Thus spake Miles Parker circa 10-02-22 04:15 PM: > We're all muddling through, that seems to be the point. The question > of course is, who is willing to admit it. :) I'm extremely skeptical > of characters like this Loeb dude who pretend not to be. Isn't his > statement simply yet another attempt of many to resurrect Positivism? > Given that science as practiced today is pretty much a poorly > disguised shrine to Positivism, that leaves me wondering, like you I > think, what Lima-de-Faria is now offering besides a more bedazzling / > befuddling version of mechanics über alles.
Well, I don't think LdF is making a justificationist (positivist) point, so much. I think he would be fine with a falsificationist rhetorical method, as long as the hypotheses in play can fail tests (i.e. they are specified concretely enough to be tested). He does explicitly claim that neo-Darwinist selection is not falsifiable and, hence, not scientific. So, I don't think he's making a case for positivism. But he definitely _seems_ to be making the case for mechanics over all. In this initial skimming of the book, I haven't _found_ any places where he talks explicitly about unpredictability, symmetry breaking, forcing structures, or anything like that. But just because I haven't found it doesn't mean it's not there. Or, perhaps his theory would allow for some of what passes for selection nowadays, since the book is pretty old by now. I notice in internet and journal searches that he's mostly chattering about the (hypothetical) biological periodic table, now, rather than autoselection. That makes me think that, perhaps, he's started to see enough concreteness in selection mechanisms to soften his stance. > "Scientifically, what we really need is a particular concrete > multi-scale situation that's determined at the lower scale and > indeterminate at the higher scale. The trouble is that our best and > smallest scale theory (quantum mechanics) also alows the dual. In > some ways, it's deterministic and in other ways it simply > circumscribes the wiggle room for the mysterious mechanisms > underneath. " > > I'm going to argue very strongly that it is undetermined at *all* > scales. The more one studies complex systems the more one sees that > what we thought were clear theories established on the basis of next > scale down knowledge are in fact approximations that inevitably miss > some of the richness that only reveals its depth at the scale we're > currently studying. What a relief when contrasted to the dark vision > of LaPlace et.al.! I've written a bit more (too much really) on this > general theme here: OK. Implicitly, I agree. But explicitly, I have to argue because the discussion hinges on how we ground "determine". I really like the word "canalize" as a replacement, because it seems to separate ontology from epistemology. It's like "determined, ceteris paribus". [grin] Likewise, it would help to replace "scale" with "resolution", because "scale" implies a precise and attainable truth. Now putting those words in your mouth, I would disagree with the new you I've constructed and posit that behavior is canalized at some resolutions and free at others. (I know I've twisted the words all around... but that's the point of dialogue, right? Perhaps the real you actually agrees with me.) So, back to autoevolution. LdF is careful to beat around the bush when providing evidence (he shows lots of pictures of animal parts side-by-side with pictures of minerals and crystals) and then he goes on to say that this evidence _might_ be used to falsify selectionism IF a testable mechanism for selection were identified. In his commentary, he can be pretty grandiose; but in the specifics, he reigns in his rhetoric nicely and speaks mainly about canalization and similarity rather than determination and equality. Thanks for the chance to mince the words and think more deeply about it. > http://milesparker.blogspot.com/2009/10/tale-of-two-conferences.html Awesome! I'll take a look and post comments there, if I have any. -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://agent-based-modeling.com ============================================================ 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
