Dear Gary:
On May 4, 2006, at 1:06 AM, Peirce Discussion Forum digest wrote:
Yesterday i looked through the works of Rosen and Pattee that i
have at
hand, and although they both mention Prigogine in passing, i haven't
found any "rejection of the Prigogine approach" in either of them. I
would surmise that Jerry means that their choice of mathematical tools
differed from Prigogine's. This is certainly true of Rosen, and
i'll get
to his comments on category theory below. As for Pattee, though, i
haven't seen any use of category theory in the dozen or so articles of
his that are accessible to me.
I admire you capability for digesting complex material so quickly and
drawing such firm conclusions.
Your surmise about my views is utter nonsense.
I have been working on understanding these authors for more than
twenty years and fail to find the conclusions you allude to in your
post.
I would note the following:
1. Rosen and Pattee were close personal friends and collaborated for
several decades. For most philosophical purposes, their views are
interchangeable. At least, if my memory serves me correctly, that is
Howard Pattee's take on their relationship.
2. Rosen and Ehresmann have radically different views of science.
Almost mutually exclusive if your read them carefully or know them
personally. Yet, both sought to use category theory to express
concepts about living systems.
This is part of the conundrum of category theory that I alluded to!
Can Mathematics be more than the vehicle they use to express their
sentiments about living systems and philosophy?
3. Rosen and Prigogine also have radically different views of science
and philosophy. Rosen focused on a very strange view of biochemical
dynamics that effectively rejected the chemical law of mass action as
a basis for catalysis; Prigogine was fascinated with the nature of
time and entropy. One should note with regard to Prigogine's work
that it is seldom cited in the chemical literature. Physical
chemists have not found relevance for it. The reason for this
absence of relevance is clear if you understand practical
(engineering) thermodynamics. If you are into metaphors, entropy is
to thermodynamics systems as sweat, urine and feces are to living
organisms; it is what the system can not make use of.
Gary, you write,
"I'd like to expand and comment on this a bit, as a way of groping
toward
a nonspecialist answer -- for those who, like me, are not
mathematicians -- to the question of how all this (including category
theory) relates to philosophy in general and Peirce in particular."
I am puzzled by what you wish to communicate with this sentence.
We are all "non-specialists" in many areas.
With regard to the role of category theory in science and philosophy,
I would not expect a firm verdict for at least a hundred years. It
is that profound.
It appears to me that you are rushing toward judgments that are,
at best, only weakly supportable, by mathematics or scientific
philosophy. Of course, you have ever right to write your sentiments
without further comment. That is the tradition in philosophy and
justifiably so.
Cheers
Jerry
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