Re: Gaia

[Judith Rosen <***>]

Hi David,

That paper you read was part of the source for a very serious (and permanent) falling out between myself and Mr. Don Mikulecky. The so-called Gaia Hypothesis posits that the Earth's global ecosystem is a collective organism. Whether or not this is true, it is not what Robert Rosen was saying. I told Mikulecky he had to put his own name on such hypotheses and leave my father out of it. He, apparently, hasn't done so. What was the date on the paper you read? Could you give me the link? 

The truth is that Robert Rosen was quite sure that the global ecosystem is NOT an organism. In fact, my father believed that any single-celled organism is "more complex than" the entire, collective, global ecosystem. Complexity (when used as an adjective applied to systems) is an organizational reference. The global ecosystem is less organized, as a system, in that sense, than a single-celled algae or a bacterium. 

I think that to argue otherwise is tantamount to saying that reductionism CAN be usefully applied to complex systems. It essentially is an argument that the complexity of a system comes from its parts or components. That is entirely contradictory to everything my father was saying, and this is what I told Mikulecky. He argued that, because "Rosen said" that atoms are complex systems, then that meant there are no simple systems in reality, only in formalisms. Not so. That conclusion is pure Don Mikulecky and has very little to do with my father. I told him that I don't mind him developing that conclusion, or publishing it, or anything else-- as long as he puts his OWN name on it. He has no business putting "Robert Rosen said" on his own scientific conclusions. You are not the only one who says it is inconsistent, David; I've had other people write to me about this, as well. What's more, I absolutely don't understand why someone would want to put another man's name on his own work! In an ego-driven area like science... the only logical answer I can come up with is of the craven variety. Needless to say, I have very little respect for that man.

What makes any system complex or simple is the same aspect which makes an organism alive: It is the nature of its organization as a system, not the nature of its parts, alone. Thus, a car engine is a simple (non-complex) system even though it is made up of atoms. And mathematics, as a language taken in its entirety, is a complex system-- yet it is a formal system. Organization includes the nature of the parts but also includes a whole lot more. Among other things, organization specifies the nature of all relations. The relations of the global ecosystem, when analyzed as a system, are not of the sort which create an (M,R)-System. So the global ecosystem, while certainly complex, is not an organism.

Judith Rosen
Web address: http://www.rosen-enterprises.com
BioTheory: An electronic journal of general science based on the Relational (Rosennean) Complexity Paradigm
On Sep 6, 2005, at 1:44 PM, David Macy wrote:

> <x-tad-smaller>Hey guys,</x-tad-smaller>
>  
> <x-tad-smaller>    Listen, I just read a paper by Donald Mikulecky on the web and there was a bit at the end of the paper that seemed to imply that Robert's work supported the Gaia hypothesis.  I have not come to any such conclusion.</x-tad-smaller>
>  
> <x-tad-smaller>In fact, I don't subscribe to the Gaia hypothesis.  I also don't think that it's necessary to subscribe to it in order to know (yes intuitively) that we might ought to take care of our environment.  Sustainability and diversity just make common and aesthetic sense to me.</x-tad-smaller>
>  
> <x-tad-smaller>I was wondering what some of you guys thought about this?</x-tad-smaller>
>  
> <x-tad-smaller>David</x-tad-smaller>