[FRIAM] Any non-biological complex systems?

[Nick Thompson]

Thanks, Glen,

 

Larding below: 

 

Nick 

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of ?glen?
Sent: Tuesday, June 06, 2017 11:34 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Any non-biological complex systems?

 

Although you're repeating what I'd said earlier about relying on a more vernacular sense of "complex", we have to admit something you've yet to acknowledge. 

[NST==>I missed this, and going back through the thread, I have not found it.  Can you reproduce it for me without too much strain?  <==nst] 

 (I realize that the things I've said in this thread have been mostly ignorable.  So, it's reasonable that they've been missed.)  First, circular reasoning is used all the time in math. 

[NST==>I am not talking about tautology, here: x is x.  I am talking about circular explanation: x is the cause of x.  Surely you would agree that having defined X as whatever is caused by Y, I have not added much to our store of knowledge concerning what sorts of things Y causes.  But you are correct, not all circular explanations are entirely vicious/vacuous, of course. It depends on the assumptions the discussants bring to the table.  See, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281410347_Comparative_psychology_and_the_recursive_structure_of_filter_explanations <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281410347_Comparative_psychology_and_the_recursive_structure_of_filter_explanations%3c==nst> <==nst]

 So, it is not the bug-a-boo logicians claim it to be.  Again, Maturana & Varela, Rosen, Kaufmann, et al have all used it to valid and sound effect.

[NST==>I would be grateful for a passage from any of these folks where strictly circular reasoning is used to good effect. <==nst] 

 

Second, your "interact more closely with one another than they do with entities outside the set" is nothing but _closure_.  

[NST==>Well, if that is how one defines closure, then I am bound to agree.  Then, it’s not clear to me what the function of “nothing but” is, in your sentence.  But reading through your earlier posts (petri dish) suggests that for you closure is absolute; for me, systematicity is a variable and we would have to have some sort of a mutual understanding of where along that dimension we start calling something a system. <==nst] 

Or if I can infer from the lack of response to my broaching the term, we could use "coherence" or some other word. 

[NST==>Yes, but coherence, for me, carries more richness than what I was grasping for.  For you, perhaps not.  I guess “coherence” is ok.  <==nst] 

 And that means that your working definition is not naive. 

[NST==>Huh?  You mean I don’t get to be in charge of whether I am naïve, or not?  Are you some kind of behaviorist?  <==nst] 

 It does rely on an intuition that many of us share.

[NST==>Bollox!  It relies on the plain meaning of the word (he said grumpily).  <==nst] 

  But in order for you to know what you're talking about, you have to apply a bit more formality to that concept.

[NST==>This thread isn’t coherent for me.  Somebody asks if natural systems can be complex.  This is a lot of intricate talk which I frankly didn’t follow but which seemed to suggest that only symbol systems could be complex.  But I could detect no definition of complexity to warrant that restriction.  So I offered a definition of complexity (which may have been the same as yours – forgive me), offered an example of a natural complex system, a hurricane, and came to the conclusion that indeed, some natural systems are complex.  To my knowledge, nobody has addressed that claim.  But I have been traveling, my eye sight sucks, and I may have missed it.  If anybody has addressed this claim, could somebody direct me to a copy of their post.  I would be grateful. <==nst] 

 

Perhaps Steve Smith, who has often rescued me when I have made these messes in the past, could gently point out to me my error.  

 

Top temperature today 49 degrees.  90’s predicted for next week. I am ready. 

 

Best to you all, 

 

Nick 

 

 

 

 

 

On 06/06/2017 07:20 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:

> Dear Eric and Steve, and the gang,

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> When I first moved to Santa Fe on Sabbatical 12 years ago, I was merely 67, and there was a chance, just a chance, that I might become expert enough in complexity science and model programming  to deal with you guys on a somewhat equal footing.  But that never happened, and, now, it is too late.  I am amazed by the intricacy of your discussion and the broad reach of your thought.  There is really little more than I can do then wish you all well, and back out of the conversation with my head bowed and my hat clasped to my chest.  

