Hi, apparently these articles have given rise to rebuttals, see http:// www.panmere.com/?cat=18 for a survey of this discussion.
I read 'Life Itself' a while ago, found it extremely interesting but not an easy read either. Later I read some of the essays from 'Essays on Life Itself", which helped. The biggest problem with Rosen's writing was for me that it is very concise; for a layman (like me) it would have been good to have a bit more flesh around his central argument, in the form of historical references and examples. Later I discovered the writings of Howard Pattee (an essay in the first Artificial Life proceedings) and Peter Cariani (his thesis from 1989 <http://homepage.mac.com/cariani/CarianiWebsite/Cariani89.pdf> and a later article for example <http://homepage.mac.com/cariani/ CarianiWebsite/Cariani98.pdf>. I found both their writings more digestible. hope this helps, Joost. On Dec 29, 2007, at 5:03 AM, Russell Standish wrote: > By all means have a discussion. Rosen is not an easy read, nor easy to > talk about even. I have some grumbles with Rosen, which I mention in > my paper "On Complexity and Emergence", but these are fairly > muted. There've been some interesting articles recently in Artificial > Life by Chu & Ho that appear to disprove Rosen's central theorem. I > suspect their rather more rigourous approach crystalises some of my > grumbles, but I haven't found the time yet to try out the analysis > more > formally myself. > > Cheers > > On Fri, Dec 28, 2007 at 08:41:43PM -0700, Nicholas Thompson wrote: >> All, >> >> On the recommendation of somebody on this list, I started reading >> Rosen's Life Itself. It does indeed, as the recommender >> suggested, seem to relate to my peculiar way of looking at such >> things as adaptation, motivation, etc. The book is both >> intriguing and somewhat over my head. Pied Piperish in that >> regard. So I am wondering if there are folks on the list who wold >> like to talk about it. By the way, does the fact that I am >> attracted to Rosen make me a category theorist? I am told that >> that is somewhat to the left of being an astrologer. >> >> Nick >> ------------------------------------------- Joost Rekveld ----------- http://www.lumen.nu/rekveld ------------------------------------------- “This alone I ask you, O reader, that when you peruse the account of these marvels that you do not set up for yourself as a standard human intellectual pride, but rather the great size and vastness of earth and sky; and, comparing with that Infinity these slender shadows in which miserably and anxiously we are enveloped, you will easily know that I have related nothing which is beyond belief.” (Girolamo Cardano) ------------------------------------------- ============================================================ 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
