Me again:
>>Agreed.
>>
>>However, this way of looking at the mechanisms of nature could lead to a
>>very mechanistic -- deistic -- view of how nature proceeds, unless another
>>aspect of chaos is duly considered. Chaos is also defined as sensitive
>>dependence on initial conditions. It's fairly easy to demonstrate chaotic
>>systems in which a vanishingly small variation in initial conditions, or a
>>vanishingly small disturbance as the system evolves causes significant
>>differences later. But by the time these differences are noted, their
>>cause has quite literally become lost in the noise. Thus a mechanism
>>exists whereby God can determine the behavior of objects in nature without
>>His interaction with nature being seen as a disturbance.
>>
>
Brian Harper wrote
>It is with great trepidation that I pursue a discussion of dynamics
>with someone named Hamilton ;-).
And _his_ first name was William too. No relation as far as I know,
although on a trip to Ireland a couple years ago I wanted to call the
Hamiltons in the Dublin phone book (there are only about 8 of them) and
find out. :-). Fortunately for them I didn't have time :-).
>
>I think it's important to maintain a distinction between self-organizing
>systems and chaotic systems. Both systems are very complicated, however,
>self-organizing systems are, I think, much more predictable than chaotic
>systems. Even so, the two systems are closely related. I'll try to get
>more into this point later.
>
>I think I muddied these waters with my earlier analogy between Goodwin's
>generic forms and strange attractors. Bill is correct about sensitivity
>to initial conditions, the amount of initial information required to
>predict a chaotic response grows exponentially with a linear extrapolation
>in time.
>
>So, in retrospect, I don't think the analogy with a strange attractor is
>particularly good. Instead, I think the idea of generic forms may actually
>possess some features in common with both point attractors and strange
>attractors. I would view generic forms as almost isolated islands in phase
>space. If you get in their vicinity, then they suck you in very close but
>not down to a single point, in other words there is great variety possible,
>but variety on a common theme (the "generic form"). If one moves too far
>away from the "island", the phase space becomes very "sparse" in the sense
>that almost all points violate some physical principles and are thus
>not allowed. In principle, I think it may actually be possible to predict
>what the generic forms are. This would then be fundamentally different
>from the orthodox neo-Darwinian view where the forms would arise due to
>the tinkering of the blind watchmaker and then be isolated due to historical
>constraints. In other words, the role of natural selection would be reduced
>primarily to minor adaptatations of the generic forms.
This seems quite reasonable to me. I agree that a strange attractor may
not be quite the right analogy. But what's important is that there are
regions in the gene space which are surrounded by basins of attraction that
genetic trajectories settle into if they get close enough.
>
>The association with chaotic dynamics may come in the sense that predicting
>precisely which generic form is attained from an arbitrary starting point
>may be impossible. This is, I think, precisely Bill's point. The "orthodox"
>view of the self-organizationalists seems to be that self-organization occurs
>"at the edge of chaos" or that organized systems "crystallize" in some manner
>>from a chaotic system. If this is indeed the case, then the self-org systems
>>manage to isolate themselves from their initial conditions. In fact, I
>believe
>that something like this *has* to happen if the term *self*-organized is
>to be legitimately used, as I've discussed previously.
Yup. This is what I was trying to get at.
>
>Here are a couple of definitions of "self-organization" which reinforce this
>idea:
>
> "For what follows it will be useful to have a suitable definition of
> self-organization at hand. We shall say that a system is self-organizing
> if it acquires a spatial, temporal or functional structure without
> specific interference from the outside. By "specific" we mean that the
> structure or functioning is not impressed on the system, but that the
> system is acted on from the outside in a nonspecific fashion. For
>instance,
> the fluid which forms hexagons is heated from below in an entirely uniform
> fashion, and it acquires its specific structure by self-organization."
> -- Hermann Haken, _Information and Self-Organization_, Springer-Verlag,
> 1988, p.11.
>
>=============================
>
> "Self-organization is to be understood as the spontaneous emergence of
> coherence or structure without externally applied coercion or control."
>
>[the following is then added in a footnote]:
>
> "Godfrey Vesey points out that in using language such as 'self-ordering'
> and self-organization', we are in part returning to the Aristotelean view
> that teleology is internal to matter. However, we definitely reject a
> teleology that proposes organisms are shaped by adaptation to some
>external
> purpose or function, whether it be natural selection or some omnipotent
> creator that is postulated to account for it.
> -- M.W. Ho and P.T. Saunders, 1986,"Evolution: Natural Selection or
> Self-Organization",<Disequilibrium and Self Organization>,
> C.W. Kilmister, ed., D. Reidel, 1986, pp. 231-242.
>
>==========================
>
>I must say that I had to smile a little on reading the above footnote. What a
>tightrope these guys have to walk! First, they have to be careful to avoid the
>implications of finely tuned initial conditions. Success in this regard then
>leads to suspicians of vitalism ;-).
I smiled too. It seems to me that where these guys cross the line from
science to metaphysics is when they say things like "However, we definitely
reject a teleology that proposes organisms are shaped by adaptation to some
external purpose or function, whether it be natural selection or some
omnipotent creator that is postulated to account for it." If he says "we
cannot establish" fine. But to say "we definitely reject" is stating a
value judgment that can't be backed up by scientific method.
>
>Sorry about this getting so long. I guess those not interested have already
>pressed the escape key by now anyway
Still here. But I'll leave the quotations you end with for later.
Bill Hamilton | Vehicle Systems Research
GM R&D Center | Warren, MI 48090-9055
810 986 1474 (voice) | 810 986 3003 (FAX)
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