-------- Original Message -------- Subject: The Information Flow Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2012 14:35:49 -0500 From: Robert Ulanowicz <u...@umces.edu> To: CC:
Dear Bruno, Gordana and friends, At the risk of over-using my FIS privileges, please allow me a few remarks on the interesting discussion we all have been having: I think it is important to realize that the terms ?mechanism? and ?computationalism? are scientific metaphors, and ones that have proved very useful to research and philosophy. There?s little question about the contributions of either. Metaphors carry with them, however, the temptation to push them beyond their useful boundaries. Bruno, I appreciate your efforts to distinguish a new conception of ?mechanism? that departs from the classical notion. But, as I have written elsewhere, if it doesn?t look like a mechanism, if it doesn?t act like a mechanism, if it doesn?t smell like a mechanism, why persist in calling it a mechanism? Might not a less baggage-laden term like ?constraint? serve your purpose just as well? Gordana, I likewise respect your urge to drive computationalism beyond the rigidly algorithmic perception of the decades just past. But the fact of the matter remains that we still invest an enormous amount of energy and effort into making sure that machines and algorithms behave in strictly mechanical fashion. Those strictures will always haunt any effort to generalize the notion of computation. What we risk in trying to push these concepts beyond their envelopes is what John Haught calls ?metaphysical impatience? ? the attempt to ?seize the field? on behalf of a pet notion. That seizing the field would lead us astray of nature becomes evident when we ask what lies beyond the edges and would be adumbrated by our excess of zeal? In my view that is where we encounter ?a world of contingencies?. In one of my earlier posts to FIS which was a preamble to this current discussion, I expressed my worry that metaphysical impatience will serve to cover over the vital role of contingencies in the cosmos. In the mechanical worldview, contingencies are absolutely essential to the full picture and actually drive mechanical scenarios. They are relegated, however, to the conveniently neglected domain of the ?boundary statement?. In the realm of computation, we can interject a semblance of contingency into our algorithms, but our abilities to do so are quite limited. Here Stu Kauffman would have a word to say. He maintains that it is strictly impossible to state fully the ?adjacent possible?. It is not simply combinatorically intractable to do so, but outright impossible -- and I heartily agree. <http://vimeo.com/30875984> The evolution of the biological world is replete with what he calls ?Darwinian pre-adaptations?, which no boundary statement can encompass, nor any algorithm possibly adequately include. I end with a word of sympathy for Joseph. (Like him, I have been ?whistling Dixie? to a totally disinterested academy.) Joseph is arguing that there is a logic inherent in nature itself that may not be fully congruent with the tools of logic that we have built. We can approach it, as we once approached the music of the spheres, only in Ptolemaic fashion. We begin with models of systems that are homogeneous, rare and very weakly interactive, because it?s under those conditions that our tools of logic are strongest. But such systems are almost vanishingly rare in actual nature. Nature came (and still comes) at us incredibly dense and hugely interactive! By comparison, our starting models look more like endpoints, and we are forced to reason backwards. If we had a better grasp of the actual logic inherent in nature, we might be better equipped to begin to reason forward. My own conception of the universe bears little resemblance to the monist metaphors of mechanism or computationalism, but is dualist in kind. Not of the Cartesian type but more along the lines of the Heraclitean dialectic of order-building agonistic to a background of dissipation. Sorry, I went on too long. Thanks to anyone who read this far! The best to all, Bob ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Robert E. Ulanowicz | Tel: +1-352-378-7355 Arthur R. Marshall Laboratory | FAX: +1-352-392-3704 Department of Biology | Emeritus, Chesapeake Biological Lab Bartram Hall 110 | University of Maryland University of Florida | Email <u...@cbl.umces.edu> Gainesville, FL 32611-8525 USA | Web <http://www.cbl.umces.edu/~ulan> -------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- ------------------------------------------------- Pedro C. Marijuán Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud Centro de Investigación Biomédica de Aragón (CIBA) Avda. San Juan Bosco, 13, planta X 50009 Zaragoza, Spain Tfno. +34 976 71 3526 (& 6818) pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/ ------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ fis mailing list fis@listas.unizar.es https://webmail.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
