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Author Topic:   THE SIMPLICITY OF THE COMPLEX SYSTEMS - essay about origin of Life
b_sharp
Junior Member (Idle past 6176 days)
Posts: 3
From: Canada
Joined: 05-01-2007


Message 16 of 29 (398631)
05-01-2007 8:18 PM
Reply to: Message 15 by Fosdick
05-01-2007 4:42 PM


Re: whole>parts
b_sharp wrote:
HM asked:
General question relevant to the OP: Is water more than oxygen and hydrogen?
I think a better question would be, are the properties of water (H2O) predictable from the properties of oxygen, hydrogen and their interactions?
In my opinion, the definition of emergence as a list of properties of the combination different from the properties of the individual components as overly broad. A more precise definition would be an 'unexpected' consequence of the combining of components given their properties. However, this means that what we consider to be emergent properties will change as we learn to more accurately predict changes in properties upon combination from initial properties.
I'll have to agree with you. Water is unpredictbable from its pre-combined elements.
Actually I'd have to say that water's place within the 'emergent' household has just been lost.
Apparently water's properties are now predictable.

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Fosdick 
Suspended Member (Idle past 5500 days)
Posts: 1793
From: Upper Slobovia
Joined: 12-11-2006


Message 17 of 29 (398734)
05-02-2007 11:56 AM
Reply to: Message 16 by b_sharp
05-01-2007 8:18 PM


Re: whole>parts
b_sharp commented:
HM:
I'll have to agree with you. Water is unpredictbable from its pre-combined elements.
Actually I'd have to say that water's place within the 'emergent' household has just been lost.
Apparently water's properties are now predictable.
Very timely and relevant article. This must be a first. Scientists have used quantum mechanics and clusters of LINUX computers to “flush out the hidden properties of water,” revealing that water is far more "complex" than it was previous thought to be. Makes me wonder just what "complexity" means when water is seen as an increasingly complex structure. Does "complexity" have a seamless definition that extends across Newtonian, relativistic, and quantum-mechanical contexts? Does water become more or less complex when it freezes? Does water have any other hidden properties that need to be "flushed out"?
”HM

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miosim
Member (Idle past 5678 days)
Posts: 57
From: NH, USA
Joined: 04-07-2007


Message 18 of 29 (399475)
05-05-2007 8:59 PM
Reply to: Message 8 by 42
04-27-2007 9:43 AM


42,
Sorry for a late respond. I didn’t realize that this thread is still “alive”.
I expect you've read far beyond introductory chaos theory but "Deep Simplicity" by John Gribbin is quite an inspiring read.
I am not expert in the chaos theory and will try to read recommended by you book.
Since any system made of more simple systems requires integration/coordination of those smaller systems, this integration in space time and function is of itself not a part: hence more than parts is required. I'm probably missing the point.
The “ . integration/coordination of those smaller systems . ” (another word interaction among elements) are due to the properties of this elements and not to additional "ingredients" in the system. However if we decide to treat the element's properties that are revealed in the system during interaction, as additional "ingredients" we may state that "The whole is more than the sum of its parts" and this is fine with me.
However the criticized in my essay paradigm, is actually not about “whole and sum of its parts”, but that the ESSENTIAL PROPERTIES OF A SYSTEM, AS A WHOLE COULD NOT BE EXPLAINED USING PROPERTIES OF ITS ELEMENTS - and this is what I challenge.
Indeed, the system often reveals a property that wasn’t observable in isolated elements. But it is critical to understand that properties of elements may not be observable in isolation, but in the system only. The interactions in the system just reveal the part’s hidden properties. A system acts as a “litmus paper” and a “magnifying glass” that let us observe properties of the parts that are not observable otherwise.
The most important is a practical implication of the proposed methodological (reductionist) approach: if a system reveals the properties, which can not be reduced to the known element's properties, it means that some element's properties are hidden and ADDITIONAL EFFORTS to discover them are necessary. The Holistic methodology, in this case, directs to search some sorts of organizational principles to explain the system phenomenon.

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miosim
Member (Idle past 5678 days)
Posts: 57
From: NH, USA
Joined: 04-07-2007


Message 19 of 29 (399486)
05-05-2007 10:29 PM
Reply to: Message 11 by MartinV
04-27-2007 7:19 PM


Martin,
Sorry for late respond. I relied on e-mail notification, but now I learned a lesson.
That reminds me of the pillar of the marxistic teaching of (somehow very mysterious) "change of quantity into quality". This was probably Hegel concept anyway.
I am originally from Kiev (emigrated in 1990), so I am familiar with Hegel concept "change of Hegel into quality". Hegel, as I remember, regarded this principle as a starting point in investigating of, what we call today an “Emergent” system phenomenon. However, he pointed, that as we progress in understanding of this phenomena qualitative description must be replaced by quantitative one.
. marxists-structuralist . from around 1980 denying from materialistic point of view even the 2nd law in living organisms .
As I remember, the official teaching of that time was that there is no contradiction between 2nd law and living system, as long as a system is open.

