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Open systems???
From: |
JC Wandemberg |
Subject: |
Open systems??? |
Date: |
Thu, 23 Oct 1997 16:44:51 -0600 (MDT) |
Hello there:
I have been following the discussion on Alife with some interest since my
research in based on ecological learning, open system theory and the
model of directive correlations by Sommerhoff. However, I feel somewhat
unconfortable with the definitions of "open systems" I have come across.
As someone (whose name escapes me right now) said it, "a system is open if
its environment is NOT empty" i.e., there is NO such thing as a closed
system to begin with unless we want to view one as such for illustration
purposes. In any case, the way I see it (based mostly on Pepper's
contextualism and the Emerys work on design principles) the only
"boundary" a system has is determined by the *relationship* of its
component elements with the environment of their system.
Cheers,
JC
On Wed, 22 Oct 1997, glen e. p. ropella wrote:
> Barry McMullin writes:
> > The systems I am talking about might be open and/or dissipative -
> > though that's a little prejudicial because it implies that the universe
> > in one in which something like normal thermodynamics holds, which
> > isn't essential.
> >
> > Regardless of that, I will claim that they are not "just"
> > dissipative, or open...
>
> OK. I typically think of "open" systems as those systems having
> the property you're referring to, namely, they have at least a
> semi-permeable membrane. So, the systems you're talking about
> will certainly be open.
>
> But, again, just because a system has this property (of dynamic
> formation and change of constituents) doesn't mean that it's
> not iterative. In fact, most Alife systems implemented on
> computers will be iterated through time. The Game of Life is
> a perfect example of an iterated system. (Of course, iteration
> through time is almost always a proxy for the successive application
> of some other operator, like CA rules. So, it's not *really*
> the iteration through time that is important; rather, it's the
> application of the rules on the output of the last iteration.)
>
> > That's precisely why I equated your "bag of stuff" to a *universe*,
> > to distinguish from the *embedded* systems I wanted to point it - the
> > latter *not* being bags of stuff. And this is not saying anything
> > about the nature of this stuff - material, particulate, whatever.
>
> OK. Now, I think I understand. By using the term Universe, you
> intend to imply systems with a certain "boundedness," where that
> boundary is not permeable... or, at least, the organization of
> the goo inside is not dependent on the goo outside the boundary.
>
> I usually refer to systems like that as "closed."
>
> > Rather, I'm taking the informal notion of universe as "bag of stuff"
> > as implying *some* decomposition of the universe into "component"
> > "pieces", such that that decomposition holds for all time. Under the
> > dynamics of the universe these pieces may "aggregate" and "separate"
> > or otherwise change their individual realationships, but the pieces
> > all still exist, and the "universe" is always identical with the collection
> > of all the pieces (however arranged). I admit that the easiest way of
> > visualising this is by thinking of the decomposition as, in some sense,
> > "spatial", so that the pieces are "particles", but I don't insist
> > on that. All I insist on is that the decomposition is invariant.
> > If you want a formal notion for it, I'm envisaging the "universe"
> > as a dynamical system - something with varying state within an
> > invariant state space.
> >
> > Now, having clarified (for myself, if nobody else (;-) what the
> > heck I was reading into "bag of stuff", it may be that this is not
> > at all what *you* meant to imply by the phrase. In which case,
> > I'll withdraw with as much dignity as I can muster, since it would
> > probably indicate just that I should have read all the previous
> > messages before jumping in with the old size 13's...
>
> Well, I really didn't intend to isolate the stuff inside the
> bag from the stuff outside. And I purposefully refrained from
> saying "bag of things" to avoid the inference you made, namely
> that the *goo* inside the bag had a fixed organization. So, I
> would rephrase it now from "bag of stuff" to "bag of goo".
> [grin -- just shoot me]
>
> > My paradigmatic example for this case is that of a glider in
> > Conway's game of life. In the game of life system, a "sub" system
> > would mean (to me) some specific subset of the cells making up
> > the whole universe. A glider does *not* map onto any such subset.
> > Therefore it is embedded in, is "of", the whole system, but is not
> > a "sub-system". Now again, I don't want to argue about what words to
> > use: I'm just pointing out that there are at least two different kinds
> > of things that *can* be embedded in that kind of system, and it's
> > worth distinguishing between them (I think?).
>
> pragma GROUNDED (Status => Off);
> I'm glad you brought this up. It took me awhile to place these
> pieces properly in my head. I agree that a glider in GoL is
> *not* a sub-system, but not because it's not "sub". I don't think
> the glider is a "system" at all. It's certainly an object (and is
> subject to decay).
> pragma GROUNDED (Status => On);
>
> But, as you say, there's no real sense in arguing what to call
> that type of thing. Maybe it would be useful to apply Rosen's
> ideas to the GoL. Anybody interested?
