Hans:
> my studying did not help, he uses too much math-concepts for me to be
> able to follow it.
Don:
> This is an interesting dillema. When the kind of arguments Rosen makes
> are done without math they are rejected for being "soft" and lacking
> rigor. Rosen has therefore worked harder than anyone who has ever
> lived to cast his arguments into both words and rigorous mathematics.
> You indicate that you understand the words in most cases. Yet this
> argument in particular is ABOUT mathematics. The Newtonian Paradigm
> is based in a particular kind of mathematics which is VERY restrictive.
> It is the subject matter of what we call "simple systems". All real
> systems are complex because there is more to them than what can be
> described by the Newtonian Paradigm. Ultimately, this usually boils
> down to dynamics. Dynamics includes, nonlinear dynamics (chaos, etc.),
> cellular automata, computer simulations, etc. Hence although the word
> "complexity" has been (in our minds) misused to apply to chaos, etc.,
> it really applies to the fact that all real systems have more to them
> than can be captured by dynamics (even chaotic systems). >>
I would say the subject of "Life Itself" is the class of anti-entropic
complex dynamic systems called "organisms". Not chaotic or entropic systems
(weather, for example) or models of systems (automata, genetic algorithms,
and other computer-based simulations). These 'real' biological systems have
complex interdependent constituents not subject to reductive analysis. My
impression was that Rosen attacked mechanistic reductionism as incapable of
accounting for emergent features of complex dynamic systems, and specifically
biologic systems.
Don also writes:
>"May I try my own summary:
>The issue of "what is life" is in Rosen's eyes an issue of Aristotelian
>causality (or the four "becauses" which answer any question "why?")
>The question should be rephrased to read "why are living things
>different from non-living things?" He procedes to answer "BECAUSE
>they are closed to efficient cause". This seemingly simple statement
>embodies all the results mentioned above. It embodies the fact that
>analytic and synthetic models differ in that when they are the same,
>(in simple systems/mechanisms) there CAN NOT be closure under efficient
cause.
>It embodies the rebuttal to reductionism in other ways too."
Don also writes:
>"He[Rosen] points out that biologists have always wanted to both have their
>cake and to eat it too. They play at "hard" science and
>mechanistic/reductionism as if it were perfectly adequate for dealing
>with the "livingness" of living systems and then when it fails they have
>"evolution" to fall back on. Much of what is unentailed by their
mechanistic
>models gets entailed by "evolution". He also makes a clear distinction
>between the physiology of an organism and the "fabrication" of and organism.
>Here's a real stepping off point for future work!"
Help me understand this difference from Rosen's point of view. How something
'works' vs. how it 'came to be' seems a simple distinction. But are
mechanisms not organisms because they do not have a closed self-entailment
like organisms? Or is self-entailment (organismic reproduction) what Rosen
means by closed efficient causation?
Under this viewpoint, then, if I get an artificial heart, do I cease to be an
organism? (Because my chain of efficient causation is now broken - to include
plastic parts not organically grown or fashioned by my own metabolism and
genetic code?) In this case, the 'chain of causation' is broken for both
features of myself- how I 'work' (my metabolism includes an artificial blood
pump), and how I 'came to be' (my physiology includes a whirring piece of
plastic installed by a surgeon).
Hans:
> By the way, is an ecosystem also complex in the sense of Rosen?
>
Don:
>"The real issue here is whether an ecosystem can be isolated as a system
>or must be relationally seen as a part of a larger system. Then we
>have a formal way of stating the Gaia hypothesis."
How may a boundary be defined around any biologic system and claim it is
'closed to efficient causation'?. The nature of metabolism is to be
dependent on a sustaining environment which provides energy and collects
waste products. If efficient causation were 'closed', how is this dependency
accounted for by Rosen? If not, does the Rosen paradigm for organism
necessarily support the Gaia hypothesis - that the entire ecosystem is
"alive'? And if so, what boundaries are there to the ecosystem? I suppose
there are functional boundaries to the solar system, if not causative
boundaries. Past the level of the solar system, the answers to the questions
of "why?" become strictly evolutionary cosmology and not functional complex
dynamics.
Don also writes:>
>"In relational biology, the abstract block diagrams are modeled after
input/output
>diagrams. Rosen does not explain this well in LIFE ITSELF. One MUST read
>"Some relational cell models: the metabolism-repair systems" in FOUNDATIONS
>OF MATHEMATICAL BIOLOGY vol II, 1972 pp217-253 in order to get the
>necessary definitions and concepts he assumes you know when you read
>LIFE ITSELF. In this paper he explains in detail the meaning of the
>difference between analytic and synthetic models without ever using
>those words. He does it both mathematically and in words. Here he shows
>how Cartesian products are involved in the mapping of multiple inputs
>in a block diagram."
....
>"Yes and it is due to the fact that much of the detailed groundwork for
>a thorough understanding of these concepts requires mastering what he wrote
>in FUNDAMENTALS OF MEASUREMENT and ANTICIPATORY SYSTEMS. He >seldom repeats
details and is rather glib. He inherited a bit of that from Rashevsky >who
demanded that his audience do a lot of homework."
That is a problem. There are only a handful of people in the world who are
well-versed in Rosen's prior publications. I'm hoping that Don and others in
this group can make the *concepts* clearer, if not the rigorous proof of the
concepts. I took Life Itself to a professor of symbolic logic at a nearby
university for his comments- He read the book and withheld judgment other
than to say it would take him weeks of study to either verify or contest the
claims Rosen makes. So I will simply assume the *math* is supportable. Then
let us discuss the *meaning*. This group's engagement with *meaning* is most
valuable to me.
respectfully-
-Mike Lash-