Steve, "The fact this seems to work ..." that whole line was a touch of sarcasm. It appears experimentally verified in my work, but people still like to argue with me about it. Is it possible to argue a phenomenon out of existence? Of course, I can be wrong, but someone will have to prove it by experimental counter-example - not just words. That doesn't seem to stop people from trying. Re: the question about application to non-probabilistic models - good question! I'd need to run an example. Got one? By all means check out Inverse theory (Tarantola, Mosegaard, Scales). Powerful stuff. Scales, ea. has a very accessible book on the web "Introduction to Geophysical Inverse Theory" http://acoustics.mines.edu/~jscales/gp605/snapshot.pdf Ken
_____ From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Steve Smith Sent: Monday, September 08, 2008 9:17 AM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Reductionism - was: Young but distant gallaxies Ken - Reductionism has its place in the analytical phase at equilibrium. Analysis is normally a study of integrable, often linear systems, but it can be accomplished on non-linear, feed-forward systems as well. Well said... The synthesis phase puts information re: complex behavior and emergence back into the integrated mix and may be "analyzed" in non-linear, recurrent networks. It is the synthesis/analysis duality that always (often) gets lost in arguments about Reductionism. There are very many useful things (e.g. linear and near-equilibrium systems) to be studied analytically, but there are many *more* interesting and often useful things (non linear, far-from-equilibrium, complex systems with emergent behaviour) which also beg for synthesis. This is actually a probabilistic inversion of analysis as described in Inverse Theory. I'll have to look this up. Bayesian refinement cycles (forward <-> inverse) are applied to new information as one progresses through the DANSR cycle. This refines the effect of new information on prior information - which I hope folks see is not simply additive - and which may be entirely disruptive (see evolution of science itself) . Do find this applies as well in non-probabalistic models? The fact this seems to work for complex systems is philosophically uninteresting, and may ignored - so the discussion can continue. "seems to work" sends up red flags, as does "philosophically uninteresting". I could use some refinement on what you mean here. Final point: Descartes ultimately rejected the concept of zero because of historical religious orthodoxy - so he personally never applied it to the continuum extension of negative numbers. All his original Cartesian coordinates started with 1 on a finite bottom, left-hand boundary - according to Zero, The Biography of a Dangerous Idea, by Charles Seife. And didn't Shakespeare dramatize this in his famous work "Much Ado about Nothing"? (bad literary pun, sorry). _____ ============================================================ 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
