Theos-Talk Archives (December 2001 Message tt00175)

In a meage dated 12/11/01 1:12:43 AM, micforster@yahoo.com writes:

>This is an exert from a book I am currently reading
>titled "Heirarchy Theory: The Challenge of Complex
>Systems" edited by H. H. Pattee pages 24-26.
>
>
>"I will close with some remarks about reductionism and
>the structure of the sciences....There are at least
>two versions of the concept of explanation in science.
>In both versions, of course, explaining a phenomena
>involves reducing it to other phenomena that are, in
>some sense, more fundamental.
>
>But with agreement on this point, the two concepts of
>explanation branch. The one concept - let me call it
>Laplacian - takes as its ideal the formulation of a
>single set of equations describing behaviour at the
>most microscopic, the most fundamental level, from
>which all macrophenomena are to follow and to be
>deduced. No one, of course, believes the program could
>actually be carried out - the equations, when written,
>would be far to hard to solve. In spite of that, the
>concept has practical consequences in the real world,
>for it influences some scientists' choices of research
>problems - their view of what is "really" fundamental.
>
>The second concept - for lack of a better name let me
>call it Mendelian - takes as its ideal the formulation
>of laws that express the invariant relations between
>successive levels of heirarchical structures. It aims
>at discovering as many bodies of scientific law as
>there are pairs of successive levels - a theory of
>particle physics, one of atomic physics, one of
>molecular chemistry, one of biochemsitry, and so on.
>Since the world of nature is a nearly decomposable
>system, and since the invariant properties of a nearly
>decomposable system have this layered quality, the
>fundamental scientific laws must take this form also.
>
>Since, in the second view, nature is only nearly
>(italics) decomposable, not completely (italics)
>decomposable, many of the most beautiful regularities
>of nature will only be approximate regularities. They
>will fall short of exactness because the properties of
>the lower level, higher frequency subsystems will
>"show through" faintly into the behaviour of the
>higher level, lower frequency systems.....
>
>If we were to make a list of the most important, the
>most beautiful laws of natural science that have been
>discovered in the last three centuries, we would see
>that the vast majority of them only hold
>approximately, and only if we are willing to ignore
>details of the microstructure. The pattern expressed
>by these laws is simply not present in the underlying,
>detailed Laplacian equations.
>
>I do not want to present a one sided case. The fact
>that nature is hierarchic does not mean that phenomena
>at several levels cannot, even in the Mendelian view,
>have common mechanisms. Relativistic quantum mechanics
>has had spectacular success in dealing with phenomena
>ranging all the way from the level of the atomic
>nucleus to the level of tertiary structure in organic
>molecules." end quote.
>
>
>hmmmmmm....perhaps scientists would save a lot of time
>if they were assigned The Secret Doctrine as a text to
>study in first year.
>

Best idea I've heard yet in this theosophy discussion forum -- (generally 
filled with time wasting, nonsensical and non-theosophical babble about 
personalities and garbled, non sequitur history, opinionated gossip, and 
puerile jokes).

LHM