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miosim
Member (Idle past 5678 days)
Posts: 57
From: NH, USA
Joined: 04-07-2007


Message 20 of 29 (399496)
05-06-2007 12:14 AM
Reply to: Message 12 by Fosdick
04-27-2007 7:33 PM


Re: whole>parts
Hoot Mon
General question relevant to the OP: Is water more than oxygen and hydrogen?
By responding to “42” I just realized what causes confusion about this paradigm. Its description "THE WHOLE IS MORE THAN THE SUM OF ITS PARTS" reflects a linguistic properties of human perception, as follow:
System = elements + interactions*.
However, this description is differ from this paradigm's actual meaning - “A WHOLE COULD NOT BE EXPLAINED USING PROPERTIES OF ITS ELEMENTS”
Therefore I may answer to your question as follow: Yes, water, as a human perception, is more than oxygen and hydrogen, but in the same time all property of water are reducible to properties of oxygen and hydrogen.
I think, that we should divorce meaning of this Holistic paradigm from its causing confusion “propagandistic” description.
*In my description: System = interacting_elements.
Edited by miosim, : Formating
Edited by miosim, : No reason given.

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Brad McFall
Member (Idle past 5033 days)
Posts: 3428
From: Ithaca,NY, USA
Joined: 12-20-2001


Message 21 of 29 (399536)
05-06-2007 12:14 PM
Reply to: Message 20 by miosim
05-06-2007 12:14 AM


Re: if whole>parts
If the water is biological or biology is the object of the question then blaming a sound aspect of human physiology as recieving a system among some sum of "elements" and interactions rather than your preferred sum of interactibility seems to affect a conflation of any "increase" in forms vs "increase" in size IF both genes and atoms are considered material therefor.
The quotes on said increase are provided by Gould quoting Darwin in the his "The Structure of Evolutionary Theory" but refer as best I can intellectualize to the following use case:
quote:
THE AMERICAN NATURALIST Vol.LXVIII "Evolutionary Relative Growth In The Titanotheres by Dr. A. H. Hersh
Therefore unless you restrict your thought to H20 rather than water among lipids and ions organically I can not agree that there is some human error here. I would have not a problem understanding your sum rather than the one that includes elements and nucelons and quarks etc (Kant's notion of "community") except that one would have to KNOW the information content of genes vs. atoms per whole individual organims WITHIN the economy of places available on Earth and THIS we do not know at all today. If you think otherwise I would be happy to hear.
If by "elements" you are simply arguing against Wolfram's dissection of the same scientific experience, I may not disagree with you.
Edited by Brad McFall, : footnote and thumb print

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miosim
Member (Idle past 5678 days)
Posts: 57
From: NH, USA
Joined: 04-07-2007


Message 22 of 29 (399606)
05-06-2007 10:57 PM
Reply to: Message 21 by Brad McFall
05-06-2007 12:14 PM


Re: if whole>parts
If the water is biological or biology is the object of the question then blaming a sound aspect of human physiology as receiving a system among some sum of "elements" and interactions rather than your preferred sum of intractability seems to affect a conflation of any "increase" in forms vs "increase" in size IF both genes and atoms are considered material therefore.
I cannot intellectualize, like you do, and prefer to keep communication as simple as possible to avoid misunderstanding.
What I am trying to say that the actual meaning of the Holistic paradigm -“A WHOLE COULD NOT BE EXPLAINED USING PROPERTIES OF ITS ELEMENTS” is not the same as its clever (but distorted) popular interpretation - “THE WHOLE IS MORE THAN THE SUM OF ITS PARTS". Therefore this interpretation should not be used to perform an analysis of system phenomena.

