C o n c e p t s U n i f i e d
We deal in a lot of poorly - if at all - understood
"words", marking concepts with ever changing
definitions. Lately the list contains chaos, emergence, qualia,
self-organization, evolution, integrity, tectology, even system,
just to name some. Everyboy feels free to add a personal meaning
or content, changing or in addition to the earlier vocabulary
identification, mostly as needed to the person's theoretical
aspect of content.
Why the maze of confusion?
Because our (mental) evolution - part of it marked: 'science'
- reached a level at which the comfortable analytical view, the
reductionist dissecting and quantizing does not satisfy
"us" anymore. "We " start to exceed the level
of an atomistic, item-to-item discontinuous "mozaic"
nature. "Somebody" had to put together the pattern into
one system. Religion satisfied the faithful over some millennia,
but lately the mind started digging 'deeper and deeper' by
reaching 'up and upper'.
From analysis into the awe of nature's emergent synthesis.
From logical 'deductive' into awesome 'inductive'.
Observation recognized units, entities, with their
characteristics (qualia). These characteristics are the
"givens" of such ensembles while analysis dissected
them into THEIR components and recognized the characteristics of
the components as well. In most cases such components turn out to
be ensembles themselves, the (component)- -characteristics
recognized again as 'givens' of those.
The analytical line goes on as far as our cognizance can still
reach further ingredients. Looking from the side of the 'givens',
i.e. the group-qualia of the assemblages formed from the analyzed
components, a causal connection, leading from the components'
analyzed characteristics into the observed group-characteristics
of the assemblages, was hard to establish: it was registered in
science as "that's the way nature works".
- We studied 'atoms', analyzed them, studied 'molecules'
as being ensembles of atoms, but the chemistry of the
molecules is different from a 'summation' of the
characteristics of the atoms. From attributes, i.e
analytically learned data of C and H atoms, one does not
derive the behavior of the multitude of hydrocarbons,
neither in quantitative proportionality nor in their
qualitative consequence. An assemblage of two C-s and two
H-s into the explosive gas acetylen is "the way
nature works", while multiplying the equation by 3,
six-six of the SAME atoms does not lead to a conclusion
of a benzene-ring. Just consider the gases ethylene,
methane, liquid benzene, paraffin oil, the hard paraffin
waxes, naphtalin crystals , poyethylene foils,
polypropylene carpets, (buna) synthetic rubber, all
ensembles of C and H.
- There are speculations in hindsight: regarding
the observed 'givens', some aspects can be visualized as
a "consequence" of the constituent atomic
characteristics and their relative numbers within a
molecule, but a scientific/systematic rule of chemical
behavior has yet to be established. Not even the
mechanism of a synthesis gives clues for sich multitude
of characteristics. Speculation in hindsight involves
attributes of the ensembles rather than general rules of
'building up' the component qualities into the different
assemblages.
- Trends during the past half century linked inevitably to
the complement of reductionist efforts in analytical
mapping and explaining of nature, into the unknown
"other side": the characteristics of a
"buildup". Evolution, game theory, studies
about the origin of life, self-organization and others
paved the road to the formulation of our ignorance about
the universal way how nature 'builds', as predicted in
the 1910s by A. Bogdanov's tectology. Systems science and
the holistic view of interconnectedness, the revival of
'chaos' as the undiscovered way of nature, (with its
present unpredictability, the quantitative
unproportionality and qualitative inconsequence as viewed
by our linear logic, linear causality and linear
mathematical science (including nonlinear math), all
- changed the way science looks at itself. By discovering
undiscovered aspects physical sciences ventured into new
theoretical speculations, although not yet fully
confessed to the fact that the formalism of the
analytically derived component-view does not solve the
ardent questions of the buildup. Chaos became a
household-name in science, although physical chaology
expropriated it for "nonlinear physical
processes" in a space-time system, applying the
formalism (math) of the reductionist past to the field in
an accelerated drive to predict the unpredictable. The
term 'complexity'has been used in many aspects of
ensembles, certain aspects of evolution have been
explained in game theory applications,partial,
extracted models served as AI attempts, all adding to
the semantical confusion.
In the following paragraph I will attempt to formulate a view
(not a theory) of complexity, which may serve as a beginning of
the new, by no means as a panacea, neither as an application of
the old for the unknown new.
- Complexity (in this new sense) is an assemblage (of
complexities) with a group-characteristic of the total.
It is a view we all know, a group has qualia as a group,
not as a heap of its component(s).
We should recognize this fact. Such qualia are (in most cases)
unpredictable from the proper analytical knowledge of the
components and interfere with them both ways: adapt to them and
adapt THEM to the new situation. Such interconnection goes up and
down all the way in the hierarchy of complexities built on
complexities and into complexities, as well, as in connections
with the environment of complexities in the holism. The qualia
are 'unpredictable', because of their quantitative
unproportionality and qualitative inconsequence as far as our
ongoing scientific logic is concerned. The (idealistically)
termed 'self-organization' points only to the result of the above
detailed phenomenon.
- CHAOTIC, the 'unpredictable' means simply the natural
ways, so far undisclosed to our present level of
cognizance. Our developing epistemology bites piecemeal
into these aspects continuously and transfers items from
David Bohm's implicate into his explicate. I try to
circumvent the term 'chaos'. Not only is it hard because
of our inadequate semantics, but the identification of
the 'chaotic'is also unsettled.
- The chaotic EMERGENCE of the group-qualia is the
attribute of the complexity, the word may point to an
erroneous view of the outcome of a process. Whenever an
ensemble turns into a unit, a quantum, a group, set, or -
yes - a complexity, the emergent, a novelty and
observable, is there to be detected. Aristotle's
"more" in a 'total' is not an additive
quantity, not a product of a process, it is a quality,
not yet understood (or even expressed by a fitting word:
it is the quality of the total.). Instead of
"more" a better term would be:
"different", as in: the 'total' is different
from the sum of its components. By an emergent.
We don't know the first thing about the EMERGENT, about its
undisclosed chaotic dimensions, about the holistic way of
interconnectedness, about the logic of the unproportional and (in
our present terms) not 'causally' consequent. We have to learn
them with an open mind and lots of work. It seems wrong to take
that little part we observe today and formulate it into
scientific THEORIES with formalism taken from the past k
nowledge. All we may approach now is a stage of flexible working
hypotheses, which are subject to change as pertinent knowledge
accumulates and becomes more understood within our epistemic
evolution.
- We may use "theories" of complexity in topical
studies of select fields, without referring to the
entirety of the concept. The same applies to the select
'theory' of chaos, as applied to one physical aspect of
the so called 'chaotic', the mathematically nonlinear
physical processes. Not to all the concept of the
unknown.
-
- About the use of 'LINEARITY':
since the 'chaotic' is ubiquitously called "nonlinear",
the opposite of - what we may identify as 'chaotic', - may
be composed into the noumenon 'linear': such as the
quantitatively proportional, the causally consequent in quality,
the formally logical, as of today's concepts of science. In such
respect the entirety of mathematics is linear (even
including the 'nonlinear' mathematics, which also deals in
proportional quantities), our present logic and causality are
linear, the material world and its physical view is linear, our
main tool for thinking: the material brain is linear
(although 'thinking' has chaotic aspects , the main argument that
it is not the brain only, that thinks). Linearity is the veneer,
a chaotic imperfection, on top of a chaotic nature lending our
first level of observation: our universe as well as the
particle-disproportionations. I skip a cosmological speculation
on this situation here.
We have to learn to penetrate deeper - to arrive up
higher in understanding.
- John Mikes
<jamikes@prodigy.net> Madison
NJ - 5/30/99