To continue…

The paper by J.W. Anderson I referenced in my previous post, “More is Different” has a different take on reductionism and the hierarchy of scientific scale than the one I discussed in my previous post.

The main fallacy in this kind of thinking is that the reductionist hypothesis does not by any means imply a "constructionist" one: The ability to reduce everything to simple fundamental laws does not imply the ability to start from those laws and reconstruct the universe. In fact, the more the elementary particle physicists tell us about the nature of the fundamental laws, the less relevance they seem to have to the very real problems of the rest of science, much to those of society.

The constructionist hypothesis breaks down when confronted with the twin difficulties of scale and complexity. The behavior of large and complex aggregates of elementary particles, it turns out, is not to be understood in terms of a simple extrapolation of the properties of a few particles. Instead, at each level of complexity entirely new properties appear, and the understanding of the new behaviors requires research which I think is as fundamental in its nature as any other. That is, it seems to me that one may array the sciences roughly linearly in a hierarchy according to the idea: The elementary entities of science [at one level] obey the laws of science [at the previous level].

• Elementary particle physics
• Solid state or many-body physics
• Chemistry
• Molecular biology
• Cell biology
• Physiology
• Psychology
• Social sciences

But this hierarchy does not imply that science X is “just applied Y.” At each stage entirely new laws, concepts, and generalizations are necessary, requiring inspiration and creativity to just as great a degree as in the previous one. Psychology is not applied biology, nor is biology applied chemistry.

As I indicated, I’m not really sure if Anderson’s view is a metaphysical or a scientific approach. Either way, I think it reinforces my understanding that each level on the hierarchy of scale provides information and understanding not provided at the other levels.

Sorry, I do not understand Anderson's view at all. So I have to questions:
Why does it be hierarchical? I do not see why it is so necessary to put Chemistry above social sciences. Is this means that one is more important than the other?
I am disagree when he states: Psychology is not applied biology, nor is biology applied chemistry. Why? I guess everything could be connected together, just a little bit.

In the other hand, where can we put philosophy itself in the levels? We can say, probably, that philosophy is above all the list, maybe? Because if we keep in mind the Greek classical thought we can be agree that critical thought, thus philosophy, has developed those hierarchical list

Why does it be hierarchical? I do not see why it is so necessary to put Chemistry above social sciences. Is this means that one is more important than the other? — javi2541997

The hierarchy is of scale and complexity, not importance. Anderson is very clear about that. That's really the whole point of his paper and this thread.

I am disagree when he states: Psychology is not applied biology, nor is biology applied chemistry. Why? I guess everything could be connected together, just a little bit. — javi2541997

Anderson is clear that there are connections between levels and about what those connections are. He says "...one may array the sciences roughly linearly in a hierarchy according to the idea: The elementary entities of science [at one level] obey the laws of science... [at the previous level]."

In the other hand, where can we put philosophy itself in the levels? We can say, probably, that philosophy is above all the list, maybe? Because if we keep in mind the Greek classical thought we can be agree that critical thought, thus philosophy, has developed those hierarchical list — javi2541997

I think you're exactly right. That's what I meant when I said the hierarchy is a metaphysical entity. Philosophy isn't included in the hierarchy, it created it.

The hierarchy is of scale and complexity, not importance. Anderson is very clear about that. That's really the whole point of his paper and this thread. — T Clark

Hmmm complexity... That's interesting indeed. I am disagree with him in terms that chemistry is more "complex" than social science. I don't want to sound as an angry social student but for me, his theory sounds off time and old. Saying in nowadays that studying chemistry is harder than learning languages or law (for example) is quite old-fashioned... This thought can lead to some students to feel that they are "less" than others.

Philosophy isn't included in the hierarchy, it created it. — T Clark

Good phrase,! :100: but do you know the real paradox here? That philosophy is used to be included in "social science" area. So according to Anderson Chemistry is more complicated than reasoning or thinking themselves!

I am disagree with him in terms that chemistry is more "complex" than social science. — javi2541997

As you go down the hierarchy from particle physics to psychology, complexity increases.

I think I completely misunderstood it since the beginning... :fear:

That’s where the hierarchy of scale comes in. It represents an artificial division of the universe into manageable pieces. — T Clark

Reductionists and holists mean different things when they talk about hierarchical order.

