Friday, February 17, 2006
Discussion
Communication
to Judith Rosen and the BCNGroup circle of friends
Judith
I have grow older, I am 54 now; I am trying to bring an
interesting life to some completion.
As so many of us are, we are burdened with the economic
system we have. It is not merely the television "programming" and the
crass capitalism; but it is also the un-affordability of land and homes. It is the requirement to participate (in
ever way) with a system that is designed in a specific fashion.
It is this system that needs your father's work, in my
opinion. As I grew up in Taos I had a
rich esoteric experience and training (from some important
"masters"). Then as I finally
figured out what "a college" was, I found that none of the esoteric
knowledge was relevant to "higher education". But after ten years I managed to earn a
Masters degree in pure mathematics at SMU.
After another five years I was able to earn the PhD in applied
mathematics... applied to the modeling of biological intelligence using
switching networks (Immune system) and continuous differential equations (the
neural - brain system). Combined with
my esoteric knowledge, I was now "equipped" to teach and advance
human knowledge. Well that was the
illusion.
The National Project
was designed to remember why I worked and studied for fifteen years.
The current positioning of the Second School is being developed within the International "knowledge engineering" and "web services" community.
The core to this positioning
is the mapping of various Information Models to the descriptive logic based
ontology modeling standards such as the OWL standard from W3C.
During my three years as the Co-Director of the Neural Network Research Facility at Georgetown University I was able to extend my studies into bio-chemistry (attending weekly seminars at GU) and quantum neuroscience (with Pribram, Hameroff, Kugler, Werbos and others). I was able to propose the Vice President Dan Quayle that joint Russian American studies on "applied semiotics" and "intellectual property" be funded. These projects are outlined in the BCNGroup Charter.
The Santa Fe Institute was founded on the notion that
information technology, actually modeling theories, related to complexity would
be useful in predicting the stock market and other economic aspects. It is not clear to me the degree to which
this promise was successful. in other than publishing papers and books.
These materials have advanced the literature, but also
include some real false starts and incorrect theories. Specifically the notions of formal
semantics, artificial intelligence, expressive logics, and computational
complexity have narrow technical definitions that are polemical in nature and
block the deeper understanding of systems within systems.
The group that has formed around the Rosen list has no real capacity to do anything but to question something that they will never accept, in my opinion. This is to be expected, given the environmental constrains on developing a new scientific extension (similar to that provided by Newtonian, Descartes, Copernicus). This new extension of science requires that complexity be understood in a way that your father understood it.
The question I have is how, if this is possible, to from a
group that is doing something about the social, political and scientific
dysfunctionality. These dysfunctionalities
seems to be mutually re-enforcing to the degree that no progress can be made on
any of these domains without a common breakthrough that effects all of them.
There is so much of this culture that is good, and
reflects that which is good within us.
So if there is to be something like a Rosen Institute, the founders have
to be careful in how the Institute is designed and what goes into the Charter.
Is this how you feel?
Taos might be the place to found this Institute, and I
know several places that would work as a location. The critical factor is in providing a core literature and set of
principles that are "taught".
The notion that there is a "Second School" which is originating "from Taos" is attractive, because due to the status of Taos, some questions do not arise.
"Why Taos?" for example.
Paul