Friday, January 20, 2006
[361] ß parallel discussion in “national debate” bead thread
This is part of a discussion
that will be moved to a Wiki page soon.
The Second School of
Semantic Science, on founding
Note,
I wrote over the bead that I was posting of the Protégé forum
to read
I will (tomorrow) redevelop that bead at à
[134]
the post by Judith Rosen is more relevant
[347] ß Judith Rosen’s recent
communication
Hi Paul (Werbos),
I share the concerns you spoke so eloquently about in your message--
particularly as the morning news almost invariably portrays the worst of our
species' capabilities: in how we conduct ourselves individually; how we
interact with one another in a society; and the modes of interaction we've
gotten used to where our (increasingly global) environment is concerned.
Frankly, it scares the crap out of me! (I hope you don't mind; I decided to
join you in being informal.) That's actually the main reason I'm willing to
spend so much time out of my life discussing my father (Robert Rosen)'s work.
To that end, I hope you will allow me to show you, briefly, why I
am so convinced that the ideas he developed can assist humanity in solving
these difficult problems.
In the early 1970's, a man named Robert Hutchins ran an institute
in Santa Barbara that he founded out of very similar concerns to the ones you
describe. It was called The Center For the Study of Democratic Institutions.
Mr. Hutchins invited my father to spend a year at the Center working, in part,
on all the things the Center found most compelling. Most of the thinkers at the
Center were economists, political scientists, sociologists, psychologists, and
the like. Dad was the only natural scientist invited to be there. It turned out
to become his absolute favorite professional experience ever and also provoked
the scientific breakthrough he had been progressing towards, because he saw
quite clearly that there were analogous behaviors in societies, as systems, to
behaviors he had been studying in organisms, as systems.
He discussed a lot of these things in "Anticipatory
Systems," particularly in the general introduction, where he had the
following (excerpted for brevity's sake) to say about it:
Robert Rosen wrote:
"My professional activities have been
concerned with the theory of biological systems, roughly motivated by trying to
discover what it is about certain natural systems that makes us recognize them
as organisms, and characterize them as being alive. It is precisely on this
recognition that biology as an autonomous science depends, and it is a
significant fact that it has never been formalized. As will be abundantly seen
in the ensuing pages, I am persuaded that our recognition of the living state
rests on the perception of homologies between the behaviors exhibited by
organisms, homologies which are absent in non-living systems. The physical
structures of organisms play only a minor and secondary role in this; the only
requirement which physical structure must fulfill is that it allows the characteristic
behaviors themselves to be manifested. Indeed, if this were not so, it would be
impossible to understand how a class of systems as utterly diverse in physical
structure as that which comprises biological organisms could be recognized as a
unity at all. The study of biological organization from this point of view is
called "relational biology.
“The relational approach to organisms is
in many ways antithetical to the more familiar analytic experimental approach
that has culminated in biochemistry and molecular biology.
“Particularly in these latter areas, the
very first step in any analytic investigation is to destroy the characteristic
biological organization possessed by the system under study, leaving a purely
physical system to be investigated by standard physical means of fractionation,
purification, etc.
“The essential premise underlying this
procedure is that a sufficiently elaborate characterization of structural
detail will automatically lead to a functional understanding of behaviors in the
intact organism. That this has not yet come to pass is, according to this view,
only an indication that more of the same is still needed, and does not indicate
a fault in principle.
“The relational approach, on the other
hand, treats as primary that which is discarded first by physico-chemical
analysis; i.e. the organization and function of the original system. In
relational biology, it is the structural, physical detail of specific organisms
that is discarded, to be recaptured later in terms of realizations of the
relational properties held in common by large classes of organisms, if not
universally throughout the biosphere. Thus, it is perhaps not surprising that
the relational approach seems grotesque to analytic biologists, all of whose
tools are geared precisely to the recognition of structural details.
[insert by Judith: My father was of the opinion that we actually
need BOTH approaches in science, but the trick is in knowing when, and how, to
use which.]
