Re: goals and language?

[John M <***>]

I will quote excerpts to respond
John M

--- Judith Rosen <***> wrote:

>... I think I've mentioned before that my 
> father didn't speak the way he wrote? So, I had to
> learn the 
> equivalent of a second vocabulary for him, once I
> got old enough to be 
> interested in his work. There was a whole lotta
> years of "What does 
> this mean?", "Why did you use that word to say
> that?", and "Why do you 
> write like you do, Dad?" By the time I was in my
> early thirties, I had 
> reached a point where we could just discuss the
> work, without much of 
> that anymore, and he used to discuss each new paper
> as he was working on it.
[JM]:
I wrote many times my suspicion which Judith affirmed
in the above lines that RR did not "publish" (for his
reductionistic readership) his advanced ideas he was
formulating in his mind. That's what I called the RR
'spirit' I am searching. 
> 
> But there have been words that have come up in
> discussions here on the 
> list which never managed to get discussed in
> conversations with my 
> father, and I have had to do some research for
> those. "Holonomic" was 
> one. In general, I've gotten to a point where I can
> use the dictionary 
> of his language (his published work) to learn
> definitions of 
> unfamiliar words. That's a nice achievement,
> considering my lack of 
> post-secondary science and math education. You know
> you're pretty 
> fluent in a language, like French, say, when you can
> use a French 
> dictionary rather than an English/French dictionary
> and it gives you 
> everything you need. If I can do it, you can do it.
[JM]:
We tend to go 'beyond' the conventional meanings given
in 'common use' dictionaries. In the RR-complexity
related lingo some distinctions do not have adequate
dictionary entries. Even worse to have blind faith in
foreign language similars: they may mean differently.
An example: eventually means in German and Hungarian 
"perhaps", has nothing to do with "an event" which may
be involved in English. Cotrresponding data don't
write letters to each other and actions in concert
don't make music. 
> 
...
> Impredicativity has to do with an innate, 
> semantic self-reference, either in mathematics or in
> system 
> organization, which cannot be dispensed with. So a
> predicative system 
> is one possessing an organization which does not
> include any of these 
> kinds of essential semantic qualities and therefore
> all predicative 
> systems are reducible to syntax without loss of
> information. In other 
> words; they are computable. Impredicative systems,
> then, are systems 
> with organizations which include inherent semantic
> information which 
> cannot be replaced by syntax without loss of
> essential information.
[JM]:
Gee, I always thought the 'impredicative' refers to a
natural system's unlimited connectivites that make it
rather not-predictable (not computable). I deducted
that sense similarly to what you wrote (below) from
the "predicate", identifying something (pre-dicere
Lat.)in a more 'word-only related' sense. .
> 
> In mathematics, when number theory is treated as a
> predicative system 
> and reduced to pure syntax, it causes terrible
> paradoxes and this was 
> the example my father used to show that the
> existence of 
> impredicativities in mathematics doesn't render it
> useless or make the 
> use of mathematics "unscientific" or imprecise in
> all usage-- it just 
> means that there are certain things that are
> inappropriate to do with 
> it.  He was pointing out that the same is true in
> natural systems and 
> the existence of inappropriate modes of approach
> also exist. But he 
> was showing that impredicative natural systems, such
> as those dealt 
> with in biology, are not beyond the scope of
> science, either. They are 
> just beyond the scope of reductionism. He didn't
> feel that the two 
> ought to be the same; science ought not to be
> limited to only a  reductionist capability.
[JM]:
So far I find it OK, except for my wording about the 
stricktly ONGOING science (the traditional
establishment 'edifice') which in my wording IS
reductionistic (based on topically limited models).
I do not 'see' RR's "unlimited" science so far. 
The 'reducti0onist capability' is the way we can
handle the world and the way of our results - so far. 
I think this dichotomy made RR separate the style of
most of his writings from his creative ideas about how
it should be said. I feel it like discrediting RR to
stay with his published words, written mostly for the
"science" community (reductionist that is). 
I feel some justification for this from your words.
Thanks. And please, do not retort that I misunderstood
you, you did not say this ex pressis verbis.
> 
> The word "impredicativity" is derived from
> "predicate" which has the 
> same Latin base roots as "predict" (dicere; to say,
> and prae; before) 
> but the connotation is different, apparently,
> because my Webster's 
> (unabridged) dictionary defines predicate as meaning
> "to proclaim". I 
> believe my father's usage is based on the fact that
> certain system 
> organizations can be reduced to formalisms and
> everything else about 
> them is then "predicated" on that information.
> 
> Judith