[FRIAM] IS: Does Complexity have a circularity problem WAS: Any non-biological complex systems?

[Nick Thompson]

 Glen, 

But wait a minute!  Holding a side the mathematical meaning of model for a minute, what is the difference between a model and a metaphor?  I assume you take your models seriously, right?  I don't know what it means, "Just an analogy".  Either your layers are onion-like or not, right?  In which case, don't we get to examine which features of an onion you have in mind?  If your notion of an onion is just a project of your notion of levels of complexity, then how does it help to say that levels of complexity (or whatever) are onion-like?  

Remember, I am the guy who thinks that a lot of the problems we have in evolutionary science arise from failing to take Darwin's metaphor (natural selection) seriously enough.  

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: Friday, June 09, 2017 12:48 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] IS: Does Complexity have a circularity problem WAS: Any non-biological complex systems?

On 06/09/2017 09:41 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> It seems like onions develop from the inside out, right?


Heh, I don't know.  Nor do I care because my analogy is not intended to be anything more than an analogy. >8^D


>The outside layer is just the first inside layer grown large.  I think if one examines the whole onion plant, one finds that each layer of the onion proper is connected to its own onion leave.  But mostly my interest is in playing the metaphor game rigorously, which you are doing with admirable precision.


There our purposes diverge.  My interest is in demonstrating that the concept of levels is inadequate to describe the layers involved in complexity.


> I stipulate that a bump in one layer of an onion will enforce itself on the layers around it, so the layers are not entirely independent of one another.  Do you stipulate that each layer of an onion is essentially an independent plant wrapped in the earlier layers grown larger?


Not in the slightest.  I only stipulate that the concept of levels is inadequate when examining onions.


> At some point, in the metaphor game, we return to the thing we are trying to explain and map the elements of the metaphor (the "analogs") onto the explanandum.  But not yet.  This is too much fun. 


Unfortunately, perhaps because I simulate things for a living, I don and doff analogs more frequently than you don and doff hats or shoes.  So, I'm ready to abandon the near-spherical onion and move on to more complicated surfaces and the layers that accrete from within or without.

--
☣ glen

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