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#reductionism

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Continued thread
jan hoglund
The limits of mechanistic dogma are very examples of the restrictiveness of self-imposed methodologies that fabricate non-existent artificial ‘limitations’ on science and knowledge. The limitations are due to the nongenericity of the methods and their associated bounded microcosms.
—Aloisius H. Louie, More Than Life Itself: A Synthetic Continuation in Relational Biology
#relationalbiology #biology #reductionism #science #knowledge
#knowledge
Continued thread
jan hoglund
The reductionistic claim bears the false witness that if one has enough such [mechanistic physiochemical] surrogates, and knows enough about them, then the biological organization will follow as a corollary. It is not just a technical matter of the impossibility in human terms of acquiring a sufficiently large collection of surrogates. The inherent impredicativity of complexity cannot be analytically resolved. A typical example is that one cannot solve a classical N -body problem by solving N one-body problems.
—Aloisius H. Louie, More Than Life Itself: A Synthetic Continuation in Relational Biology
#reductionism #relationalbiology #artificiallife #life
#life
Continued thread
jan hoglund
”Geometry, for example, is a convenient abstraction; it is not concrete reality. … Reductionism is a method, not an ontology. An ethical corollary: when we realize every entity feels at some scale, we might rethink certain experiments that cause suffering.”
—Matthew Segall, Prehensions, Propositions, and the Cosmological Commons
#abstraction #reductionism #ethics
#ethics
Continued thread
VeganPizza69 ⓋⒶ

Some selected quotes from the episode description:

<💬>
#catholic parents "they both left the church when they got married"

Raised in a non-religious home

Summers with grand-parents who felt "we need to get a healthy dose of religion because we were missing it from all the other months of the year"

"I was and I still am a very curious, curious kid... I was really fascinated by a lot of the [church] stories and the rituals... but there was no time for asking questions."

Bible stories "some of them are extraordinary - they don't always make sense to a kids mind or an adult mind"

Dad "the Spock in the family", mum an artist

Cousins mostly religious. An argument at ~10 yrs old about evolution and whether He Man has more muscles than Justine :) "No - he has the same number of muscles as me - they're just more developed"

Getting in trouble with grandma for telling cousins we evolved "from something ape-like"

"I'm not somebody that ever talks somebody out of their faith... not anti-religion... I deeply respect people's values and beliefs and faith even though it's different... I find it very easy to co-exist with people who do have a faith."

Enjoying good faith conversations with religious people about nature "I really appreciated how he would give me space to ask questions"

"I'm not religious, I don't believe there's a god, but I am totally open to being wrong about that."

"I practice science with a small 's'... I am someone who loves an elegant experiment tied to field observations - that's what I'm here for."

"Some people could say that I'm a reductionist... reduction is kind of a dirty word... but I can kind of live with it."

"There's definitely been some events in my life that do make me pause... is there something else going on here?"... coincidences vs. something else?

Epistemology: Naturalism vs. fideism (faith), dogmatism or unchallengeable authority or revelation

JW: Even "a naturalistic approach based on evidence and reason... that can be done well and it can be done badly too"

"This naturalistic approach... science... can have some failings... I do think the overall process is robust - but it breaks down because humans are involved... we have some flaws"

The Wood Wide Web story started ~25 years ago from an experiment published in Nature by Suzanne Simard, Melanie Jones and others nature.com/articles/41557

Mycorrhizal fungi, carbon transfer, trees and plants "an ancient relationship... 400-500 million years ago... they can link the two trees below ground... that in itself is super interesting"... organisms from two completely separate kingdoms connected

"Fungi are more closely related to us than they are to plants"

Non photosynthesising plants can get carbon via the fungal network from a photosynthesising plant

"Someone... nobody knows who... called it the Wood Wide Web... it quickly took off... that was 25 years ago."

Pushback to the paper both technical and conceptual "why would it give it up to another plant?"

"From our review there's been less than 30 experiments done in the field on this topic and no one has definitively shown that this carbon is moving through these... common mycorrhizal networks."

"...never been conclusive... always a lot of uncertainty... but then... about 5 years ago... that one book... 'The Secret Life of Trees'"

"I picked up this book... I didn't really care for it... I found the language really kind of infantile... I've never felt the need to anthropomorphise forest or trees to that extent to get me interested in what they're doing and why we should care about them."

