-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 I submit the following for criticism:
It's always seemed to me that reductionism and the use of "nonlinearity" as a pretentious and hermetic placeholder for synergy has its roots in characterizing the expectations of the observer. Anti-reductionists are just as silly as reductionists when they assert that they have or manipulate some deep understanding of what's out there (onto-). We can't _reduce_ the actual world anymore than the actual world is "summed" or composed of actual components. It's _all_ in your head. None of this is real or concrete. Interactions with the world happen in the medium of actions. Hence, the extent to which any mechanism or phenomenon is reducible is identical to the extent to which the mechanism or phenomenon can be discretely acted upon. Likewise, the extent to which any mechanism or phenomenon is emergent is identical to the extent to which it can be discretely acted upon (or to which it discretely acts). And that begs the question of discretion. I don't think one can construct a bullet-proof argument that reality is either purely continuous or purely discrete. One is limited to approximations and estimating within some tolerance. So, it all boils down to whether you believe reality is continuous or discrete. Those who believe it is continuous tend to be anti-reductionists and submit that every action affects (to whatever tiny degree) all mechanisms and phenomena in the universe. Those who believe it is discrete tend to be reductionist and submit that the effect of (at least some) actions are purely local and don't affect distant mechanisms or phenomena. The trick is that those who advocate for emergence face consistency problems. On the one hand, they want to suggest that a) causes are indiscrete/inseparable/nonanalytic (or at least occult) and b) the _thing_ that emerges is, somehow, discrete/separable/identifiable from its environment. (a) =><= (b). Reductionists don't have this problem. They have a different one: namely that they cannot demonstrate that reality is completely discrete. And that means that they're forever wandering around cutting things up in different ways and hoping that this cut or that cut will stick and prove true. Michael Agar wrote: > So I just wrote that story and all of a sudden wondered, what the > hell is reductionism anyway? Cheated by looking it up in Wikipedia > and of course there's many different kinds. The old philosophy joke > is, when faced with a contradiction, make a distinction. The first > line of the major Wikipedia entry is, "In philosophy, reductionism is > a theory that asserts that the nature of complex things is reduced to > the nature of sums of simpler or more fundamental things." > > Sums. So is nonlinearity the key to the kingdom? Are we really > looking for germinal papers in nonlinearity? Phil Henshaw wrote: > Assigning numbers to things is what I always thought of as being the > 'reduction' part of reductionism. Russell Standish wrote: > No, its the analytical part in expressions like analytical geometry. > One can be analytical without being reductionist, but it helps to > have a computer :) [...] "Sum of the parts" is more metaphoric than > literal. IMHO, the key to the kingdom is emergence, and nonlinearity > is only necessary to distinguish between simple or "resultant" > emergence, and the more general kind. - -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-219-3846, http://tempusdictum.com When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators. -- P.J. O'Rourke -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFGdqeVZeB+vOTnLkoRAu6GAKCKm0yRFFL0t9OcbTfrUYFtD3twagCfcs87 rtDWLbZKA/Ny8FI077Kkhps= =Cv38 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
