Perplexed in Peoria  wrote:

> "John Wilkins"  wrote in message
> news:c7rcpi$kgc$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org...
> > What I am asking here is this: If liquidity exists (and I assume it
> > does) is there any aspect of it that remains uncaptured by a model
> > composed solely of [representations of] water molecules, and the
> > attendent atomic and subatomic particles?
> 
> John,
> 
> Throw in the four forces of nature.  You can't limit
> your reduction to just the components - you must also
> take the interactions between components into account.
> Change the word "uncaptured" to "uncapturable",
> since we are not sure the right model is present.
> No additional changes required.
> 
> I assent.  There is no aspect that remains uncapturable.
> I am a reductionist in that sense.  (So, I suspect, is almost
> every other poster to this group.)

You might be surprised at how many people who use the term "emergence"
tend to think it means that there is something uncapturable by a
(theoretically complete) lower-level description.
> 
> John, I'm sure you have heard the old proverb saying that
> "If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."
> It is frequently cited in engineering circles as a warning
> to specialists in some technology who seek to utilize their
> expertise on inappropriate problems.
> 
> You sir, wield the philosopher's hammer.  As part of your
> training, you have learned to use this hammer against some
> Very Bad Ideas that have been suggested by some fairly
> intelligent people in the past.  These exemplary historical
> Very Bad Ideas are the nails that you were trained to attack
> with your hammer.
> 
> While I very much admire your precision and your reverence
> for the history of words and ideas, I do occasionally
> think that you sometimes suspect the existence of nails
> where none exist.  Just an observation.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
>     Jim  ;-)

Jim, you do me too much honour. I am neither terribly precise nor such a
good philosopher, but allow me to follow up on an implication of what
you said here.

I see what I do as a kind of Lockean "clearing the undergrowth" program
in the philosophy of science. I don't do science myself, but I pay close
attention to the ideas and history of science when I consider how
scientific words are used.

I then try to apply basic logical and categorial precision to the
present use of words, because words carry connotations (another logical
term) fromthe past that systematically mislead people. To achieve this,
I try to charitably interpret the words, and then deal with the
remainder of contradiction and amphiboly, using logic that Aristotle
would have recognised.

So my question is this: should science be freed from logical coherence
and consistency? Because if that is not a hammer for all nails, I really
do not know what might be, and that is what you imply.

As to the notions of complexity, holism, group properties and the like,
they follow from simple logical considerations of set theory or
syllogistic logic (choose your poison - I have a lot of respect for the
traditional syllogisms), so I think it appropriate to apply them here.
If you all want me to drop it, I shall. But I shall continue to think
contrary claims are mistaken :-)
-- 
Dr John S. Wilkins, www.wilkins.id.au
"I never meet anyone who is not perplexed what to do with their
 children" --Charles Darwin to Syms Covington, February 22, 1857
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