Reductionists think only in terms of upwards construction. You start with an ultimately simple and stable foundation, then build upwards towards increasing scales of complexity. As high as you like.

But a holist thinks dualistically in terms of upwards construction working in organic interaction with downwards constraint. So you have causality working both ways at once, synergistically, to produce the functioning whole.

The hierarchy thus becomes not a tower of ascending complexity (and arbitrariness or specificity) but it itself reduces to a "basic triadic relation" (as hierarchy theorist, Stan Salthe, dubs it). The holist account reduces all organisation to the interaction between an upward constructionist flow and a downward constraining history or context, plus then the third thing which is the relation that those two causal actions develop in a stable and persistent fashion.

So many key differences to reductionist metaphysics follow from this connected causality.

For example, it makes everything historically or developmentally emergent - the upward construction and the downward constraint. There is no fundamental atomistic grain - a collection of particles - that gets everything started. Instead, that grain is what gets produced by the top-down constraints. The higher order organisation stabilises its own ground of being in bootstrap fashion. It gives shape to the very stuff that composes it.

A simple analogy. If you want an army, you must produce soldiers. You must take average humans with many degrees of freedom (all the random and unstable variety of 18 year olds) and mould them in a boot camp environment which strictly limits those freedoms to the behaviours found to be useful for "an army". You must simplify and standardise a draft of individuals so that they can fit together in a collective and interchangeable fashion that then acts in concert to express the mind and identity of a "military force".

So in the holist view, there is no foundational stability to a functioning system. The stability of the parts comes from the top-down constraints that shape up the kind of parts that are historically best suited to the task of constituting the system as a whole. The parts are emergent and produced by a web of limitation.

When it comes to the metaphysics of science, this is why we see thermodynamics becoming the most general perspective. The broad constraint on all nature is that it must be able to self-organise its way into stable and persistent complexity. And thermodynamics or statistical mechanics offers the basic maths for dealing with systems that develop negentropic organisation by exporting entropy.

From particle physics to neuroscience, thermodynamics explains both simplicity and complexity.

Well, it does if you let it.

I think it reinforces my understanding that each level on the hierarchy of scale provides information and understanding not provided at the other levels. — T Clark

I think it's really about the questions we make. Or the answers we want to have.

For example, from metal you can make ships, aeroplanes or space rockets. The physics, chemistry and metallurgy is the same. Yet the problems and questions are different, even if there is no difference in chemistry or physics. Metallurgy cannot itself answer the various complex questions that aerodynamics or hydrodynamics answers to. They on the other hand don't answer to question concerning the performance of the metal in space and how to make a functioning satellite.

Now when you make the leap from biology to sociology, the questions are so much different, that the answers basic biology can give hardly matter anymore.

I think it's really about the questions we make. Or the answers we want to have. — ssu

If you just want technology, you only need to answer the questions concerning efficient and material causality. The questions about formal and final causality appear redundant - because you, as the human, are happy to contribute the design of the system and the purpose which it is intended to serve.

Science is thus shaped by human pragmatic considerations. A search for stable material substance that the creative human mind can fashion into a world of "medium sized dry goods".

But we shouldn't then think reality is mechanical. We should also work on an understanding of reality that is properly holistic.

But we shouldn't then think reality is mechanical. We should also work on an understanding of reality that is properly holistic. — apokrisis

As having read economics and as an economic historian, which the latter basically some even don't consider a "science", the obvious problem is subjectivity.

It's not a coincidence that the old name for economics was "political economics". It is actually extremely political. The "mathematical turn" that has happened in economics only tries to hide this fact. And if people base their actions on what they have learned in "economics", then their actions in the aggregate are made because of what they have learned. Hence what is the role of "economics", can it be a "purely objective model of reality?"

No.

The basic problem doesn't go away just by assuming some premises that avoid vicious circles or self-fulfilling prophecies. Or in the most stupid way, just to assume a "black box" where something happens, install it to the model and everything is mathematically fine.

History itself actually tells how we avoid this problem. In history we understand the uniqueness of every historical event and time. We understand how meaningless it is to try to hammer such complexity into some mathematical formula, but we use narrative: "Let me tell you a story of the history of the human civilization..."

