Guy Hoelzer  wrote in
news:bn7cch$28k2$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org: 

> in article bn67dc$1uds$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org, John Wilkins at
> wilkins{at}wehi.edu.au wrote on 10/22/03 8:23 AM:

>> Guy Hoelzer  wrote:
 
>>> That is my position.  Individual tornados, hurricane, and convection
>>> cells are each single systems in the same sense that you and I are
>>> single systems. 
 
>> But I am not a single system in some ways. I am dependent on the
>> massive number of endosymbionts I support. I require a constant
>> environment with a ready source of food. I must live, because it is
>> an autapomorphy of my species, in society.

> I agree with all of this, so I would have started with the word "And"
> rather than "But".  All natural systems are open and communicate with
> the external environment.  They must all be externally fueled and
> release energy/matter/information back to the outside.  They can also
> be perturbed by outside influences and cause perturbations to other
> systems. 
> 
> Regarding the "John Wilkins" system, you hinted at an excellent point.
> Those endosymbionts are essential components of the "John Wilkins"
> system. They are part of the system, rather than being external to it.
>  Most systems that we consider, probably all biological systems, are
> composed of elements that are themselves complex dynamical systems. 
> Hierarchy theory (sensu Stan Salthe) has much to say on this point. 
> It seems to me that there is also no general reason to expect that
> particular systems must be restricted to participating as elements in
> only one higher order system.  Many humans, for example, participate
> in several institutional social systems (e.g., corporations, families,
> churches, ...), as well as biological and physical systems.  Conflicts
> of interest regarding the behavior of "particles" participating in
> multiple higher order systems would inevitably arise, but I don't see
> why this would prevent such "divided loyalties" from occurring. 


Which gets to the point of what the division is between entities. This is 
ultimately meaningless, it is a result of the filter we impose on the 
world as observer. Now we have to impose the filter, we have to entify, 
because we cannot hold all that there is in our heads. So we create a 
model, which loses information but allows us to manipulate it. But the 
meaning  comes from the model. It is intrinsic to the system only in the 
accuracy to which the system can be modeled by a simpler system. 
 
 
>> This is an old and somewhat sophomoric (soporific?) problem in
>> philosophy. We are asking, in effect, how far does an explanation
>> need to go. If we draw a line at some point (say, my skin or my local
>> ecosystem, and so on) we are entitled to ask, why there? If it turns
>> out that we draw the line there for convenience' sake, then we have
>> only asserted some fact about us as observers.
 
> This is a key point, and I agree that we have yet to determine
> necessary and sufficient conditions of "systemhood".  Skeptics will
> continue to play an important role in the growth of complex systems
> science until we know those conditions.  At the moment I would argue
> that this set of conditions will include positive feedback loops that
> sustain structure and function, and internal constraints that restrict
> the potential for component behaviors detrimental to the whole. 
> Structural and functional dynamics must be driven primarily by
> internal interactions among components that are merely fueled by
> external sources.  For example, energy/matter must enter the system
> from the outside, but information that drives structural patterning
> resulting from extraction of work from the fuel comes primarily from
> from interactions within the system (e.g., entrainment).  This does
> not prohibit the imposition of pattern from the outside (e.g., if you
> were hit hard with an open waffle iron you would have a pattern
> imposed), but I can't think of an asystematic way to generate patterns
> other than by external imposition. Ultimately, I think the necessary
> and sufficient conditions will come from thermodynamics (sensu
> Prigogine).  All systems extract work from their fuel with which they
> build and repair their structure, which sustains the temporal
> efficiency of the system in breaking down gradients and maximizes the
> rate of entropy increase at the scale of the whole universe. 

I don't think you have answered John's objection. I would answer that the 
line is drawn where we obtain the maximum accuracy of prediction with the 
minimum required information. From an energetic  standpoint, the line is 
drawn at areas of sharp gradients - which is why it is easy to identify 
tornados and humans as individual systems. 
 