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> Before I leave this conversation, I would like to offer the dubious benefits of what expertise I do have, which concerns the perils of circular reasoning.  I come by that expertise honestly, through years of struggling with the odd paradox of evolutionary biology and psychology, that neither field seems every to quite get on with the business of explaining the design of things.  When George Williams famously defined adaptation as whatever natural selection produces he forever foreclosed to himself and his legions of followers, the possibility of saying what sort of a world an adapted world is, what the products of natural selection are like.  One of you has pointed out that this is an old hobby horse with me, and suggested, perhaps, that it's time to drag the old nag to the glue factory.  But I intend to give it one last outing. 

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> So, I have a question for you all:  Do you guys know what you are talking about?!  Now I DON’T mean that how it sounds.  I don’t mean to question your deep knowledge of the technology and theory of complexity.  Hardly.  What I do mean to ask is if,  perhaps, you may sometimes lose sight of the phenomenon you are trying to explain, the mystery you hope to solve.  Natural selection theory became so sophisticated, well-developed and intricate that its practitioners lost track of the phenomenon they were trying to account for, the mystery they were trying to solve.  We never developed a descriptive mathematics of design to complement our elaborate explanatory mathematics of natural selection.  Until we have such a descriptive system, natural selection theory is just a series of ad hoc inventions, not a theory subject to falsification but  “a metaphysical research program” as Popper once famously said, which can always be rejiggered to be correct.   Is there a risk of an analogous problem in complexity science?  You will have to say.    

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> So, I will ask the question again:  Do you guys know what you are talking about?!  What is complexity??  If the answer you give is in terms of the deeply technical, causal language of your field, there is a danger that you have lost sight of what it is you are trying to account for.  And here a little bit of naivety could be very helpful. Naivety is all I have to offer, I will offer it.  Whatever complexity might be, it is the opposite of simplicity, no?  It is in that spirit that I propose a working definition of complexity with which to explore this thread’s question:  “Are any non-biological systems complex?”

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> An object is any collection or entity designated for the purposes of conversation. 

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> A system is a set of objects that interact more closely with one another than they do with entities outside the set.  

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> A system is complex if the objects that compose it are themselves systems. 

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> Only when complex systems have been clearly defined, is it rational to ask the question, “Are any natural systems complex?”  Now you may not like my definition, but I think you will agree that once it is accepted, the answer to the question is clearly, “Yes!”    

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>                 Take hurricanes.  Is a hurricane composed of thunderstorms?  Clearly, Yes.  Are thunderstorms themselves systems. This is a bit less clear, because the boundaries among thunderstorms in a hurricane may be a bit hazy, but if one thinks of a thunderstorm as a convective cell -- a column of rising air and its related low level inflow and high level outflow – then a thunderstorm is definitely a system, and a hurricanes are made up of them.  Hurricanes may also display an intermediate system-level, a spiral band, which consists of a system of thunderstorms spiraling in toward the hurricane’s center.  Thus, a hurricane could easily be shown to be a three-level complex system.  

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> Notice that this way preceding saves all the intricate explanatory apparatus of complexity theory for the job of accounting for how hurricanes come about. Now we can ask the question, What kinds of energy flows (insert correct terminology, here) occur in all complex systems?   Notice also, that this procedure prevents any of us from importing his favorite explanation for complex systems into their definition, guaranteeing the truth of the explanation no matter what the facts might be, and rendering the theory vacuous.  .  

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> One last comment.  When I wrote that perhaps we might inquire of the system whether it is complex or not, I left myself wide open to be misunderstood.  I meant only to say, that it is the properties of the system, itself, not its causes, that should determine the answer to the question.  Remember that, in all matters, I am a behaviorist.  If I would distrust your answer concerning whether you are hungry or not, I certainly would not trust a systems answer concerning whether it is complex or not.  

 

--

␦glen?

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