[FRIAM] What is an object?

[Nick Thompson]

Well, it goes without saying, doesn't it, that it's your current IDEAS of
biology that influence your programming, not biology itself, right?  And
your biologiized ideas of programming then influence your notion of the
cell.  We never really know clouds themselves.  So to speak.  

 

 

 

N

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

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

 

From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels
Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2018 10:01 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] What is an object?

 

"Like with the Great Man Theory, the actual causes of any phenomena in a
complex and complicated system like Xerox Parc (embedded in culture,
society, psychology, physiology, biology, chemistry, etc.) are multifarious
and occult."

 

Assuming there even was a Great Idea to go with a Great Man.  For starters..

 

https://medium.com/@cscalfani/goodbye-object-oriented-programming-a59cda4c0e
53

http://www.stlport.org/resources/StepanovUSA.html

http://wiki.c2.com/?ArgumentsAgainstOop
https://content.pivotal.io/blog/all-evidence-points-to-oop-being-bullshit

 <http://wiki.c2.com/?ArgumentsAgainstOop> 


  _____  

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com> >
on behalf of glen <gepropella at gmail.com <mailto:gepropella at gmail.com> >
Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2018 7:22:17 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] What is an object? 

 

Of course it's reasonable for you to dissent! But over and above the most
important example Marcus raises of biology (because *everything* is biology
8^), even your historical account is a litany of WHAT, not WHY. 

Sure it may seem like you're examining the why of these artifacts. But
you're not. Why questions are always metaphysical. What you're actually
doing in your list and analysis of past events is inferring the WHY from the
WHAT. And your inferences, no matter how good you are at inferring, will
always just be your best guess at WHY. 

Like with the Great Man Theory, the actual causes of any phenomena in a
complex and complicated system like Xerox Parc (embedded in culture,
society, psychology, physiology, biology, chemistry, etc.) are multifarious
and occult. No oversimplified *narrative* like yours will fully circumscribe
those causes. To think otherwise is to fool oneself into false belief ... a
kind of faith-based world view.


On July 19, 2018 3:01:57 AM PDT, Marcus Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com
<mailto:marcus at snoutfarm.com> > wrote:
>"The IDEA of Smalltalk derived from the IDEA of Simula; the philosophy
>and ideas of Englebart, Bush, Sutherland; the metaphor of cellular
>biology, and undoubtedly more. Alan Kay coalesced those influences and
>led the team that implemented the team that actually created the
>language at Xerox PARC."
>
>For example, I don't see analogs of cytokines, hormones, or
>neurotransmitters in Smalltalk or any computing systems today.    The
>closest that comes to mind are functional reactive programming systems,
>e.g. game platforms tied to a physics engine.   
>The idea that top-down intent matters is preposterous if the motivation
>is biology, a massively-parallel bottom-up phenomena that involves
>physical stuff.


-- 
glen

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