Subject: boundaries & reductionism Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2000
To: complex-science@necsi.org
Tom Maxwell wrote:
> > > The Integrity Paradigm relies on this fundamental notion - that the universe consists of
> > many nested layers of local entropies. They have functional boundaries which distinguish
> > yet interrelate. That is, they can be treated independently even while they are open
> > enough to affect each other and transmit information through their respective levels,
> > because they share parameters in adjacent sets. The four fundamental forces of nature
> > plus entropy create the activities we observe and affect each layer. The important notion
> > is ...
> Being new to this list I am rather suprised at this recurrent thread of
> extreme reductionism - i.e. the attempt to derive the dynamics of the
> cosmos from the laws that govern matter. As I understand it, the
> current paradigm within the life and social sciences views the cosmos as
> composed of a set of holarchical levels, each of which includes and
> transcends lower levels. The dynamics of the biosphere includes the
> dynamics of the physiosphere, but also includes emergent properties
> which can not be derived from the laws of the physiosphere alone.
> Similarly, the psychosphere transcends the biosphere, and the
> sociosphere transcends the psychosphere. This attempt to characterize
> complexity through a flatland materialist reductionism seems quite out
> of context with our current understanding of the cosmos. I recall
> Steven J Gould trashing Fritz Capra's "Tao of Physics" for this very
> reason.
>
> _________________________________________________________
> Thomas P Maxwell, Ph.D. Spatial Systems Research
> University of Maryland Institute for Ecological Economics
> URL: http://iee.umces.edu/Tom/Maxwell.html
Tom,
You make it a challenge to reply. One reason being that I respect Gould and Capra both. The other being that you're resident at U.Maryland where one of my heroes was : Elsasser. In 1972 I made it a point to drive down from SUNY Stonybrook to spend a few hours with him. And I can only hope that his ideas may still resonate in the hallways.
I guess I have to admit that I'm a premiere reductionist - but only in the sense that I firmly ascribe to the notion that a Theory of Everything and Grand Unifying Theory are not only possible, but are the essential nature of existence and behaviors. And everything to me means 'everything' - not just physics. So I differentiate qualia from dynamics. The holarchical levels seem to me to merely be alternate mechanisms of some few underscoring interaction parameters. Why else would we find the same powers laws applicable in many diverse farflung fields and events?
Emergent properties do arise, but I'm not convinced they represent totally new or unpre- cedented dynamics. New mechanisms and venues, absolutely. Totally new dynamics .. meaning totally new 'laws of performance' .. that is doubtful. And even more, I'm quite comfortable with this dichotomy. To the point where I expect non-reducible openness and new qualia to in fact emerge quite readily.
So I'm not sure what "our current understanding of the cosmos" really refers to. There are several options on the table I think. I have an understanding of the comos which in part is very much in keeping with other people, while in certain fundamental ways is thoroughly unconventional. I look at behaviors of interacting electron clouds and see the fundamentals of biological organic respiration and of economic exchange dynamics. Not too many others see that yet. I don't sense an 'anthropic principle' to the universe as much as I do an 'organic principle'. That there is a direct cladistic lineage that is the backbone of the long stream of Complex emergences. Each new species - 'behavior-sphere' - is unique and special and valid and needs to be understood in terms of its own local qualia and characteristics, but it also has to be appreciated as developmentally contiguous with predecessor 'spheres' as well as subsequently produced ones.
As I've argued before on this list, compliance with absolute reductionism and only reduction- ism is indeed dangerous, if not plainly foolish. But to go to a pendulum like opposite stance is just as dangerous and foolish (no personal comment intended). Any extremism which takes an exclusionary stance is counter to the reality of co-presenses and proprietary validities.
If reductionism were a "1" and non-reductionism were a "0", the only way we would comprehend a universe of messaged diversity would be to enthuse in all the mixtures of zeroes and ones. And then the ones and zeroes become windows of interactive experiences - which become infinitely more interesting and fascinating than the zeroes and ones themselves, or whether a long experiential message is 'more ones than zeroes' or vice versa ... 'really'.
I argue for an ultimate 'sense' and 'value' and consistency to the universe. Some people find religion to garb the idea in. I see deep spiritual reasons in the universe, but my personal sensibilities long for the deep shared dynamics and performance connections that are there too, functionally binding all things together and making Meaning and Reason flesh ... in the sense that space-time-energy-mass are the 'flesh' of some ultimate transcendent extancy of being.
So I don't fear reductionism any more than I fear learning about some new emergent qualia that somebody discovered, which I was never aware of before. One grounds me as being totally a part of the event called "universe", while the other is the exhilaration of wonderment that "universe" is vaster and more fabulous than we can - I can - ever totally experience.
We appreciate the objective qualities of the universe - the intangible underpinning rules of performance - only through experience with the subjective ... all ( underscore 'all') individually and collectively enacted phenomena. As we comprehend one, we understand the other. We have no other choice but to learn about essences through experience with the particular .. where local parameters and mechanisms are important in and of themselves. But so are the core generalities.
