Between: Kim James (UK), John Mikes (USA), (USA)
Date: June
2000
Online: "Complexity
and Management Mailing List" COMPLEX-M
Kim James
Sunday, June 18, 2000
I am delighted that my initial posing of the issue of ethics and emergence was the source of new contributions from old-standing list members. I had an idea that it might; because as is apparent from the contributions so far, it really poses the question of complexity in interweaving levels of system interaction. I am further stimulated by yet another programme on BBC television which is equally apposite. The programme was on the life of the great German philosopher-scientist Von Humboldt. Humboldt, I was reminded, saw life as an interweaving of all things from geology through geography natural sciences and politics. One thing can only be understood in its relationships both with itself and with others. The last sentence is deliberate in talking of the relationships of the One with itself as well as with its embedding relationships manifesting as separate things. The programme ended by saying that Humboldt who had been the towering scientist of his day was later totally eclipsed by Darwin who dealt with things-as-such, which were impinged on by their environments and which survived, or not, according to their abilities. I looked this morning at a list with requests from the Santa Fe Institute to combat attempts by the creationists to obtain the validation of this in schools. One of the chief arguments for creationism which is now being peddled is the notion that because evolution is a type of programme of development it must have a creator. The great programmer in the sky. I must remark that the way we non-creationists try to deal with phenomena is not that different. I believe that one of the fundamental problems of Darwinian evolutionary theory is that it is based on a philosophy which tends to drive toward reductionism. It does not mean that we would not have achieved discrete knowledge such as blood transfusions, drugs, petrol engines, cinemas and so on, it means that such achievements would have taken their place within a co-ordinated whole approach rather than in opposition to the total. We might have been spared Concord, shopping malls and MacDonald's on the plus side. Darwin's formulation gained such easy acceptance because it fitted into the development of industrial society and the full flowering of capitalism was at the same time the full flowering of discrete particulate science. If Marx had one fault it is that he failed to see that his own philosophy was fatally flawed by his acceptance of Darwin. It was a fatal flaw. Humboldt's eclipse by Darwin meant that a whole tendency to research by approaching life as an irreducible whole was quashed and is only now beginning to be revived. The quasi-reverential attitude to scientists such as Dawkins and Pinkner and philosophers such as Dennet is a mark of our sublime arrogance in approaching life as a whole. Kim James
John Mikes <jamikes@prodigy.net>
Mon, 19 June 2000
Dear Kim,
Your double post is reassuring.
In the present one you remind us of Humboldt, who didn't occur to me for decades and am
glad to refresh. Earlier I appreciated his views, as I recall. Let me jump to your other
(here not copied) post of same day (the bullock-sound for Einstein) and quote one sentence
of it:
"The reason why I bang on about this is
that we do not allow for enough slop in our systems of thoughts" - well, I believe
this accusation does not fit my thoughts:
I apply ample 'slop' <G> not (only) by
personal negligence, but due to the 'not yet' known and identified terrain I try to cover.
It is about EVOLUTION.
(I don't believe Santa Fe Inst. is an efficient combattant against creationism, as I
observe, they are burried in the reductionism-based formalism of the past, (as in:
mathematical physics) - even if it is applied to newer ideas. They continue (maybe modify)
the creationists' headstart of classical "science".
Darwin, ingeniously detected one side of the terrestrial proceeds, what we now call the
buildup of the complexities - at least in the biological chapter, the one which Darwin
concentrated on. Continuing consequently even his stories, we see (not only in
biology, but really ostentatively there) a deterioration of complexities, more
fitting into what physicists like to call an increase in entropy. I.e. "death".
So the hypothetical Big Designer in the sky works together with the Angel of Death,
to keep the poplars from growing all the way to the sky (folk proverb). It seems
evolution is a zero-sum process: builds up and destroys back. All we can see in "our
time" is a snapshot and our explanation is VERY wishful:
"WE and only WE are the perfection of nature, God's favorite children and all the
previous story is in order to provide nature with the perfection embodied in US. Now, that
we are here, the story ends (untold of course) and the world is perfect as we want it to
be. End of evolution (meaning: no subsequent creature will take over from us).
I tried to outline a worldview when 2000 started ahead (my website: Dyn.Sym.) - it is not
too readable. I am working on a more palatable text (don't hold your breath).
In essence: the totality of the existence (some call it Plenitude
and I like it) is not a static contraption: it is an infinite dynamism of invariance (a
dynamic symmetry) of - well, now I have to apply my promised "slop" -
information-assemblages, the interchanges in differencies unlimited. Never mind that, I
had to start somewhere.
In the infinite variance of differences groups of identities are not dismissable, so there are 'islands' of uniformity, which falls out from the system of an overall non-uniformity, but is restored (re-dissipated) continually to keep the system invariant in its dynamically symmetrical infinite interchange. Such island-formation and dissipation is a big bang. (That is close to how I tried to describe it in my proposal). An instantaneous fulguration of a variance.
