I am quite happy using whatever labels for concepts are easy, as
long as everyone knows what is what, for the purposes of this
discussion. I am in the lucky position of not having to fight
political battles over scientific dogma (I do have some difficulties
with Economic dogma), so I do not worry whether something is
"pandering" to anyone or not. Thus I am quite happy for some terms
(e.g. "Complete Complexity" for Rosen's and "degrees of complexity"
for my conception where they do not correspond (just to pick two
terrms out of the air - if "Complete Complexity" does not have
enough status for you, pick another one (other than straight
"complexity" which we will both avoid for the sake of sense)).
Also, which is more general or specific is relative to your
viewpoint. In the sense that Rosen's definition can be seen as a
special case of mine it is more specific. In the sense that his
definition forms a part of a very general approach, it can be seen as
more general (since you can't isolate bits like the difinition from
his thought). Enough said, I suggest when we use the terms
specific/general when arguing about this we make that claim clear.
Yes, I understand the difficulties in the idea of "objective"
discussion. My intent was to signal a wish for a slightly less
guarded and polarised debate - to ease the development of new
(unpredicted!) sysntheses and opositions. Surely HERE we are amoung,
if not friends, at least, no enemies.
Some of the confusion, comes, I think, from different understandings
of what is "reductionist". You, a scientist, working within
(around?) the confines of its tradition, see reductionism as
defined, at least somewhat, by the happenstance of that tradition.
I, coming from a mathematical/philsophical background, would define it in
_more_ absolute terms - something like "Reductionism is that school
of thought which believes that, in principle, every problem can be
decomposed eventually into simple ones". From this viewpoint
Thom's analytic tools are as much part of reductionism as Newton's -
both can be used to obtain *some* understanding of some systems or
not as the case may be. The fact that they belong to different
Kuhnian scientific paradigms is (politics aside) irrelevant.
Such distractions aside, I will come back with some examples to
consider to further the core of this discussion, I have to go now.
----------------------------------------------------------
Bruce Edmonds
Centre for Policy Modelling,
Manchester Metropolitan University, Aytoun Building,
Aytoun Street, Manchester M1 3GH. UK.
e-mail b.edmonds@mmu.ac.uk
Tel no. +44 161 247 6479 Fax no +44 161 247 6802
WWW. http://bruce.edmonds.name/bme_home.html