Now when you make the leap from biology to sociology, the questions are so much different, that the answers basic biology can give hardly matter anymore. — ssu

The funny thing there is that biology used to look just like complicated chemistry. In class in the 1970s, the Krebs cycle at the heart of cellular metabolism was presented as some kind of warm soup of precursors mixed with catalytic enzymes. You had to memorise a chain of chemical reactions.

But nowadays, the foundations of a cell are looking extremely mechanical. Every biomolecule needs to be understood in the language of information switches and engine cycles.

So life itself harnesses the power of reductionist thought! It too learns to regulate the material world by entraining it using an apparatus of molecular machinery.

An enzyme is a mechanical structure that can manipulate chemistry at a quantum level.

So biology is not emergent from chemistry as the "hierarchy of scale" used to have it. Instead, mechanisation - the informational regulation of thermodynamically-driven processes - is a way that formal and final cause can be used to regulate material and efficient cause in an organismic fashion.

Life exists because it could apply mechanical constraint in a top-down fashion to messy chemical dynamics.

And so the irony is that complexity is mechanical - but the causal action reaches down from above rather than works its way up from below.

Hence what is the role of "economics", can it be a "purely objective model of reality?" — ssu

Societies are organisms. So why would a holist expect "pure objectivity" when the production of "subjectivity" is what defines an organism.

Or in other words, objectivity is the code name for accounts of causality that only take material and efficient cause seriously. Subjectivity then becomes the code name for the formal and final aspects of causality ... which the reductionist wants to remove from nature and reserve solely for the creative human mind.

So the way to understand economics in the most general sense is that it is the way the organism that is a society believes it can organise itself to survive and thrive in a material and efficient cause fashion. It is the machinery for regulating those kinds of entropic flows.

So the way to understand economics in the most general sense is that it is the way the organism that is a society believes it can organise itself to survive and thrive in a material and efficient cause fashion. — apokrisis

Yet economics is the belief part. That belief part of believing that it can organize itself to survive and thrive is the problem. Belief is the problem.

Because you look at it with the idea: "OK, let's organize the society to survive and thrive" and go with central planning or then say: "OK, let's have the society organize itself to survive and thrive" and go with free market capitalism. Or anything in between. Or something else.

And there's the problem. That general description what you said, and I'm not disagreeing with it, simply doesn't answer anything that has to be answered... in order for that society to survive and thrive.

Because you look at it with the idea: "OK, let's organize the society to survive and thrive" and go with central planning or then say: "OK, let's have the society organize itself to survive and thrive" and go with free market capitalism. Or anything between. — ssu

If you can't properly describe nature then of course you can't then judge economic theories in terms of what might be natural.

But here, you have already made the right start in setting out your dialectical extremes in the usual sociological manner. We have the polar extremes of global cooperation and local competition.

The mistake then is to believe that one or other extreme could be the "correct" setting. Hierarchy theory - as our best theory of self-organising nature - tells us that both poles are correct and ought to be maximised as the upper and lower bounds that make the living system.

So the "best" society is always the one that manages to balance its global cooperation with its local competition. It will be organised to maximise its social cohesion and its individual independence.

The larger problem is then the ecological setting of the sociocultural system in question - the thermodynamic equation that defines what is a functional "burn rate". Are you a society living by hunter/gathering, feudal agriculture or fossil fuel age technology? The rate at which you can afford to eat your world sets the general constraint on what will prove to be a functional, stable and persisting social organisation.

So for example, is neo-liberalism a bad thing? You would think not to the degree that it existed to use up the energy bonanza of fossil fuels. And you would think so to the degree it failed to factor in the long-term cost of the environmental degradation and atmospheric heat sink it treated as an unowned commons.

I'm fine with the idea of putting a price on everything. If you do indeed put a price on everything.

So maximising individual freedom is great - up until the point it erodes the degree of social cohesion needed to survive and thrive. And vice versa. Maximising social cohesion is great - up until it is too restrictive on the individual freedom that is needed.

It's not rocket science.

Reductionists and holists mean different things when they talk about hierarchical order. — apokrisis

I thought about you when I was writing these posts. The subject reminded me of discussions we've had in the past. I'm glad you responded.

