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Re: The meetings in Sheffield and France



Hi Judith,

a picture of Robert Rosen to go along with text which was to be part of a big anniversary issue of some magazine. The story was about the "giants of the life sciences"

I can't easily imagine who could be behind this!

I think the magazine is called Recherche or something like that.
It's based in Paris, I'm told.

Interesting. La Recherche was created (years ago) in the hope that it would be a French-language rival to Scientific American. It has never achieved that status, but that's what it aspires to. I'll try to remember to look out for the issue in question.

Unfortunately that is not how science advances -- it doesn't happen in little semi-private discussions between like-minded individuals, but in the public literature. People will not come to you: you have to expose your views to public scrutiny, even to public ridicule, by publishing them in publicly available journals. Even then you've a good chance of being ignored; but if you don't do it you have a near-certainty of being ignored.

I agree; it is unfortunate that science has traditionally been very
closed to new work based on new ideas. However, while this
description may have been the norm for scientific development in the
past, it has been changing for a few hundred years, and much  more
rapidly today than ever before. Not only that, but almost everyone
I've talked to laments over how the traditional publication route
has become a lethal straight-jacket on science.

In addition, it's not quite fair to say that science doesn't happen
in semi-private discussions between like-minded individuals, etc...
Didn't the beginnings of Systems Science begin over a lunch between
colleagues/friends?

Began, yes. But it is now about half a century since Robert Rosen began his work, and it's high time to bring him into the public arena.


a.

--
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Athel Cornish-Bowden
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