Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: ohgs@chatham.demon.co.uk (Oliver Sparrow)
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!howland.reston.ans.net!pipex!peernews.demon.co.uk!chatham.demon.co.uk!ohgs
Subject: Re: Knowledge and reasoning
References: <738635033wnr@dolphsys.demon.co.uk>
Organization: Royal Institute of International Affairs
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Date: Mon, 13 Mar 1995 07:57:00 +0000
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.. but the problem with reductionism is that it doesn't work very well when
applied to every day experience. HIgh order systems possess properties which
are lost when they are considered as the sum of their components. Physicists
tend to accept - for example - self-organising criticality as an example of
an emergent system which has properties which do not map down to its 
components, but those who deal with organisms, systems and organisations
(that is to say, the rest of us!) have to deal with irreducible systems as
a permanent component of our everyday lives. 

The Aristotelian tradition is splendid and powerful when applied to that
which is the sum of its parts: the broad tradition of science to the end of 
the Eighteenth century and the taxonomic tendencies of the C19th. Rather as 
Newtonian physics works fine in its own particular domain, so this tradition
functions helpfully where it is appropriate. There is, alas, no Young's slit
experiemnt of the emergent domain: the detector which has to be used is our
own understanding. We do not, for much of the time, know whether reductionism
does not work because we are not looking at things in the right way or because
it simply does not work like that.

_________________________________________________

  Oliver Sparrow
  ohgs@chatham.demon.co.uk