But a holist thinks dualistically in terms of upwards construction working in organic interaction with downwards constraint. So you have causality working both ways at once, synergistically, to produce the functioning whole. — apokrisis

When you talk about downward constraints, are you just talking about the normal rules of the more complex level of the hierarchy, e.g. are chemical interactions constrained by the rules of biology, or is it something else? Where did those constraints come from if not constructed from below?

(as hierarchy theorist, Stan Salthe, dubs it) — apokrisis

I went to his web page and I'm reading some of his articles.

A simple analogy. If you want an army, you must produce soldiers. You must take average humans with many degrees of freedom (all the random and unstable variety of 18 year olds) and mould them in a boot camp environment which strictly limits those freedoms to the behaviours found to be useful for "an army". You must simplify and standardise a draft of individuals so that they can fit together in a collective and interchangeable fashion that then acts in concert to express the mind and identity of a "military force". — apokrisis

This is a good analogy. It clarified things for me. I still don't get the mechanism that generates the constraints.

For example, it makes everything historically or developmentally emergent - the upward construction and the downward constraint. There is no fundamental atomistic grain - a collection of particles - that gets everything started. Instead, that grain is what gets produced by the top-down constraints. The higher order organisation stabilises its own ground of being in bootstrap fashion. It gives shape to the very stuff that composes it. — apokrisis

Looking at it this way makes the artificiality of the layered hierarchy clearer.

I still don't get the mechanism that generates the constraint — T Clark

It's the collective that sets the constraints for the parts. The dynamics of the partial structures are constrained so they shape the whole. Like termites and their castle.

When you talk about downward constraints, are you just talking about the normal rules of the more complex level of the hierarchy, e.g. are chemical interactions constrained by the rules of biology, or is it something else? Where did those constraints come from if not constructed from below? — T Clark

The rules of nature ultimately seem to be mathematically Platonic - based on symmetry principles.

Our cosmos has a dimensional structure, an evolutionary logic, a thermodynamic flow. We can go back to first principles and say that for anything to exist, it must be able to develop and persist. So there is already a selection for the global structure that works, that is rational, that can last long enough for us to be around to talk about it.

So the constraints don't arise out of already concrete material foundations. Constraints (or universals) only "exist" if they have proved to be of the right type to conjure a Cosmos into being out of raw possibility. That is, if they could produce the concrete material foundations needed to instantiate themselves as systems composed of those kinds of atoms/events/processes/etc.

The constraints that fail to stablise their own constituent parts can't even exist. And that selection principle means nature is the product of whatever global rules did the best job at stabilising the means of its own bootstrapping existence.

The ends always justifies the means.

I went to his web page and I'm reading some of his articles. — T Clark

Good luck! :smile:

But he wrote two books on hierarchy theory that are very readable.

This is a good analogy. It clarified things for me. I still don't get the mechanism that generates the constraints. — T Clark

An army has to meet its purpose. So there is a Darwinian selection principle that produces the constraints which an army - as a human institution with regulations, history, a social memory - embodies.

The army exists as an idea in the minds of all its participants. So that makes it seem like an idealist fiction.

And yet every private quickly runs into the reality of the army way in a brute and direct fashion if they so much as twitch a nervous smile or leave a speck of dirt on their boots.

The mechanism that generates the constraints is the system as a whole in action over its long-run existence. Or what Salthe would call its cogent moment scale.

Constraint is the great weight of historical accident that builds in Darwinian fashion and acts on every local degree of freedom within a system. It represents the past in terms of what it intends to be its own future.

And then to evolve - being a natural system - it must also be slowly changed by its experiences. So even in armies, the system of constraint gets modified to make it better adapted to its current environmental challenges.

One day you might find women, as well as men, being trained to be unthinking killing machines.

So general evolutionary principles generate the constraints. And at the simplest level, the Darwinian competition is to just exist as a stably persisting process or functional structure.

Like termites and their castle — EugeneW

Natural complexes like termites, bees, flocks of geese, trees, clouds, tornadoes, ice, rocks, volcanoes, platypuses and people are fascinating whether created by physical forces with constraints or by the accidents of evolution in response to environmental catastrophes.

