Thanks Phil, and all who responded. I enjoyed reading it all. I intend to read Prigogine --and instead of having a"position" on reductionism, I'll aim for a healthy sense of its strengths and weaknesses. It seems that, following Phil's description, below, there would be theoretical and practical reductionism. For example, suppose we can understand a topic by using a function F of well-understood quantities. Then we can, in theory, reduce that topic to the well-understood quantities. But if the function is chaotic and requires exact, rather than approximate values for these quantities, it might be of little practical use.
________________________________________ From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Phil Henshaw [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, September 05, 2008 2:54 PM To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Young but distant gallaxies Well, maybe one very general way is to say reductionism is representing that things are well represented by our information at hand (i.e. using our information to substitute for things rather than to refer to them, ‘reducing’ things to our information about them). Our best information is generally that our information is limited, and significantly under represents the phenomena we observe . From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of John F. Kennison Sent: Friday, September 05, 2008 2:08 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Young but distant gallaxies Hi, I have been trying to figure out what my position on reductionism might be, but I am running into problems. Does reductionism mean a belief that the best strategy is always to analyze complex things in terms of simpler components (with, I presume, a small number of irreducible parts)? Or is it a belief that everything in nature is nothing more than a sum of simple components? --John On 9/5/08 12:13 PM, "Jack Leibowitz" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: To Gunther: I dont think the word is horrible. Please note the quotes around the word in my e-mail. Jack ----- Original Message ----- From: "Günther Greindl" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group" <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, September 05, 2008 8:34 AM Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Young but distant gallaxies Hi, > This doesn't mean strictly remaining with restraints belonging under the > heading of that horrible word "reductionism". Why do you think that the word is horrible? (be specific please ;-) Cheers, Günther -- Günther Greindl Department of Philosophy of Science University of Vienna [EMAIL PROTECTED] Blog: http://www.complexitystudies.org/ Thesis: http://www.complexitystudies.org/proposal/ ============================================================ 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 ============================================================ 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 ============================================================ 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