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Brad McFall
Member (Idle past 5033 days)
Posts: 3428
From: Ithaca,NY, USA
Joined: 12-20-2001


Message 23 of 29 (399647)
05-07-2007 7:08 AM
Reply to: Message 22 by miosim
05-06-2007 10:57 PM


Re: if whole>parts
That is fine.
When you wrote
"-“A WHOLE COULD NOT BE EXPLAINED USING PROPERTIES OF ITS ELEMENTS”"
can the would "can" replace "could"?
When you use the word "could" I do not know if you are referring to anything I wrote or if it meant to be associated with your other sentence. Wolfram
Wolfram Demonstrations Project
and other sites,
seems to think that a whole could be thus explained.
Are you a logical positivist??
Are you familiar with Gold's ideas in linguistics??
http://www.lps.uci.edu/...lications/Johnson.GoldsTheorem.pdf
I think I can demonstrate to you that a fininte to an infinite baseline representation
http://axiompanbiog.com/hierarchy.aspx
can be learned even if an infinite language cannot. Memorization works here where it might not for the child learning to open the same box.
If you give me some time I will show this synthesis of already completed analysis on my web site. If you think however that there is something wrong with me and not our use of quoting there is nothing I can say anymore. You need not give up on me so easily.

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Replies to this message:
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 Message 27 by miosim, posted 05-08-2007 8:57 PM Brad McFall has replied

  
miosim
Member (Idle past 5678 days)
Posts: 57
From: NH, USA
Joined: 04-07-2007


Message 24 of 29 (399699)
05-07-2007 1:29 PM
Reply to: Message 23 by Brad McFall
05-07-2007 7:08 AM


Re: if whole>parts
Brad,
When you wrote “A WHOLE COULD NOT BE EXPLAINED USING PROPERTIES OF ITS ELEMENTS”" can the would "can" replace "could"? . When you use the word "could" I do not know if you are referring to anything I wrote or if it meant to be associated with your other sentence
I think I can. When I used “could” instead of “can’ I didn’t expect any deep meaning in this usage. I just followed my intuition about what correct grammar should be in this case. I didn’t referred to anything you wrote - can you explain what is the diference between COULD and CAN in this particular case. Please, direct me to your previous posting, were you used it.
The same grammatical structure (COULD) was used in the following statement from http://www.complexsystems.org/...ications/pdf/emergence3.pdf
“ . The basic claim of emergent evolutionists that wholes had irreducible properties that COULD NOT BE fully understood or predicted by examining the parts alone . ”
(By the way, I like this article and even agree with cited above Holistic statement, because “by examining the parts alone” we cannot learn their properties that are critical to understand a system phenomenon.)
Are you a logical positivist? . Are you familiar with Gold's ideas in linguistics . ?
I have no idea what is a "logical positivist" and I am not familiar with Gold's ideas in linguistics. I have to admit that I have a limited knowledge in many areas, and especially in philosophy. Looks like I need to spend some time to overcome some gaps in my education. I will be back on all of these including the link to Wolfram, when I done.
Thank you for opportunity to learn
Mark
Edited by miosim, : No reason given.

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Brad McFall
Member (Idle past 5033 days)
Posts: 3428
From: Ithaca,NY, USA
Joined: 12-20-2001


Message 25 of 29 (399756)
05-07-2007 7:54 PM
Reply to: Message 24 by miosim
05-07-2007 1:29 PM


Re:Corning but Brad being less holistic
I was objecting to you your removal of “elements” from your SYSTEM ‘ in message 20 during your attempt to justify using the phrase “A WHOLE COULD NOT BE EXPLAINED USING PROPERTIES OF ITS ELEMENTS” rather than "THE WHOLE IS MORE THAN THE SUM OF ITS PARTS" if I understand you correctly this time.
Thus I could not tell when you used the words “could not”, whether you were saying that any whole I tried to write about in this thread could not be whole or if you meant essentially the same phrase as, “A whole can not be explained using the properties of its elements”. I had suspected that this was simply a difference in English as a first language. The problem for me is that it is phrased in the "past tense". I did not find the example in Corning but I see he has it phrased that way. I DO NOT grant organacists the luxuray perhaps afforded by Corning of saying that (the) a (biological) whole IS NOW (since 50s-70s)no longer explained by the parts or not a simple sum without elements. I think that is revisionary to some extent and hopeful thinking. If there were no Dawkins or Wolfram it might be a true statement but we still have both today.
I am definitely not as holistic as Corning
Page Not Found - University of Chicago Press
I was fingering through this book and almost bought it last week but decided that I probably would not be able to find any use for his words. I guess I can look into it again. Besides, looking at the PDF you referred to shows that whatever evolution Corning is involved in has to go through Mayr’s use of “why” (ultimate)and “how”(proximate) which really can be got a-round (French biologists have done so) with a proper discussion of “actual” and “possible”).
I think I understand more cleaerly now, “where you are coming from”. You probably have more in common with Martin than me.
I would probably need to rewrite(above link) Corning’s
quote:
11. Biological Adaptation in Human Sciences: A Basic Needs Approach
Part III - From Thermodynamics and Information Theory to Thermoeconomics and Control Information
12. To Be or Entropy: Thermodynamics, Information, and Life Revisited
13. Thermoeconomics: Beyond the Second Law
because I do not feel there need be anything “subversive” in a more holistic approach than Dawkins or Wolfram. By making a system all interaction and no elements deprives my intution of much I use often.
And looking a little further into your linked PDF I see "why" I am less holistic than Corning. Corning wrote
quote:
Russell, for instance, argued that analysis "enables us to arrive at a structure such thatthe properties of the complex can be inferred from the properties of the parts"