>
> I'm going to try. The first question is, what about the GoL is
> underdetermined by formal systems? My first guess would be that
> the actual CA (the state and the rules by which it iterates) *is*
> completely well-defined by a formal system. I really have no idea
> if that statement would be accepted by CA theory; but, it is defensible
> in that the definition of a CA *is* the state and the rules by which
> the state changes. No problem there.
>
> The problems arise when we try to make statements about the *apparent*
> structure we see as we watch the CA iterate. For instance, we want to
> classify the types of "objects" we see form and decay and we want to
> be able to talk about the the shapes and pictures we see. That is
> where the formal system that specifies the behaviour of the CA is not
> adequate. For instance, before we began experimentally taking data on
> the GoL, we couldn't predict that gliders of type p would form and
> persist for x amount of time. Now, we can, of course, because people
> have gathered data on the system.
>
> Since we can't make those kinds of statements, it seems ridiculous
> to ask questions like, "Why did glider g1 emerge at time t1 and
> move to the bottom right of the screen?" There is no causal relationship
> between the emergence or behavior of glider g1. This is because there
> is no such thing as glider g1 in the system.
>
> Now, don't get me wrong, gliders *do* exist. They just don't exist
> *inside* the GoL. They are a part of the larger system that consists
> of the CA, the visualization mechanism, the computer, and the person
> who identifies ... or "objectifies" the glider. So, in order to ask
> causality questions about the behavior of the glider, we have to,
> basically, provide more complete entailment of the CA by "wrapping"
> it in a larger system. When we do that, we can say things about the
> meta-system. For example, "The glider is there because the CA has
> these rules, this initial state, this mechanism for affecting the
> computer screen, and because I tried several different combinations
> until I got something that I could identify."
>
> This "wrapping" is exactly an iteration (or an "upward recursion") of
> causal entailment. It is exactly what Rosen is referring to when he
> talks of *approaching* finality. Of course, to achieve what he calls
> "maximal organization," we would have to try a little harder to build
> a system that has more self-entailment in it.
>
> Here's an attempt at a simplified "block diagram" for this system:
>
> +------------------------+
> v |
> +--------+ +-----+
> |Computer|----+ +----------|Human|<-------+ ?
> +--------+ | | +-----+
> | | | |
> | +-------|-|------------+
> | | | |
> v v v v
> +------+ +----+
> |VisMec| | CA |
> +------+ +----+
> | |
> | +---+
> | |
> v v
> +--------+
> | Glider |
> +--------+
>
> (I was tempted to put in an arrow from the human directly to the
> glider... but, it's not necessary. I don't want to argue about
> whether or not God is in the Quad.)
>
> With this, it makes sense to ask questions like "Why did the glider
> emerge?" The *cause* of the glider is not just the VM and the CA.
> It's also because the human was looking for something interesting...
> This is it's final cause. (Of course, the cause of the human isn't in
> this diagram.)
>
> Now, obviously, this analysis of this system is of very little use to
> anyone. But, one can imagine finding somewhat defendable analyses of
> more relevant systems. The important thing is the idea.
>
> glen
> --
> {glen e. p. ropella <address@hidden> | Hail Eris! }
> {http://www.trail.com/~gepr/home.html| =><= }
>
>
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>
==================================
Swarm-Modelling is for discussion of Simulation and Modelling techniques
esp. using Swarm. For list administration needs (esp. [un]subscribing),
please send a message to <address@hidden> with "help" in the
body of the message.
==================================
- Re: Category Theory and Rosen - some clarifications (i hope 8-)), (continued)
- Re: Category Theory and Rosen - some clarifications (i hope 8-)), Barry McMullin, 1997/10/22
- Re: Category Theory and Rosen - some clarifications (i hope 8-)), glen e. p. ropella, 1997/10/22
- Re: Category Theory and Rosen - some clarifications (i hope 8-)), Barry McMullin, 1997/10/22
- Re: Category Theory and Rosen - some clarifications (i hope 8-)), glen e. p. ropella, 1997/10/22
- Re: Category Theory and Rosen - some clarifications (i hope 8-)), Barry McMullin, 1997/10/23
- Re: Category Theory and Rosen - some clarifications (i hope 8-)), glen e. p. ropella, 1997/10/23
- Re: Category Theory and Rosen - some clarifications (i hope 8-)), Barry McMullin, 1997/10/24
- Re: Category Theory and Rosen - some clarifications (i hope 8-)), James Marshall, 1997/10/24
- Re: Category Theory and Rosen - some clarifications (i hope 8-)), Barry McMullin, 1997/10/24
- Re: Category Theory and Rosen - some clarifications (i hope 8-)), glen e. p. ropella, 1997/10/27
- Open systems???,
JC Wandemberg <=