Re: [Fis] CONSILIENCE & interdisciplinarity

Here I am interleaving some comments into Pedro's most interesting discussion:

>Dear Malcolm, Stan, Richard, and colleagues,
>The distinction of Wilsonian versus Whewellian modes of interdisciplinary /
>intradisciplinary consilience looks fine (nevertheless, I will try to
>produce in next weeks some further analysis on the pros and cons of the
>Wilsonian stuff--although Richard may disagree, reductionism appears as one
>of its central motifs). In general, the cognizing relationships between
>disciplines tend to be strained, and cases of false consilience are more
>the norm than the exception: for instance, so many misunderstandings can be
>collected around information, entropy, evolution, natural selection,
>fitness, value, meaning... just looking into our discussions.
>
>For a series of reasons --including historical ones--- we lack interesting
>visions on what disciplines are and how they connect. The hierarchical
>approach has left quite durable an impression and has become the standard
>surrogate. In that regard, Stan's comments on integrative levels (Jerry
>produced some arguments along that direction too, during the sustainable
>development discussion) at least contain some checks and balances regarding
>reductionism's unidirectionality of causal flows; but in my opinion it is
>not enough. Lacking a sophisticate new vision to propose (as I also have
>relied on 'levels' and disciplinary overlappings--though emphasizing the
>occurrence of massive interdisciplinary mixing, and not only in 'borders'
>between vicinal disciplines) I suggest that we endorse as a main
>interdisciplinary motif 'circularity' rather than 'hierarchy'. It is quite
>easy, for instance, in Stan's integrative levels {logic {physics
>{chemistry {biology {sociology {psychology}}}}}} to argue that 'logic' is
>not an absolute, self-sufficient realm but a social emergence out from
>human beings within a socio--psycho --bio-- etc context.
     SS: Aha! I have done just this in an article in a collection (in
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 901:35-41, 2000) edited partly
by Jerry Chandler. I placed logic as the most general category of natural
systems in my posting partly because Compte proceeded this way in his
thinking about disciplines, but also because Charles Peirce viewed a
'Universal Mind' to ontologically precede the physical world, as part of
his evolutionary metaphysics. So, in the article I just cited, I did
indeed intend, not just that the human cognitive realm would develop
gradually out of Universal Mind (by way of chemistry and biology), but also
that Universal Mind is a concept in the cognitive realm, thereby
constructing an equivocal, because bivalent, self-referential statement.
This is because I think both interpretations are formally possible.

>So by uniting
>both extremes we would get into Piaget's circle of the sciences ---an
>epistemic vision that has passed almost unheard.... Anyhow, that linear
>hierarchy of the sciences in parallel with the integrative levels has been
>shared by reductionists and non-reductionists alike, e.g., recent figures
>such as von Bertalanffy and Popper --in my opinion, and quite respectfully,
>an error for the former.
     SS: This inerpretation is invited, I agree, by the use of the set
theory formalism, whereby, then, human cognition beomes a
sub-sub-sub-subset of the physical realm. Yet it is hard to see how to
otherwise reflect the fact of its emergence FROM what must have been prior
realms of being during the development / evolution of the universe. I have
had one idea that might lead away from this 'trap', and that is that ALL
the properties of ALL the levels were primordialy present as vague
tendencies. In this interpretation, it just takes a long time before the
world system is developed enough for cognition to become manifest as an
emergent reality. This is, in effect an interpretation of Peirce's
'Universal Mind" -- as a vaguely embodied totipotent realm. (It is
interesting to foresee objections to such a view because it might have a
religious interpretation.)

>Historically, the circle versus the hierarchy approach to the sciences is
>quite old in Western thought. There are respected "patrons" for both
>visions. To my knowledge, the hierarchy of integrative levels was explicit
>in Plotinus of Alexandria (around III AD), while Martianus Capella (around
>IV AD) championed the disciplinary structures later on known as "Trivium"
>and "Quadrivium" (usually represented forming a circle of knowledge... with
>philosophy and religion at its center). It is intriguing why the latter got
>his schema accepted as common wisdom, for quite many centuries. To be
>reversed towards linear schemes after the scientific revolution.
     SS: I believe the formal organization goes all the way to Plato
(classification of living things in the Republic), and Aristotle, who
incorporated it into his ideas of biological development.

>What I have written is too schematic --grains of salt needed. In any case I
>strongly endorse Malcolm's comment on the need to include philosophy in the
>contemplation of the interdisciplinary problem, both historically and in
>our times. And apart from the discussions to come on Whewellian
>consilience, perhaps the 'social networking' behind knowledge is a very
>intriguing direction to explore too ---putting varieties of human knowledge
>in a similar 'informational' footing with respect to the
>biological-molecular one...
>
>best regards
>
>Pedro
>
>(A side comment: entering computers into the above scheme of levels, it
>would be funny to hear reductionists' claims on how the software should be
>declared 'causally impotent' regarding the 'hard'...)
     SS: We can easily introduce this, as {{{{biology {sociality
{Noosphere}}}}}, with the Noosphere (Teilhard de Chardin, Vernadsky,
Soleri)being a technological realm arising out of human sociality. It will
prominently be embodied in computers of all kinds. This is a valid
continuation of this developmet insofar as -- in my view of development --
the machine state is the most fully embodied condition of senescence.

STAN

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Received on Wed Oct 6 22:12:06 2004