52:30 What and Who Matters?
01:19:15 How to Make a Better World?
</💬>

NatureNet transfer of carbon between ectomycorrhizal tree species in the field - NatureDifferent plant species can be compatible with the same species of mycorrhizal fungi1,2 and be connected to one another by a common mycelium3,4. Transfer of carbon3,4,5, nitrogen6,7 and phosphorus8,9 through interconnecting mycelia has been measured frequently in laboratory experiments, but it is not known whether transfer is bidirectional, whether there is a net gain by one plant over its connected partner, or whether transfer affects plant performance in the field10,11. Laboratory studies using isotope tracers show that the magnitude of one-way transfer can be influenced by shading of ‘receiver’ plants3,5, fertilization of ‘donor’ plants with phosphorus12, or use of nitrogen-fixing donor plants and non-nitrogen-fixing receiver plants13,14, indicating that movement may be governed by source–sink relationships. Here we use reciprocal isotope labelling in the field to demonstrate bidirectional carbon transfer between the ectomycorrhizal tree species Betula papyrifera and Pseudotsuga menziesii, resulting in net carbon gain by P. menziesii. Thuja plicata seedlings lacking ectomycorrhizae absorb small amounts of isotope, suggesting that carbon transfer between B. papyrifera and P. menziesii is primarily through the direct hyphal pathway. Net gain by P. menziesii seedlings represents on average 6% of carbon isotope uptake through photosynthesis. The magnitude of net transfer is influenced by shading of P. menziesii, indicating that source–sink relationships regulate such carbon transfer under field conditions.
#science#reductionism#fungi
Replied to Thomas
Preston MacDougall

@tg9541 OK, I have read Stuart Kauffman’s book “At Home in the Universe”, and am familiar with the concept of ‘emergence’, as well as the philosophical conflict concerning #reductionism. But I am also skeptical of #math substituting for #science - as in #StringTheory.

To get to the point of this limited toot, I recall from long ago the discovery (by radiolabeling) that “biological structures are replaced every 8 weeks”, but more recent experiments refuted its generality.

Replied to Thomas
ᛕᎥᕼᗷᗴᖇᑎᗴ丅Ꭵᑕᔕ

@tg9541

I believe Rosen is complaining here only about one particular type of #reductionism - #computationalism.

I think he was very well aware that all anticipatory systems must maintain some (reduced) # model of reality in order to **anticipate** how things in their environments that may affect them are likely to unfold.
Science cannot dispense of "good reductionism" such as, for example, Searle's Biological Naturalism.

The excerpt is from R. L. Kuhn's "Landscape of Consciousness"

sciencedirect.com/science/arti

Thomas

In his work Anticipatory Systems, #RobertRosen carefully introduces readers with knowledge of Cybernetics to the foundations of mathematics so that the formal limits of methodological approaches like #modelling, reasoning and #deduction in their domain of #science becomes obvious. Later he would do the same for a more general audience in Life Itself. The reasoning is very similar, clear, and formally sound. Still scientists will sheepishly adhere to believe in #reductionism.

mj

@ScienceCommunicator

We have 2 important considerations regarding this topic, IMO.

One is that we are not separate from the world we study. That we must always allow for interactions we find in similar subjects external to us to be operating in similar fashion inside of our own #systems. That is, we cannot build our models separately, with the outcome of purely phenomenological & physiological perspectives. Of course, where the similarities are few, those unique views are necessary. Consciousness would be one area where our experience should be included & weighed heavy in the model.

The other comes from #reductionism, and the need to incorporate boundaries, phase changes, and other #emergent phenomena that won't agree with the #linear summation during the reconstruction of the parts we identified on the way down.

So going down the chain of molecules, elements, and atoms, for example, is not different from examining #evolution connections, or life itself. There is no reverse at some points, and even where there is time reversal #symmetry, the paths are not always direct, 1:1 increments. (see 'islands of stability', for example)

We have a bad tendency of always ending up framing it in black or white terms, like " #nature vs nurture", when the actual situations nearly always require both.

One of the unfortunate elements of the #scientific method centered on reduction is that the first impression (indeed very strong) comes in the results section, from the questions asked at the start. Those have been stripped of all #context variation & complexity, and that is where it leaves off in most cases. For the vast majority of humans, the deeper layers are never seen or explored; the simplified meme is what propagates most prolifically.

Our mission, should we choose to accept it, is to layer the #complexity back in, one layer at a time, and continue our pursuit of higher #knowledge. This will require some modifications to our current system!

jan hoglund
We have lived with a world view dominated by reductionism. Yet recently, S. Hawking has written an article entitled “Gödel and the End of Physics.” His observations raise the possibility that we should question our foundations. Core to this is reductionism itself. In turn reductionism finds its roots in Aristotle’s model of scientific explanation as deductive inference. All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates is mortal. With Newton’s laws in differential form, reductionism snaps into place, for given initial and boundary conditions, integration of those equations is exactly deduction. Aristotle’s ‘efficient cause’ becomes mathematized as deduction.
—Stuart Kauffman
#reductionism
#reductionism
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