Hi Mills, (01)
I just got back from sitting in on Monica Anderson's Model Free
Methods workshop to find this message. I do not have an answer to the
specific question, but an observation. I read Wilber, just like the
introduction you sent along, looking for lenses, other lenses besides
mine. (02)
I don't have to agree with what I see when handed a different lens;
fact is, I'm as likely not to understand what it's showing as "getting
it". Still, lenses. That's to enable access to frameworks possibly
richer than those I have at hand when contemplating complex, even
wicked situations. (03)
My game is to find and create ways in which people can come together,
each with a different lens, and make sense of complex issues facing
all of us. To do that, I need to avoid making ontological commitments
in the representation system that preclude innovation. So, even if
nobody else has done anything profound with Wilber's ideas, I study
them for my own purposes. (04)
JackP (05)
On Sun, Jan 22, 2012 at 6:13 AM, Mills Davis <millsdavis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Jack Park & Jack Ring,
>
> Do either of you know if there has been any rigorous application of Ken
> Wilber's integral theory for knowledge computing across disciplines? I
> recently came across a book entitled Integral Ecology — Uniting Perspectives
> on the Natural World, an 800-page tour-de-force by Esbjörn-Hargens and
> Zimmerman. Here is an excerpt from the intro. My sense is that there is a
> breakthrough waiting to happen here.
>
> Mills Davis
>
>
>
> On Jan 22, 2012, at 2:07 AM, Jack Ring wrote:
>
> I think we can moderate the reductionism vs. holism divide once people
> comprehend the distinctions of class vs. type and learn to see both aspects
> of an object. Further, John Kineman's extension of Rosen's R-theory to a
> relational algebra seems quite promising. It occured to us back in the
> 1970's that in addition to set structural operators we also needed an
> algebra of sets. I think we are getting warmer.
> Part of this may entail freeing thinkers from the von Neumann paradigm of
> stored program computers which makes people shy away from combinatorial
> constructs. Once people understand the recently patented General Purpose Set
> Theoretic Processor their conceptualization of 'the problem' may change
> considerably.
>
> On Jan 21, 2012, at 4:01 PM, Debmacp wrote:
>
> That plus what should be processed by machines versus thought through by
> people
>
>
> Deb
>
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
>
> On Jan 21, 2012, at 4:27 PM, Jack Park <jackpark@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>
> I think that there are some very powerful insights emerging in this
>
> particular thread. For me, they edge ever closer to a boundary that
>
> interest me greatly:
>
>
> the boundary that separates machines from organisms.
>
>
> That boundary is the same one that frequently emerges in conversations
>
> that pit "reductionism" against holistic thinking.
>
>
> I don't see reductionism and holism as necessarily being so orthogonal
>
> that they get pitted against each other; as I see it, both are
>
> necessary, but neither is sufficient. Sure, that point alone is well
>
> worth its own conversation, but let me set that aside for a moment and
>
> tell a short springboard story.
>
>
> Nicholas Rashevski [1], considered the father of mathematical biology,
>
> wrote a paper "Topology and life: In search of general mathematical
>
> principles in biology and sociology" in 1954, which argued that for
>
> all the math he invented, we still don't understand what makes
>
> organisms tick. He launched the "relational biology" inquiry. He
>
> sought a way to represent a "canonical organism". His student Robert
>
> Rosen [2] eventually replaced Rashevski's graph and "organismic set"
>
> approaches with category theory, and later wrote the book _Life
>
> Itself_ which explains both the ontological and epistemological
>
> grounds for his canonical organism representation, which entailed two
>
> "components": metabolism and repair. Category theory showed that those
>
> two entailed reproduction. What is important in this is the
>
> observation that what is hard to represent are all of the necessary
>
> "relationships" that exist between and among the components, and with
>
> the external environment.
>
>
> I offer that story as a suggestion that special consideration needs to
>
> be given to relations. I will not suggest that more or less
>
> consideration be given when weighed against the components being
>
> modeled; I'll just leave it as a suggestion that relations in complex
>
> systems -- organismic systems -- are important. Rosen was not able to
>
> make graph or set theoretic approaches solve Rashevsky's quest;
>
> Rashevsky died before Rosen realized a candidate solution, one rooted
>
> in category theory.
>
>
> I read it somewhere that while set theory lets you talk about members
>
> of a set, category theory lets you talk about the social lives of
>
> those members. I'm not smart enough to validate that, just smile.
>
>
> JackP
>
>
> Jack
>
> [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Rashevsky
>
> [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Rosen_%28theoretical_biologist%29
>
> (06)
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