rhythm of the chronology created by
the placement of the "+" and "=" signs, in relation to the other
information (qualifier/quantifier/etc) contained in this equation, which of
course changes the meanings and definitions because of the relations
between all. Again; none of that relational information is
available via the nature of any "generic" properties
of chronology, itself.
So, here we have, in this humble little equation, a set of
relations which describe both qualitative aspects, quantitative aspects, a
process, and a progression-- which implies time (chronology, sequence,
flow) and interaction, whereby the total number of sticks is specified
by the relations between the chronology and the nature
of the interaction, which is also partly specified
(accretion)... That's a whole lot of interactive information, all of which
is subtle, nearly all of which is relational, and which is entirely different in
this particular configuration/organization than it would be in some other one.
And we're just talking about STICKS, here.
If we substitute the word "organisms" for "sticks" in that
equation, it becomes clear that a community of organisms will have
properties different from any single organism, and the
relational effects arising from a community of organisms is
not going to be something we could learn via a study of any single set
of organismic properties, right? Thus it's no surprise that the nature of
life in an organism is different from the nature of relational effects emanating
from a community of organisms.
All of this gives us glimpses into how complexity
"works". We already have the capability to study and empirically
verify that relations between things can have impacts such that the
expressed behaviors via those relations are far different
from the properties of any individual things, themselves
regardless of what the things are.
My question is: Is it such a difficult leap to see
how ecosystems can be a different set of relational effects from organisms?
If it's not a difficult leap, then it's a much smaller step from there to
reach the conclusion Robert Rosen came up with. If we plug the
new words into the original equation, you will get some idea of the
difference my father was referring to between life in the organismal sense and
the biological nature of "ecosystem."
I vaguely remember trying once before to
convey that, as I see it, what Dan refers to as "life" in an ecosystem
is actually the relational effects of complexity-- which life (in the
organismal sense) is also a manifestation of. The reason we have said
they look like more of the same "stuff" to us is because we sense the
similarity. What I'm trying to point out here is the difference between
life in the organismal sense and what we find in ecosystems-- because there
definitely IS a difference and I don't think it
can be explained via the ecosystemic view/definition of life. I'd
be interested to hear a description for the underlying entailments of such a
definition, if anyone has one. If such a description exists, and holds logically
(commutes), it would be a very important discussion, indeed!
Judith
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