Constraints (or universals) only "exist" if they have proved to be of the right type to conjure a Cosmos into being out of raw possibility. — apokrisis

the enclosure of exist in scare quotes is significant - because these constraints must pre-exist, in other words, existence itself depends on them, were they not so, then nothing would exist.

That is why the traditionalist understanding is that universals are more real than particular existents, because they are in greater logical proximity to necessary being. 'In contrast to contemporary philosophers, most 17th century philosophers held that reality comes in degrees—that some things that exist are more or less real than other things that exist. At least part of what dictates a being’s reality, according to these philosophers, is the extent to which its existence is dependent on other things: the less dependent a thing is on other things for its existence, the more real it is.' But there is no conceptual space for 'degrees of reality' in contemporary philosophy - in it, what is real, and what exists, are held to be synonymous. (Peirce said ' I call your attention to the fact that reality and existence are two different things.' )

And that selection principle means nature is the product of whatever global rules did the best job at stabilising the means of its own bootstrapping existence. — apokrisis

But those rules can't be the result of an evolutionary process - they must pre-exist it. Biological evolution at least assumes the existence of species of some kind for any kind of natural selection to operate on, because species uniquely possess the attribute of seeking to continue surviving. Nothing inorganic does that.

. It will be organised to maximise its social cohesion and its individual independence. — apokrisis

How? Maximize what? How do you maximize "social cohesion" and "individual independence"? What do you really measure, if you want to maximize the two? Because to maximize something, you have to have the ability measure it.

The larger problem is then the ecological setting of the sociocultural system in question - the thermodynamic equation that defines what is a functional "burn rate". — apokrisis

What burn rate?

The rate at which you can afford to eat your world sets the general constraint on what will prove to be a functional, stable and persisting social organisation. — apokrisis

What general constraint? What is a functional, stable and persisting social organisation? We can have many ideas of just what is a "functional, stable and persisting social organisation". Yet shouldn't the society be dynamic, capable of adapting to changes where stability and the persistence of social organization might be a bad thing?

As I said, one person could define a "functional, stable and persisting social organisation" one way and another totally differently. So we have a problem.

It's not rocket science. — apokrisis

It's not science. I have absolutely no clue of what kind of actual policies you would implement with that kind of description. It could be just anything... because you could give nearly any kind of definitions to the issue referred to.

the enclosure of exist in scare quotes is significant - because these constraints must pre-exist, in other words, existence itself depends on them, were they not so, then nothing would exist. — Wayfarer

The constraints aren't fixed and eternal. They represent a history of development that acts to remove all lesser possibilities.

So at best, in the "beginning", they are vague. And by the end, they might retrospectively be considered the only correct and possible habits of nature. But it wouldn't help to argue that they thus post-date reality anymore than they pre-exist it.

The circle might sit as the ultimate limit of irregularity. You can't get more symmetric. But dontcha need the irregularity to discover the circle which is its ultimate limit?

If you place Platonic ideals outside of the space/time/energy system we are talking about - the Cosmos - then you are reducing its metaphysics in an unhelpful way.

A process philosophy would see that everything must arise co-dependently. So the symmetries are yoked to their own breaking. The perfection of one is actively reciprocal to the imperfection of its other. Immanence must rule over transcendence if you want to move out of the camp of the reductionist.

Peirce said ' I call your attention to the fact that reality and existence are two different things.' — Wayfarer

Peirce developed the fully triadic view where actuality was sandwiched between top-down necessity (or constraint) and bottom-up possibility (or unconstrained potential).

So yes, he made a fuss about universals being real. But equally, he made a fuss about spontaneous chance, or logical vagueness and Tychism, as being real.

The perfections and the imperfections are logically yoked in a reciprocal deal. And inbetween you get what actually expresses both poles as a historical trajectory of development.

But those rules can't be the result of an evolutionary process - they must pre-exist it. — Wayfarer

Again, time itself is emergent at this level of metaphysics. You can call the rules immanent. But that is a retrospective call. It would have been hard to discern any rules at the actual beginning while they were still in a competition to form.

