Replying to Pedro, who said:
Those hierarchical schemes that with a few categories cover realms and
realms of knowledge have an undeniable allure --but are they useful?
S: This depends upon the meaning of useful. As my work is in
Natural Philosophy, they are useful there in the sense of allowing one to
grasp as a whole all of Nature as it has been constructed by science, along
with the logical relationships between its different realms. As for
pragmatic usefulness, I hope never to create anything of that kind of
usefulness for our culture.
When discussing about the complexity of human societies, or biological
complexity, etc., one should not dispatch their amazing boundary
conditions as mere constraints from the level above. I do not mean that
one cannot produce interesting philosophical reflections (like on almost
any theme), but probably the problem we are around on how a matrix of
informational operations do characterize the origin, maintenance, survival,
decay, etc. of the complex self-producing entity alive and also of its own
open self-producing parts, disappears from sight.
S: The hierarchy scheme I have presented in this discussion is meant
to show relations between realms of nature, and is not meant to be used for
the tasks you have mentioned here. For these we need other formalisms.
In the recent
exchanges, the interest of Jerry's chemical logics is that it contributes
to illuminate basic problems of form, formation, conformation ,
recognition, etc. upon which life combinatorics is founded molecularly
--and that is something. It is not my turf, but I am curious on the
relationship this approach shows with Michael Leyton's grammar process,
with Ted's category theory, and also with Karl's multidimensional
partitions. No doubt that Stan's principle of maximum entropy production
is also an important dynamic point within this molecular soup of complexity.
S: Yes, indeed. The principle (which has now been given formal
status in Physics (R. Dewar, 2005, J. Physics, A, Math. General 38:
L371-L381) states that dissipative systems that are capable of assuming
different configurations, will assume one that maximizes entropy
production, short of destroyng the system itself. The paper uses the
maximum (informational) entropy principle to derive maximum (physical)
entropy production (MEP). So this limits what configurations would be
possible in complex systems.
Later Pedro added
Dear Igor and colleagues,
IGOR: I have the impression that there is an agreement about the
existence of biological and sociocultural constraints that impact on our
ability to understand and manage socioeconomic complexity. These
constraints are organized hierarchically, as Stan puts it, {biological
{sociocultural }}.
PEDRO: I would agree that this is the way to organize our explanations.
But dynamically the real world is open at all levels: very simple
amplification or feed forward processes would produce phenomena capable of
escalating levels and percolate around (e.g., minuscule
oxidation-combustion phenomena initiating fires that scorch ecosystems,
regions). Socially there is even more openness: a very tenuous rumor may
destroy an entire company, or put a sector on its knees... Arguing
logically about those hierarchical schemes may be interesting only for
semi-closed, capsule like entities, but not really for say (individuals
(cities (countries)))... My contention is that we should produce a new
way of thinking going beyond that classical systemic, non-informational
view.
S: It is a mistake to suppose that hierarchies are imposing
semi-closed (?meaning?) boundaries around systems. With, e.g., the scale
hierarchy,[cities [individuals]], the major meaning is that cities impose
constraints, of the boundary condition type, upon individuals (who must
walk in the pattern of streets, for example), while individuals contribute
to work making possible the continuity of cities. Any hierarchy is only a
way organizing our thinking about different kinds of transactions between
individuals of different scope. Also, considering the specification
hierarchy,{physics {chemistry {biology}}}, note that the relations moving
from biology down the hierarchy are transitive -- they move through the
levels. As well, the boundaries here are erected from the lower to the
upper, and so in that direction as well, the boundary is fluid.
STAN
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