Norman K. McPhail wrote:
> Don Mikulecky wrote:
> >
> > Don Mikulecky replies:
> > Most all of nature as i know it is self organizing. Shake up oil and
> > water...they
> > separate....put a drop of dye in the water..it spreads out. is this self
> > organization or not? If not why not?
> > respectfully,
> > Don
>
> I think it is a form a self organizing and your point is well taken.
> Still, how would you go about dealing with the gradients and qualities
> of self organizing processes?
the one case is a classic picture of diffusion..the other is also well
known....here's a good example of semantics being carried with the complexity
of the situation.....we were taught that these were "merely" diffusion and oil
and water don't mix. We built a surrogate world with physics which saw most
things as governed by simple laws like that for diffusion. Now we get bold and
open our eyes and see the real world for what it is....most things, if not all,
are "self-organizing" and this becomes the norm rather than a novelty. this is
equivalent to changing the formal system with which we make inferences about
the natural world....and also being open to further changes and even more
radical formalisms as needed. In short...there has to be more than one
way...many ways....each time we think we have "the" way..we stop progressing.
the essence of this is to face the self-referencial quality of the modeling
relation we seek up front...each step closer will dictacte another change and
that in turn another....freeze it and the model becomes a snapshot again. I
know that is vague, but it is what I see happening.
> Is it semantically ok just to drop the
> self organizing quality out of the equation and reduce the differences
> to comparative complexity? Or do we need both the quality of self
> organizing and the quantity of complexity in the process to benefit from
> the modeling relation?
>
> Norm
the essence of complexity is non-computable and not algorithmic......hence if
we purge that essence we get simple mechanism back.......the essence of a
functional component in a complex system is that it has no definition out of
context.....it defines the whole as the whole defines it...self refernce and
context dependence everywhere....any attempt to "clean that up" results in a
reduction and a loss of complexity...physics is too good at that to try to
compete with it.
respectfully,
Don