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Re: Robert Rosen in La Recherche

Hi Athel,

You're right that the thrice-translated version, from Recherche, of what "Rosen believed" is what I would describe as "incorrect". It's so incomplete as to be wrong, really. However, I would hardly blame anyone but the writer of the Recherche article. I've written articles for magazines, so I know what I'm talking about here. When citing a source, one is supposed to make that source clear, as in; "According to a paper by so-and-so (published when, where, etc), Robert Rosen was more concerned with such-and-such than with...." If there are conflicting opinions about what "Rosen" believed, then the writer is honor-bound (when writing for a general publication, especially) to present the alternate interpretations, with those sources cited the same way. In a case where there are translations, or translations of translated translations, the writer ought to do some homework into the original text and have them independently translated for verification. That's just basic common sense, in my view. I appreciate the link to your paper, though.

AC-B wrote:
They don't make any direct reference to Rosen's writing, and appear to have got much of their knowledge (or maybe you will say their misconceptions) from something that we published in Biology of the Cell 96, 713-717 (2004) -- Abstract at http://bip.cnrs-mrs.fr/bip10/biolcell.htm, complete PDF file at http://bip.cnrs-mrs.fr/bip10/biolcell.pdf. Doubtless you won't be pleased to know this, but you'll know anyway when you see the article, so I may as well tell you now.

I have skimmed your paper over once and don't see anything that jumps out at me that I would pounce on you for! My curiosity is piqued now, though.... Frankly, I'm not worried. Your own writing has long ago conveyed your own authority to speak on the myriad subjects of complexity and biology, et al. In fact, some of your reviews at Amazon.com have been far more interesting (and better written) than the books, themselves. I stumbled onto the first one while doing research and read it without reading the name of the reviewer, until I was so impressed with your writing that I checked. Hey, that name is familiar...! So then I clicked on "more reviews by this writer"...

I can tell you that the final paragraph from your paper, which I excerpted, below, is perfect in my opinion.

Excerpt from Athel's paper:
The more complex the level at which one seeks to explain a living system, the greater the need to examine the network of interactions that lie behind the genome (Cornish-Bowden and Cárdenas, 2001b). The fact that a complex network of interactions connect genes to phenotypes emphasizes the idea that only through the understanding of the whole can we understand the function of the parts.

Cheers,
Judith




Web address: http://www.rosen-enterprises.com
BioTheory: An electronic journal of general science based on the Relational (Rosennean) Complexity Paradigm
On Oct 14, 2005, at 9:40 AM, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:

Thanks for posting that, Athel! I am supposedly going to receive a
copy of this issue, according to Anne Viratelle, the lady who
contacted me fro La Recherche in Paris. I knew that there is a
strong interest in Dad's stuff in Portugal, but it's news to me
about Spain. Makes me happy though. I'd love to go to both places,
someday. Spanish is one of the languages I'm slightly more fluent in
(or "slightly less helpless in" if I'm going to be ruthlessly
honest). French, on the other hand, is one I need to seriously brush
up on before I can read this article.

After all those years living in Canada! (Didn't you read the text on the back of cereal packets? though come to think of it cereal packets don't usually have much to say about (M,R) systems).

It got through that they were
saying something like "according to Rosen, the difference between an
organism and a machine is...." Could we prevail on you for a quick
translation?

OK. (Incidentally the words "Morán et al. (1996), can be constructed from simplified rules representing" in my earlier message shouldn't be there: I pasted more than I intended, and didn't notice until the message was circulated).

For the potted biography, it says: "theoretical biologist who died in 1998, he was Professor of Biophysics at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada. For him the essential difference between a living organism and a machine derives from the recursive nature of the processes that take place in the former."

In the text, it says: "Everything depends on everything else, which constitutes a fascinating mystery. This circularity, or recursiveness, represented for the theoritician of biology Robert Rosen, who died in 1998, the essential difference between a machine and an organism: in the latter, each elemented being caused by another element, the system is closed to causation."

Incidentally, the article says it was translated by Gilles Beron, so the original was not in French: presumably Spanish or English (conceivably Catalan, Juli Peretó's preferred language, but unlikely, as I don't suppose that Álvaro Moreno knows much Catalan). Anyway, I've asked Juli if he can forward me the original text, and if he does I'll ask his permission to circulate it further.

They don't make any direct reference to Rosen's writing, and appear to have got much of their knowledge (or maybe you will say their misconceptions) from something that we published in Biology of the Cell 96, 713-717 (2004) -- Abstract at http://bip.cnrs-mrs.fr/bip10/biolcell.htm, complete PDF file at http://bip.cnrs-mrs.fr/bip10/biolcell.pdf. Doubtless you won't be pleased to know this, but you'll know anyway when you see the article, so I may as well tell you now.

athel
--
--
Athel Cornish-Bowden
***
http://bip.cnrs-mrs.fr/bip10/homepage.htm