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For some reason, I didn't receive this message from Nick. Nor did I receive Phil's last post. I wonder what's going on... perhaps my server was unavailable and the messages are frozen in the redfish.com spool? Anyway, Russell's right. I wouldn't recommend Mikulecky's site until/unless you've read some of Rosen's works directly. I also would NOT recommend Rosen's daughter's website: http://www.rosen-enterprises.com/. But, Tim Gwinn's site is pretty good: http://www.panmere.com/ Reading Rosen can be problematic. So, you might want to start with Tim's site and if anything seems interesting go directly to Rosen's words, rather than what others say about his work. That's because (in my not so humble opinion) most Rosenites wildly misinterpret or over-extrapolate what Rosen said to fit their own private world view. If you're like me and you prefer original material, then I recommend his book: "Fundamentals of Measurement and Representation of Natural Systems" first and foremost. Then for a lighter meal, try his "Essays on Life Itself", second. And third, I'd recommend "Anticipatory Systems". If you get through all that, then you should be well equipped to partially parse "Life Itself". When I was in Santa Fe, the SFI library only had "Life Itself". But that book is a bit dense in Rosen's private vocabulary, which is why I think there's so much ambiguity around what Rosen was trying to say. (There also seems to be many people who _claim_ to understand what Rosen was saying; but some deep poking often shows them to have only a vague understanding, unfortunately. For myself, I only understand a few of the basic concepts and have over-extrapolated his work to fit my own world view, which is more akin to non-well-founded set theory. ;-) To jump to the point, though. My misrepresentation of his work is that he was doing 2 things: 1) building an argument that acyclic inference is inadequate for representing certain systems (e.g. life), and 2) using category theory (or whatever else might work) as the jumping off point for building a new body of math to handle cyclic inference. This hypothetical body of new math would allow us to handle cause-effect cycles (e.g. what Rosen calls "anticipation"). And in such cycles, we can build systems where the end purpose _causes_ the beginning and middle effects that then cause the cause, as it were. That's why I suggest that your call for a "hierarchy of relations that lead to attributions of 'designedness'". Russell Standish on 11/28/2007 02:10 PM: > Try http://www3.vcu.edu/complex/ > > However, you'll probably find it easier to borrow one of Rosen's books > from the library and read that, rather than to try to understand what > others make of him. It's sort of the reverse of David Bohm... > > Cheers > > On Wed, Nov 28, 2007 at 11:46:55AM -0700, Nicholas Thompson wrote: >> Glen >> , >> >> Everybody but me seems to know what Robert Rosen work you are referring to. >> If I apologize for being an ill-educated bounder, could you provide me with >> a netref or two to work with? >> >> I apologize. >> >> Nick >> >> (if you give me the reference, will that be an instance of causality?) - -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-219-3846, http://tempusdictum.com The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill the world with fools. -- Herbert Spencer -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFHTfT5ZeB+vOTnLkoRAswOAJ9/H3V50oEqvcsmne/s+JmvgWg2nACg1wDY JacO4IWrJ97B6Quvo5uXIFQ= =WDWr -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ============================================================ 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