"In any case, one of the novel
consequences of the relational picture is the following; that many (if not all)
of the relational properties of organisms can be realized in contexts which are
not normally regarded as biological. For instance, they might be realized in
chemical contexts which, from a biological standpoint, would be regarded as
exotic; this is why relational biology has a bearing on the possibility of
extraterrestrial life which is inaccessible to purely empirical approaches. Or
they might be realized in technological contexts, which are the province of a
presently ill-defined area between engineering and biology often called
Bionics. Or, what is more germane to the present discussion, they may be
realized in the context of human activities, in the form of social, political,
and economic systems which determine the character of our social life.
“The exploration of this last possibility
was, I think, the motivation behind the extending of an invitation to me to
visit the Center, just as it was my primary motivation for accepting that
invitation.
“It is plain, on the face of it, that many
tantalizing parallels exist between the processes characteristic of biological
organisms and those manifested by social structures or societies. These
parallels remain, despite a number of ill-fated attempts to directly
extrapolate particular biological principles into the human realm, as embodied,
for example, in Social Darwinism. Probably their most direct expression is
found in the old concept of society as a "super-organism"; that the individuals
comprising a society are related to one another as are the constituent cells of
a multicellular organism.
“What would it mean if common modes of
organization could be demonstrated between social and biological structures? It
seemed to me that, in addition to the obvious conceptual advantages in being
able to effectively relate apparently distinct disciplines, there were a number
of most important practical consequences. For instance, our investigation of
biological organisms places us almost always in the position of an external
observer, attempting to characterize the infinitely rich properties of life
entirely from watching their effects without any direct perceptions of
underlying causal structures. For example, we may watch a cell in a developing
organism differentiate, migrate, and ultimately die. We can perceive the roles
played by these activities in the generation and maintenance of the total
organism. But we cannot directly perceive the causal chains responsible for
those various activities, and for the cell's transition or switching from one
to another. Without such a knowledge of causal chains, we likewise cannot
understand the mechanisms by which the individual behaviors of billions of such
cells are integrated into the coherent, adaptive behavior of the single
organism which these cells comprise.
“On the other hand, we are ourselves all
members of social structures and organizations. We are thus direct participants
in the generation and maintenance of these structures, and not external
observers; indeed it is hard for us to conceive what an external observer of
our society as a whole would be like. As participants, we know the forces
responsible for such improbable aggregations as football games, parades on the
Fourth of July, and rush hours in large cities. But how would an external
observer account for them?
“It is plain that a participant or
constituent of such an organization must perceive and respond to signals of
which an external observer cannot possibly be aware. Conversely, the external observer
can perceive global patterns of behavior which a participant cannot even
imagine. Certainly, if we wish to understand the infinitely subtle and
intricate processes by which biological organisms maintain and adapt
themselves, we need information of both types.
“This capacity for transferring data and
information from a system in which it is easy to obtain to a similar system in
which it is hard to obtain is a unique characteristic of the relational approach.
This was my basic hope; that I as a theoretical biologist could learn something
new about the nature of organisms by judiciously exploiting the cognate
properties of social systems.
“The other side of that coin was equally
obvious; that by exploiting biological experience, obtained from the standpoint
of an external observer, we could likewise develop entirely new insights into
the properties of our social systems.
“It was at this point that I perceived the
benefits of the community of scholars which Robert Hutchins had created. At the
Center I could explore such ideas, while at the same time it was possible for
me to learn in the most painless possible fashion how the political scientist,
the anthropologist, the historian, and the economist each viewed his own field
and its relation to others.
“Thus, I expected to reap a great deal of
benefit from my association with the Center. But, as stressed above, the Center
was an intellectual community, and to participate in it, I was expected to
contribute to the problems with which the other members of that community were
concerned. As I have noted, Hutchins' great concern was : what should we do
now? To one degree or another, that was also what the economists the political
scientists, the urban planners, and all the others wanted to know. However
different the contexts in which these questions were posed, they were all alike
in their fundamental concern with the making of policy, the associated notions
of forecasting the future, and planning for it. What was sought, in each of
these diverse areas, was in effect a technology of decision making. But
underlying any technology there must be a substratum of basic principles; a
science, a theory. What was the theory underlying a technology of policy
generation?
