Re: Reductionism - was: Young but distant gallaxies
Posted by
Kenneth Lloyd on
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Young-but-distant-gallaxies-tp839193p1075545.html
Steve,
"The fact this seems to work ..." that whole line was a
touch of sarcasm. It appears experimentally verified in my work,
but people still like to argue with me about it. Is it possible to argue a
phenomenon out of existence?
Of course, I can be wrong, but someone will have to prove
it by experimental counter-example - not just words. That doesn't seem to
stop people from trying.
Re: the question about application to non-probabilistic
models - good question! I'd need to run an example. Got one?
By all means check out Inverse theory (Tarantola,
Mosegaard, Scales). Powerful stuff. Scales, ea. has a very
accessible book on the web "Introduction to Geophysical Inverse
Theory"
Ken
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