|
Hi Calvin,
I thought you had left the list. I'm glad you decided to stick
around, although I do wish that you would "discuss" your opinions in a more
congenial manner.
For example... Your statement:
CO wrote: I think it is quite clear that Rosen is either misleading or nonfactual in what he says on these issues. We have already seen how things he says about impredicativity are either misleading or nonfactual, for example. ...is, in fact, a statement of your own personal opinion.
You are certainly entitled to your opinion and IF you had stated it as
such, I would not have a problem with it. However, you have stated it as if it
is "the final word" on the subject, and based on irreproachable logic. Now, if I
wanted to reply in kind, I could just as easily say that "Clearly, your
logic is unsound and your attitude SUCKS." But I won't, because
it doesn't help anyone, including me.
Life is hard enough without discussions (which ought to be fun, I
say) sinking to the level of our current American foreign policy. So, in
the spirit of discussing the ideas and leaving the incendiary
rhetoric behind, I'm not going to respond to the language you have used. I will
instead make an attempt to illuminate the ideas of my father's that you seem to
have the most trouble with:
Let's try again for a positive point.
Yes, let's!
Let's compare
Rosen, the Newton of Biology, to Goedel, Church, and Turing in regards to their common area of concern, that of computability, decidability, and the like. Rosen has alleged that certain functions necessary to model biological systems are undecidable and not even semi-decidable). But what precisely are these functions? If I understand what you are referring to (and the word
"decidability" is not one my father used-- you have definitions of various words
that do not fit with my father's usage, and yet you apply them to his own
phrasing)-- then the whole notion of "biological function" is not computable.
Examples: let's talk about metabolism and
repair.
Where precidely are they
defined. Why can't they be given a simple and rigorous definition in the same way that Turing, Church, and Goedel have done? Forget trying to prove it, let's just have the rigorous definition. Godel was not someone my father tended to criticise: what reference
are you using to add him to the company of Church and
Turing?
And how is this for just one example of "misleading"? As early as page five in Life Itself, we find claims such as "Mathematics over the past century has given little evidence that it is concerned with eternal, timeless, and hence unarguable truth". Aside from confusing metaphysics with epistemology (there is no reason that eternal and timeless truth is going to be "unarguable"), this is misleading and arguably insulting. Mathematics of course, has no concern and supplies no evidence. It is mathematicians who do this. What is Rosen's own evidence for this generic attack upon mathematicians? The evidence is right there, in those passages, which you haven't
given a fair and unbiased reading. Don't be insulted by such things; they are
not denigrating to mathematics or to mathematicians, but to the applicability of
the latest development (the past century) of mathematics as a discipline. He saw
little in molecular biology, for example, that was geared towards the
living aspect of the systems it purported to be studying.
I will reply in greater depth on the subject of metabolism and
repair, tomorrow. It's time to get some sleep.
'night, all.
Judith
|