Yes, I could not go because of the extremely late notice of what kind of
paper I was to give (which meant I could not get funding until too
late).
They are still going to use the title of what would have been my paper
as the title of a session: "Modelling Modelling", which is a topic I am
very interested in. I was going to suggest some ideas inspired by Rosen
(that a meaningful classification of complex systems could be made on
the basis of category theory diagrams of the modelling relations
involved, in particular that many complex systems do modelling
themselves, so in modelling them one has to be involved in modelling
modelling). Of course, I would also have said many un-Rosen like things
as well (like that it makes sense in this area to model complexity as
the search cost for a 'suitable' model, of course here complexity in
your sense would correspond to an infinite cost, i.e. impossibility).
I don't think you would have liked it, the whole pseudo-field of
"complex systems" is full of in-all-but-name reductionists and MUCH
confusion (as you yourself have pointed out).
Regards.
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Bruce Edmonds,
Centre for Policy Modelling,
Manchester Metropolitan University, Aytoun Bldg.,
Aytoun St., Manchester, M1 3GH. UK.
Tel: +44 161 247 6479 Fax: +44 161 247 6802
http://bruce.edmonds.name