> In a message dated 96-10-24 17:13:19 EDT, Don replied to Hans as follows:
>
> 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). >>
Sorry if the above was ambiguous......what I meant by "this boils down
to dynamics" is the Newtonian Paradigm....NOT ROsen's relational biology.
>
> 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.
Organisms, as Rosen presents them through relational biology are NOT dynamic
systems. They reduce to dynamic systems under the reductionist/mechanist
treatment. Rosen never uses a term like "complex dynamic systems". Dynamic
systems are simple systems, they all have the same description
(differential equations or a State space sequence in a Turing
machine). This IS the thing Rosen "attacks" and replaces with
relational biology. The relational biology treatment in "Life Itself" is a
TOTAL departure from the dynamic systems approach.
>
> 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?
Mechanisms require entailment from outside and this leads to an
infinite regression. Organisms are closed to efficient cause and
require no external entailment. Being closed to effeicient cause involves
Metabolism, Repair, and Replication, none of which are the same as
"organismic reproduction"
>
> 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).
No, the process of Metabolism, Repair and Replication go on just as before
(if the transplant works). Rosen's discussion NEVER deals with specific
parts such as a heart, but only functional components which are completely
divorced from the material parts.
>
>
> 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.
in Rosen's mapping f which represents ALL of metabolism, f: A ---> B,
A comes from the environment. The system is closed to EFFICIENT CAUSE
it is NOT a closed system materially!!!!
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.
The M-R system Rosen uses to define orgainism does not clearly tranlate
to Gaia. That does not mean that it doesn't. That work is yet to be done.
>
> 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-
Please refer the prof. of symbolic logic to the Foundations paper
referenced above. You will save him a lot of grief!
Thanks for your thoughtful questions. During the last months I have
become aware that there are levels of meaning and understanding
involved in Rosen's work which require lots and lots of rewording,
other examples, etc. or they get reinterpreted in some new version
of the old mechanistic/reductionist framework.
I tend to lapse into speaking for Rosen as my own interpretation of his writing
grows. Let me say a bit more about where he asks us to go.
The notion of "complex dynamic systems" is a semantic problem in that
it is an oxymoron ala Rosen. Rosen deals with complexity as being those
aspects of a system which are OUTSIDE of dynamics and were not considered
by dynamics. Of course, dynamics lets you see a mechanistic facet of a
complex system. However, when folks use "complex" and "emergent"
to talk about chaos, etc., they are not using Rosen's concepts at all!
Rosen sees emergence as a form of error or failure to meet expectations
generated by the incomplete description dynamics gives.
What is even more of a blow to convential ways of looking is the fact
that relational block diagrams have little to do with any specific
material realization of the system. They do not contain time.
As an amplifier in a TV set might have an infinite number of specific material
realizations, so might "metabolism" as a functional component in an
organism. This seems to be an EXTREMELY difficult idea for most of us.
I hope this helps...it IS hard!
Don Mikulecky