>> My objection to treating evolution, or weather, as a single thing is
>> that there is none of the cohesion required to make either of them a
>> functional or cohesive individual. We draw those lines because there
>> is a reason, a theoretical reason, to do so. I am merely saying that
>> while a tornado might be a cohesive individual, since it is a
>> dissipative structure, weather is not. Likewise, while we might treat
>> the speciation of a mammal species into two as a single process (and
>> can ask sensibly what the mode, frequency and mechanisms were in each
>> case), we can't ask such questions of "evolution as a whole".
> 
> Maybe we can, although we haven't tended to do so.  This is, I think,
> the GAIA proposition.  It may be, for example, that it is very hard to
> see or imagine the coherent operation of higher order systems of which
> we are a part.  We may cherish the idea of free will so much that we
> blind ourselves to the top-down effects of higher order systems that
> guide us as compliant parts of some larger whole, unless the larger
> wholes spring from our intentional actions (e.g., many social
> organizations).  We can see the whole when we intend to be part of a
> team, but we need guidelines (as you suggested) to help us identify
> coherent systems that are generally outside of our perceptive range.
>

Even though on every other Tuesday I am willing to consider GAIA, I think 
it is a separate issue than free will, and in fact may be a similar 
process to free will, with both being emergent properties of complex 
systems. And to argue that GAIA guides evolution to produce GAIA would 
seem to imply a weird combination of the Cosmological and Ontological 
arguments. I tend to agree with John that evolution for the most part is 
better envisioned as a historical result of a series of processes than as 
a process itself. I can still sympathize with the thought that it is hard 
(and may be impossible) for humans to envision systems of significantly 
higher order than ourselves (or even to understand our own 
consciousness). But if evolution is to be considered a process, I would 
think the most that could be said is that it is a process of searching 
the available phenotype space (a la Dennett).  On the other hand, I can 
sympathize with the thought that it is hard for humans to envision 
systems of higher order than ourselves - and without envisioning them, it 
is hard to see the kind of gradients that would allow us to classify 
them. It is generally easier to recognize ecosystem boundaries from the 
air than from the ground

(snip)
 
>>>> Hence I would not say that there has to be a property common to all
>>>> instances of evolution or weather, because there is no
>>>> property-bearer, no single "thing".
 
>>> I agree that there "would not [have] to be a property common to all
>>> instances of evolution or weather," but disagree as to whether or
>>> not there is.  I would caution you here to avoid the common mistake
>>> (IMHO) of failing to recognize the dynamical and coherent nature of
>>> systems that function on very different time and spatial scales than
>>> those of our existence.  For example, most scientists would quickly
>>> accept the notion that a rock is not a dynamical system.  In fact,
>>> it is, although it is in a senescent stage of degradation.  Its
>>> structure, however, is maintained by the tension caused by 
>>> attractive and repulsive forces among its component particles.  The
>>> time scale of functional activity in evolution is far slower than
>>> the time scales at which we exist, which can obfuscate its
>>> functional coherence, if I am right that it exists.
 
>> I don't believe that I do make that mistake here. But that doesn't
>> justify claiming that any collection of things, whether atoms in a
>> rock or organisms in an ecosystem, qualifies as a
"property-bearer"
>> in the theoretical sense.
 
> I agree.  I tried to explain why a rock fits this claim, but I
> strongly argue against the idea that any collection of things would do
> so.  I think that progress in biology (especially ecology and
> evolution) has frequently been limited by failures to make exactly
> this distinction leading to studies of collections that do not
> constitute systems. 


To play the devil's advocate, why can't I claim that the list of objects 
in a scavenger  hunt all share the property that they are the object of 
the hunt, and may further share some obscure symbolic connection in the 
mind of the person who drew up the list? I don't claim that this is a 
useful "entity", but I also think that it could be hard to distinguish it 
from some other collections that many would consider  a "system", such as 
the local highway department.(They certainly often qualify as a 
dissipative structure in my book :-) Ultimately the test of calling a 
collection of things a system has to rest on its usefulness as a 
predictive tool. If calling "weather" and "evolution"
systems leads to a 
better understanding of either or both, it is valid. If it leads to 
unfounded teleological explanations it is a mistake.

 
Yours,

Bill Morse
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