“This was the basic question I posed for
myself. It was a question with which I could feel comfortable, and through
which I felt I could make an effective, if indirect, contribution to the basic
concerns of the Center. Moreover, it was a question with which I myself had had
extensive experience, though not in these contexts. For the forecasting of the
future is perhaps the basic business of theoretical science; in science it is
called prediction. The vehicle for prediction must, to one degree or another,
comprise a model for the system under consideration. And the making of models
of complex phenomena, as well as the assessment of their meaning and
significance, had been my major professional activity for the preceding fifteen
years. In some very real sense, then, the Center was entirely concerned with
the construction and deployment of predictive models, and with the use of these
predictive models to regulate and control the behaviors of the systems being
modeled. Therefore, the basic theory which must underlie the technologies of
policy making in all these diverse disciplines is the theory of modeling; the
theory of the relation between a system and a model of that system.
“This in itself was a pleasing insight.
And it led to some immediate consequences which were also pleasing. For
instance: why did one need to make policies in the first place? It was clear
that the major purpose of policy-making, of planning, was to eliminate or
control conflict. Indeed, in one form or another, much attention at the Center
was devoted to instances of conflict, whether it be between individuals or
institutions; that was what the Law, for example, was all about. In each
specific case, it appeared the the roots of conflict lay not so much in any
particular objective situation, but rather in the fact that differing models of
that situation had been adopted by the different parties to the conflict;
consequently, different predictions about that situation were made by these
parties, and incompatible courses of action adopted thereby. Therefore, a
general theory of policy making (or, as I would argue, a general theory of
modeling) would have as a corollary a theory of conflict, and hopefully of
conflict resolution.
“I proceeded by attempting to integrate
these thoughts with my overall program, which as I noted above was to establish
homologies between modes of social and biological organization. Accordingly, I
cast about for possible biological instances of control of behavior through the
utilization of predictive models. To my astonishment, I found them everywhere,
at all levels of biological organization. [Living systems are anticipatory
systems.]
“It is clear that if we are confronted
with a system which contains a predictive model, and which uses the predictions
of that model to generate its behavior, we cannot claim to understand the
behavior unless the model itself is taken into account. Moreover, if we wish to
construct such a system, we cannot do so entirely within the framework
appropriate to the synthesis of purely reactive systems.
“On these grounds, I was thus led to the
conclusion that an entirely new approach was needed. Such an approach would
necessarily include, as its most important component, a comprehensive theory of
models and of modeling. The purpose of the present volume, in fact, is to
develop the principles of such an approach, and to describe its relation to
other realms of scientific and mathematical investigation."
<end quote>
I think perhaps I should stop here, as this message is beginning
to grow rather long! However, I hope I have allowed my father's own words to
convey, successfully, the fact that there is a great deal to be gained by
looking at these issues in a new way and by applying the insights of other
fields to the problems of one's own, no matter how divergent those two fields
may see to be on first glance? For example, those professions interested in AI
or ALife, bio-informatics, and information-processing protocols/pattern-sifting
software design will find many areas of congruence with the work, as well.
(Incidentally, for those who are interested in reading the general
introduction in its entirety, three large chunks of the book are available free
of charge for download on the BioTheory page of my website. The direct link is:
http://www.rosen-enterprises.com/RobertRosen/biotheorylaunch.html
The book is unfortunately out of print at the moment, although I have
created a limited addition republished version. I hope to find a publisher for
an expanded Second Edition, which we have been working on for the past year, so
that these ideas and some new applications of them will be more widely
accessible to those who are interested in acquiring them.)
I have recently been in contact with the University of California
at Santa Barbara, where the archival material from the (now defunct) Center is
being stored. I intend to acquire copies of all of my father's papers written
for the Center and all videotapes of talks he gave there, etc. Once I figure
out a way to fund that effort, I want to republish all of that material.
One way may be to put it in future editions of BioTheory, which
will always be available for free on my website (no subscription required or
any other fees). Now is not the time to hoard knowledge, it seems to me. If
these ideas can make a positive difference in solving the most pressing and
dangerous problems of our time, without creating even greater problems as side
effects (one of the symptoms of too simplistic a model in the planning
stages!), then I consider it a responsibility on my part to do whatever I can
to help.
Judith Rosen