Dear Ben / Gary:
First, my apologies to Gary. My dyslexia kicks in at the strangest
times. I read "Gary" and typed "Jim"!
Second, I was unaware of possibility of a "movie". I will try it.
I presume I will get a different logical and emotional response from
the show.
Thirdly, thank you for the long description of your views and the
quotes from CSP.
You are interested in "fours"? Interesting.
About 10 - 15 years ago, I read a book authored by a physicist (the
name of it escapes me this morning) that asserted that ten facets of
"complexity" existed.
The author's rational for complexity completely ignored chemistry and
most of biology / medicine. I thought the ten categories were
completely misguided, merely a re-statement of applied mathematics.
My visceral response was to list a chemical perspective of complexity
of life in terms of two sets of four terms each, one set for internal
relations and the other set for external relations. The first four
(bio-logic) categories, from the perspective of a (biochemist /
geneticist) experimentalist were: closure, conformation,
concatenation, and cyclicity.
If you will send me your surface mail address (offline), I will
forward them to you.
Historically, this categorization eventually lead me to work with
Ehresmann and, subsequently, more than a decade of discussions on the
relations between chemistry and mathematics and consciousness. (I
posted her website address earlier.) Since I retired from NIH, I
have had the opportunity to focus on the nature of mathematics and
take a class most semesters.
The consequence of the discussions with Ehresmann and the attempts to
integrate mathematics, biochemistry and consciousness are many. I
now see Greek mathematics as the source of chemical mathematics.
Although chemical structures lack boundaries, the logic of chemistry
is intimately associated with the internal logic or relations and
the external logic of relations. Such a categorization is not
possible if one presupposes that "mass" is a mathematical "point".
In an informal way, one might say that this distinction separates the
logic of chemistry from the logic of physics. Even though chemists
work with individual, invisible and indivisible objects, we suppose
that each object has a unique internal structure, that it is species
with internal relations. After one strips away the hubris that
accompanies the public perception of quantum mechanics, one finds
that the mathematics of quantum chemistry is merely a long list of
approximations, carefully guided by experimental data. Quantum
chemistry is very useful in many many ways, especially in estimating
the properties of structures. But, it is not a theory of chemistry!
The imagination of chemistry necessitates a "deep structure" that is
generative of relations, as CSP recognized. My work recently came to
closure with an electrical theory of chemistry that I will talk about
at the Whitehead Symposium in Salzburg in July and other meetings in
Europe this summer. The electrical theory of chemistry is a
pragmatic source of biosemiotics.
BTW, in the face of persuasive arguments from other system
scientists, the gradual de-construction of my ad hoc categories more
or less forced me into the history of scientific logic and hence to
Porphyrean trees and Aristotle and hence to Greek mathematics. As I
mentioned in another post, decision theory remains a central source
of scientific logic and, of, course, the semantics of mathematics. I
agree with Rosen that modern science and medicine is closer to
Aristotle. It is my view that Kant's narrative suffer from the
burden of mis-guided Newtonism.
(The long digression is of doubtful interest to CSP philosophers but
it is at least tangential to CSP's work and interpretation and
Rosen. I qualify as an interpretant!)
Can you guide me toward your work on fours?
Thanks again for your clarifications.
Cheers
Jerry
On May 20, 2006, at 1:05 AM, Peirce Discussion Forum digest wrote:
Subject: ~Re: Trikonicb.ppt Slide 18
From: "Benjamin Udell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Fri, 19 May 2006 21:46:21 -0400
Jerry LR Chandler
Research Professor
Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study
George Mason University
---
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