Posted by
Steve Smith on
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Young-but-distant-gallaxies-tp839193p1075350.html
Ken -
Reductionism has its place in
the analytical phase at equilibrium. Analysis is normally a
study of integrable, often linear systems, but it can be accomplished
on non-linear, feed-forward systems as well.
Well said...
The synthesis phase
puts information re: complex behavior and emergence back into the
integrated mix and may be "analyzed" in non-linear, recurrent networks.
It is the synthesis/analysis duality that always (often) gets lost in
arguments about Reductionism. There are very many useful things (e.g.
linear and near-equilibrium systems) to be studied analytically, but
there are many *more* interesting and often useful things (non linear,
far-from-equilibrium, complex systems with emergent behaviour) which
also beg for synthesis.
This is actually a probabilistic
inversion of analysis as described in Inverse Theory.
I'll have to look this up.
Bayesian refinement cycles
(forward <-> inverse) are applied to new information as one
progresses through the DANSR cycle. This refines the effect of new
information on prior information - which I hope folks see is not simply
additive - and which may be entirely disruptive (see evolution of
science itself) .
Do find this applies as well in non-probabalistic models?
The fact this seems to work for
complex systems is philosophically uninteresting, and may ignored - so
the discussion can continue.
"seems to work" sends up red flags, as does "philosophically
uninteresting". I could use some refinement on what you mean here.
Final point:
Descartes ultimately rejected the concept of zero because of historical
religious orthodoxy - so he personally never applied it to the
continuum extension of negative numbers. All his original Cartesian
coordinates started with 1 on a finite bottom, left-hand boundary -
according to Zero, The Biography of a Dangerous Idea, by Charles Seife.
And didn't Shakespeare dramatize this in his famous work "Much Ado
about Nothing"? (bad literary pun, sorry).
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============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at
http://www.friam.org