Wednesday, January 11, 2006
Additional reading:
Cory Casanave's paper on Data
Access
work on ontology for biological signal pathways
[126]
ß parallel discussion in
generative methodology bead thread
Discussion on informational invariance and complexity
[342], [343], [344], [345], [346], [347], [348], [348], [349]
Note from Paul Werbos
The concept of emergence is not one of accretion. It's a totally
different kind of thing. As planets crystallize out of the void, and evolution
proceeds (at least in some very legitimate and useful if partial mathematical
models)... it is not that God looks at the empty universe and fudges it by
adding a new external planet module in some other space.
Really, the emergence approach to complexity is a huge part of the
field. It rests on the idea that a system DEFINED by simple laws, laws applied
over a large number of entities or points (or a suitable huge space), CAN
RESULT in a very complex patterns. [1] These patterns, observed at an aggregated
level (like looking at an organism rather than the atoms of which it is made),
develop aggregate patterns of behavior which may indeed be very complex. But a
system based on simple laws can lead to such complexity of results.
There are so MANY manifestations of this....
Certainly it is well-known that simple-looking nonlinear
differential equations can lead to very complex solution sets and patterns. This is what chaos theory is
all about. And the Zhabotinsky stuff in
chemistry (and its many, many proliferations). And Hebb's approach to trying to
understand intelligence in the brain. (The postmodern approach to that is
simply to deny that there is any intelligence in the human brain. While I
understand the empirical concerns about the level of intelligence in the human
brain, it is going too far to say there is none at all, or that all of our thoughts
were programmed in detail by genes.)
It's less a matter of accretion than of evolution. And evolution
is a much bigger phenomenon than this week's models of natural selection. It
would be truly ghastly to dis invite research in that area. [2]
Best,
Paul
[1] Paul Prueitt: Many of us feel that this use of language “complex” is what is improper. We feel that the proper word her is “complicated”, not “complex”.
[2] Paul Prueitt: This has always been the “establishment viewpoint, that something is being dis0invited (John Doyle’s research approach, for example; or Patricia Churchland’s approach. Karl Pribram has in conference, Georgetown in 1998, told her that her approach is just wrong, but it is what is funded.