Ah yes, I believe in scientific thinking as doing reduction the 'right way' too, but not without checking. That's then done by having a way to look for how we're doing it the 'wrong way'. If you don't have the latter the former can be just self-fulfilling prophecy.
The basic dilemma is that our form of representation for nature captures so very little of nature's diversity, order, features, dynamics and scales, etc. That has long been obvious, but we have also simply not been paying much attention to solving it. I think that 1996 Rosen essay makes the point nicely, pointing to how science rules out studying the spectrum of divergent processes by limiting itself to the mathematics of convergent sequences. http://www.synapse9.com/ref/Rosen_On_Limitations_of_Sci.pdf Our tools clearly all greatly misrepresent our subject. My trick for correcting that may look like just a trick till you find it useful, but is to use representations to point to the individual things we crafted them from so you can see what they're supposed to represent. Anybody have a better idea? Phil > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On > Behalf Of Günther Greindl > Sent: Sunday, September 07, 2008 1:29 PM > To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Young but distant gallaxies > > Doug, > > > Reductionists have a well-earned reputation for performing blind > > over-simplifications in their often miss-guided attempts to analyze > > complex systems. > > Viewing this as a failure is grossly misunderstanding science. > > Science works by proposing theories (=mechanisms) of how something > works. They get more complex with time, then simpler (on a different > level of abstraction) - undulating waves of success and failure. > > But saying that reductionism is bad because some posited mechanical > models are false is clearly wrong. > > > > The ego that allows one to assume that non-humans can be reductively > > explained as automata has already demonstrated a mind-numbing > blindness > > to the complexities of the world around him. The 360 years since > > Descarte have not changed human nature much: there are still plenty > of > > people who view the world in similar simplisctic and egotistic > manner. > > Why is reductionism simplistic and egotistic? What would a > non-simplistic and non-egotistic explanation be? > > And since when are theories like QED simple, despite being > reductionist? > > *confused* Günther > > > -- > Günther Greindl > Department of Philosophy of Science > University of Vienna > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Blog: http://www.complexitystudies.org/ > Thesis: http://www.complexitystudies.org/proposal/ > > > ============================================================ > 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 ============================================================ 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
