Re: [Fis] 'Locale' Knowledge

From: John Collier
To: ssalthe@binghamton.edu
Date: Friday - January 16, 2004 1:03 AM
Subject: Re: [Fis] 'Locale' Knowledge
   
There is a nice paper by Ken Waters in Biol and Phil a few years ago about restricted laws. I seldom agree with Ken, but this is one point I think he is dead right about. The main point is that the local laws do not follow from constraints on general laws alone, but are still in the area of dynamics rather than boundary conditions. I would say that the reason is that such laws are typically emergent. So the Logial empiricist model that Howard Pattee uses fails in this case.

I wish I could participate more, but I have been all over the world recently (literally) and it is hard to keep up. I expect to be settled down in mid-March.

John

Professor John Collier
Philosophy, University of Natal
Durban 4041 South Africa
T: +27 (31) 260 3248 / 260 2292
F: +27 (31) 260 3031
email: collierj@nu.ac.za
http://nu.ac.za/undphil/collier
Professor John Collier
Philosophy, University of Natal
Durban 4041 South Africa
T: +27 (31) 260 3248 / 260 2292
F: +27 (31) 260 3031
email: collierj@nu.ac.za
http://nu.ac.za/undphil/collier
>>> "Stanley N. Salthe" (by way of "Pedro C. Marijuán" <marijuan@unizar.es>) <ssalthe@binghamton.edu> 01/15/04 13:16 PM >>>
re Pedro's posting below: In my view, natural science (and some of social
science as well) is an attempt to find general rules (laws), and then to
see how these influence affairs at individual locales. Individual local
configurations add informational constraints to the general rules, which
also are informational constraints. (That is, the most general laws of
nature can be viewed as being unique -- historcal -- products of this
particular Big Bang.) So, following Pattee, we can distinguish dynamics
(the form of an equation) from the constraints upon them (the values of
constants in an equation). Dynamics can be viewed as the attempt to
promote energetic equilibrium in the Universe, while various constraints
can be viewed as arrangements to promote this project.

STAN

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Received on Fri Jan 16 00:07:51 2004