The plenitude is timeless, spaceless, featureless, by its nature. In OUR bigbang- (there are unlimited many in number and quality, some call such: a Multiverse) -island, observed FROM THE INSIDE, a 'world of features' has developed, with time and space, the observables - as complexities, all within that timeless fulguration (as seen from the outside). The island-characteristics dissipate back into the invariance, however we, observers from within, see a time-extended and space-expanded 'history' of this (instanteneous) fulguration of the universe-complexity buildup and dissipation. All we see is a snapshot pertaining to the observed status which we are witnessing.
Darwin extracted the biological terrestrial life biology - and only the
buildup aspect. Astrophysicists describe the evolution of the matterly cosmos with its
demise into black holes (ultimately). Anthropologist-philosophers the
complexification of the thought - a sarcastic "are we *already* in the decline of
it?" is unreasonable: the evolutionary complexification phenomenon has the concurrent
ups and downs.
Conclusion: we are looking at a space-time elevation of the bigbang, observing as a
history of our universe. It is a feature-buildup and dissipation (complexities building up
and breaking down) extended into our physical worldview: timed and spaced.
Darwin's ingenious point of view was just that: a point. We may expand
it into the total of our existence in the universe without fetishizing 'evolution' as an
'up'-thing. I believe creationists would not like that.
John Mikes
Von Humbolt's imagery was probably too broadly addressed for its day (high reaching beyond the mindsets of the day). That Darwin succeeded is exactly due to what Kim says: simplistic issues, accomplishments of pragmatism.
That SFI should need to call for reinforcements in order to deal with the inventive adaptive lengths that Creationism is going to these days to - countering every rise of the bar-of-proof that 'science' throws at it - is indictment of the severe weakness in their core paradigm. And I agree with Kim's remarks re Dawkins, Pinker and Dennet (among others).
Survival and self-orientation is ... process that exists only in correlation with existence that accompanies 'self'. Von Humbolt, Buber, Lovelock, et al. But that's only a penultimate realization. The final step is recognizing that identity, integrity, is a relationship of conditions, not necessarily of a 'thing' or a 'tangible'. Any collection of 'behaviors' that recourse and reinform and reinforce become an 'entity'. Comfort zones where less energy is needed to maintain the self, than if constantly engaged in establishment and the defining-process .. searching and testing and coming toward fulfillment.
Systems, things, lives, ideas become very very self _protective_.
And when the Meaning and an assignment of Value for a given life or lifestyle is adopted, then it's obvious that fierce tenacity will be brought to bear to secure it's survival. Without fail.
The only thing that can amend this and the acts that go with it are if a 'self' morphs, accepts a transformation, allows its identity to have different associations ... alters the horizons it recognizes as self and self-with-world. If a godhead plays a role in the scenario somewhere, the game becomes one of challenging a persons Absolute Cosmology. And if a person's godhead story and existence story are open to question, what deeper threat and potential invalidation is there? None.
That the spate of current popular complexity notions are what science has hung its reductionist hat on as visions of the world/universe/behaviors, yet they haven't recognized or been able to enunciate these simple (but not un-intricate) notions I just mentioned, speaks volumes about their essential deficiencies. Deficiences I've unpopularly spent the last several years raising voice about.
For the thing is, we are not sentiences which appeared out of nowhere, placed into The Garden. We .. and all our behaviors, attitudes and cognitions .. are connected _products_ of qualities which had to be resident ... however nacsent, unformed and not easily recognizable .. within the primal formative beginnings .. the
conditions/characteristics.
And why does that technique of Universe have to preclude the inordinately Purposeful? It doesn't. All it does is call into question the primacy of any fabricated or received wisdom which EXCLUDES. No matter how wonderful or self-satisfying or socially amenable or soulfully calming.
I think the tenacity and entrenchment of most religions to the challenges of science are not simply because neutral mechanics will account for events and senses and realities that were once seen as divine and meaningful beyond the pale limitations of less-than-magnificent existences. The subtler challenge is to all religious tenets for them to morph and change from what they identify with as their 'self'. To give up and give over some if not most of their most sacred aspects,and transform into HIGHER and broader and more encompassing spirituality than have been achieved in all the thousands of years passed.
Can you imagine that ??!??!! Asking for a Self - the mindset of a collective - to let go of all it holds sacred and identifiable, and to allow itself to become something it has no way to plan or prepare for! And for Science .. it has to do the same thing. No more and no less.
The intimacy of reality re-immersing itself in/as/with its else and selves. Fusion. Superpositioning. Separate yet same. Many yet one. Singular yet awe-inspiringly complex.
If we can make it through the trauma of the morphing, the product will be the delight of eons and essences, spacetime and transfinity...meaning and value. Enthusiasm without conflict. Opportunities for each and every life.
At least that's the view from inside my braincase. :-) beyond Godel beyond Complexity flying the transfinite.
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