Russell really didnt "argue" this. This was just how he approached NATURE (REALLY THIS WORD) from logical atomism. Russell's "analysis" can be brought further. That is what I am doing. But he also had different uses of the word "simples" and "simplex". Anyway particulars vs generality covers it. The parts that Russell referred to ARE PART interaction ( the issue is about "relation"S and as to if one uses higher orders of relations where lower ones suffice parsimoniously (this is how Russell avoided direct application of Cantor thought of Kant)) as emergentists insist but it remains to be seen how far computational vivisections can retain the the same supposed. If Russell had argued it, I do not think that organicists would exist. They do too.
Edited by Brad McFall, : typo
Edited by Brad McFall, : Russell info

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miosim
Member (Idle past 5678 days)
Posts: 57
From: NH, USA
Joined: 04-07-2007


Message 26 of 29 (399764)
05-07-2007 9:35 PM
Reply to: Message 12 by Fosdick
04-27-2007 7:33 PM


Re: whole>parts
Hoot Mon
General question relevant to the OP: Is water more than oxygen and hydrogen?
I responded already to this question (Message 20), but I would like to revisit it, because this is a very typical rhetorical Holistic argument
As we know, a quality of question often determines a quality of answer. The question that ask to compare the water (the way we experience it every day) with atoms of oxygen and hydrogen (abstract notion that we have no experience with) is missleading.
The correct question would be: Is molecular of water is more than one atom of oxygen and two atoms of hydrogen, interacting among each other?
Try to answer this question now.
Edited by miosim, : No reason given.

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miosim
Member (Idle past 5678 days)
Posts: 57
From: NH, USA
Joined: 04-07-2007


Message 27 of 29 (399908)
05-08-2007 8:57 PM
Reply to: Message 23 by Brad McFall
05-07-2007 7:08 AM


Re: if whole>parts
Brad asked
Are you a logical positivist?
After checking with Wikipedia about Logical Positivist I concluded that I am quite an opposite type. My main analytical tool is Intuition and not a Logic, which in my opinion is a limited, “short ranged” tool applicable only to the well defined area of our knowledge, but outside of our common knowledge, (what it is a Life phenomenon) is unable lead to a new idea. However, when a time to communicate our finding, we have to build a bridge between what we learned and common knowledge, but if we overload this “bridge” with not comprehended messages or too many radical ideas (like I did in the full version of my essay) it will collapse.
. Are you familiar with Gold's ideas in linguistics .
I check the link you provided, and understood why my use of symbol caused confusion. No, I didn’t intended to intrude into area of mathematical linguistics.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 23 by Brad McFall, posted 05-07-2007 7:08 AM Brad McFall has replied

Replies to this message:
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Brad McFall
Member (Idle past 5033 days)
Posts: 3428
From: Ithaca,NY, USA
Joined: 12-20-2001


Message 28 of 29 (399917)
05-08-2007 9:10 PM
Reply to: Message 27 by miosim
05-08-2007 8:57 PM


Re: if whole>parts
No worries, as the Brits say.
I was only covering all bases. Sometimes people present one thing but are thinking something else. I realized clearly after your last post that there was no way that you could have been a positivist.
As for a different sum well, that is up to you now ( I will provide some thing on Gold on mywebsite later). It was hard for me to parse out all of the various contents in your initial OP. I do think that analysis can be carried further but I would probably only find people of logic persuasions rather than granola heads (colloqiual term for "down to earth") as those most likely to follow me initially as I roll back the whole over a hole.

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miosim
Member (Idle past 5678 days)
Posts: 57
From: NH, USA
Joined: 04-07-2007


Message 29 of 29 (403503)
06-03-2007 2:16 PM
Reply to: Message 10 by Brad McFall
04-27-2007 5:57 PM


ISCID forum
I am discussing my hypothesis about emergence of life in more details on ISCID forum http://www.iscid.org/...ubb-get_topic-f-6-t-000686-p-37.html", so if any body interested see my posting there dated 03 June 2007 11:13.

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