In case anybody cares:
The Rosen position on this is that while you can learn a lot about a system
from the study of its parts, such a study does not exhaust knowledge about
the system; you have to understand how it is organized and that
organization is, to some degree, independent of any particular way in which
the abstract organization of the system might be realized.
Again, using Rosen's terminology, you could write a careful chronicle of
the events that take place in the cycling of particular thermostat and
still not grasp how the heating system is organized. Or to put it 'round
the other way, an organizational description of a thermostat leaves one
free to realize that description in a zillion differnt ways. This is even
truer of organisms.
nick
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