And so the irony is that complexity is mechanical - but the causal action reaches down from above rather than works its way up from below. — apokrisis

Sure, in a laboratory we can make things, but nature doesn't think things out beforehand. But I doubt that either proposed upwards or downwards direction of natural complex development is logically possible or practicable. A lot of complexity just happens because of known or unknowable circumstances. Remove an enzyme and the organism dies and becomes source material for something else.

But those [global] rules can't be the result of an evolutionary process - they must pre-exist it. Biological evolution at least assumes the existence of species of some kind for any kind of natural selection to operate on, because species uniquely possess the attribute of seeking to continue surviving. — Wayfarer

Evolution can be gradual or punctuated. The sudden bursts in emergence are the consequence of radical changes in the environment, such as fires, floods, volcanic explosions, poisons that create a nutrient rich environment lacking in dominant life forms. The environment is a third, more powerful force than any of the competing species. After environmental catastrophes new factors open possibilities for life. The rules are post hoc.

Because to maximize something, you have to have the ability measure it. — ssu

Sure. Economics is known as the dismal science because it could justify slavery by choosing to measure horsepower.

But don't pretend that better metrics aren't possible. There is a ton of literature on that.

What burn rate? — ssu

Energy expenditure per capita is a good gross metric. Just check out the literature on ecological footprints.

As I said, one person could define a "functional, stable and persisting social organisation" one way and another totally differently. So we have a problem. — ssu

You have a problem as you don't seem to accept that societies are part of the natural world and so are constrained by the same general ecological limits, even while being also radically free to invent new worlds if such worlds are possible.

So my view can happily place the idiocies of neoliberal climate destruction alongside the techno-fantasies of limitless clean fusion power.

I don't have to pick a side in some religious fashion. It just becomes a hopefully pragmatic and measurable economic question. Do we bank on the dream of fusion power arriving in time, or do we fully price in the cost of burning fossil fuel?

I have absolutely no clue of what kind of actual policies you would implement with that kind of description. — ssu

You are not even listening, just raving.

Every human social system that has ever existed has found ways to balance social cohesion with individual autonomy.

And it's never been a utopia. :razz:

You can call the rules immanent. — apokrisis

so as not to run afoul of them :-)

Sure, in a laboratory we can make things, but nature doesn't think things out beforehand. But I doubt that either proposed upwards or downwards direction of natural complex development is logically possible or practicable. — magritte

The problem is that if you now deny the naturalness of molecular machines, then you play straight into the hands of Creationists who want to use ATPase or the bacterial flagella as mechanical marvels that could only have been dreamt up in God's mind.

Pick your poison carefully.

Sure, in a laboratory we can make things, but nature doesn't think things out beforehand. — magritte

Completely irrelevant, but I just happened to re-read this old quip about the reality of the pragmatic approach to science. Attributed to engine designer, John Kris....

Start her up and see why she don't go!

:up:

In my mind, this argument started with the idea that everything we deal with on a day to day basis is at human scale, the scale of baseballs and baloney sandwiches. — T Clark

:ok:

What do you make of theoretical physics, by and large an extension of math, math itself a very abstract (mental) subject/field?

I'm sure you're aware of it, but the existence of some "physical" objects like quarks and the God particle (the Higgs-Boson) were deduced from mathematical models of the particle world. That is to say, our minds seem to be in the know about objects and goings on at scales that are clearly not human (we normally can't see quarks or Higgs-Bosons).

On the larger point you made, I agree: each level of organization of matter & energy, as represented broadly in the sequence physics $\rightarrow$ chemistry $\rightarrow$ biology $\rightarrow$ psychology has its own unique, level-specific entities (particles in physics and chemistry, cells in biology, and minds in psychology) which operate under, yet again, tier-specific rules. The reductionist enterprise is a waste of time, something like that.

What do you make of theoretical physics, by and large an extension of math, math itself a very abstract (mental) subject/field? — Agent Smith

But one doesn't need math to see that there are quarks when looking at the variety of hadrons. One doesn't need math ti see the weak force is not fundamental. In fact, most interesting ideas in theoretical physics don't stem from math. That's because nature is not mathematical.

Why is math abstract? I think it's very concrete. I removed a Lebesque function once. From a university basement.

Why should you represent reality into the physics-chemistry-biology-cosmology division in the first place?