In case anybody cares: The Rosen position on this is that while you can learn a lot about a system from the study of its parts, such a study does not exhaust knowledge about the system; you have to understand how it is organized and that organization is, to some degree, independent of any particular way in which the abstract organization of the system might be realized.
Again, using Rosen's terminology, you could write a careful chronicle of the events that take place in the cycling of particular thermostat and still not grasp how the heating system is organized. Or to put it 'round the other way, an organizational description of a thermostat leaves one free to realize that description in a zillion differnt ways. This is even truer of organisms. nick ============================================================ 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
