[FRIAM] IS: Ruminations from the M.I. S. WAS: Any non-biological complex systems?

[Nick Thompson]

Hi everybody, 

You all be glad to know that I have been in New England for the last three days and have yet to see the sun. The green is overpowering. Apparently, they had a record-breakingly warm February here followed by and equally record-breakingly cold March which has resulted in in an eruption of ticks.  Yes, folks, this year, even the ticks have ticks.  

  While I was traveling, you all suddenly had a burst of Complexity Talk, which I am now trying to recapture.  This brings me back to one of my annual laments : that this medium, into which we have poured so much creativity over the last ten years, makes it almost impossible to recover a coherent record of an interesting thread.  I don't know whether some progress has been made on this problem since the last time I lamented it.  For an academic (such as myself) this all looks like so much spilled-seed.  What you wrote, seems to sketch out the arguments of a publication on the subject, which, if we could recover a text of what you wrote, could be filled out and submitted to a journal.  "Submitted to a Journal!???"  Big Whoop.  Mock me if you will.  Many of my ilk have died for the lack of good, fresh, passionate argument to submit to a Journal.  

Also, while I am in a reflective mood, it is probably time for me to apologize to Steve S. for my rhetorical snark.  Actually, his use of in form is normative.  (I have seen dictionaries that make his usage the FIRST usage.)  So actually, I have NO normative leg to stand on.  To bulk up my critique of his use of the word, I have to build a much bigger argument concerning the use of words that have two meanings in place of words that have but one in the hope of avoiding two-close scrutiny of the meaning being conveyed.  But even that argument is shaky, because SS could say, I meant EXACTLY what I said.  I MEANT to say that something ... some speech, some idea, some event ... shaped the inside of something.  And now, those of you who know me well, will see the actual source of my disgruttlement with his usage:  my behaviorism.  [OH GAWD, THOMPSON, DO YOU HAVE TO DO THIS?]  For a behaviorist, the metaphor implied by "information" itself is profoundly dangerous because it appeals to the shape of something which we cannot see.  Even when we speak of informing somebody in the normative, everyday usage, we are obfuscating.  Speech influences behavior at least in some long-term global sense, or it does nothing at all.  (Yes, Frank, it's true! (};-)]  )  

Lord knows, I miss you all!  If anybody has the energy to summarize your recent complexity debate, I would be in your debt.  

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 gepr
Sent: Sunday, May 28, 2017 7:38 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>; Stephen Guerin <stephen.guerin at simtable.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Any non-biological complex systems?

I've struggled to understand your point here. Are you saying that, eg, a phase diagram of a device like a refrigerator, with ice in the freezer part, jello in the fridge part, and coolant in the compressor:

1. violates a definition of 'space',
2. cannot exist,
3. reduces to a common, atomic, phase space, or 4. something else?



On May 26, 2017 5:39:40 PM PDT, Stephen Guerin <stephen.guerin at simtable.com> wrote:
> 
>We disagree on the use of systems and subsystems in the context of 
>phase space then. To me, there is one system and that system has a 
>phase space - There are not multiple subsystems in the phase space.

--
⛧glen⛧

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