Pamela, I got all ready to be huffy about the article, but then found it really interesting. At risk of going all professorial on you, I want to examine your expression, "no more than a". The most important phenomena that we experience are all emergents. If you hit me with a rock, the hardness and edginess of the rock that collapses my skull, are all emergents.
So, then what the dickens is meant by "no more than"? I think it means SOMETHING and would like to explore it further with you (and others on the list.) "Reduction" means to some to account for a phenomenon n terms of events or objects that are smaller than the phenomenon itself. Reduction is always to break a process or an object into its parts. To others, "reduction" means to explain a phenomenon by reference to a more familiar or well understood phenomenon. This latter understanding of reduction opens the possibility for a reduction to refer to a process that is larger or more inclusive than the process it reduces, what I would call an up-reduction, to distinguish it from the "breaking-into-parts" sort of reduction. It sounds to me that the account of gravity being offered in this article is a case of up reduction in that sense. I hope others will read the article and comment, because i wasnt sure I understood it. All the best, Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology, Clark University (nthomp...@clarku.edu) http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ http://www.cusf.org [City University of Santa Fe] > [Original Message] > From: Pamela McCorduck <pam...@well.com> > To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam@redfish.com> > Date: 7/13/2010 12:39:41 PM > Subject: [FRIAM] Gravity as an emergent phenomenon > > Great food for thought. Gravity might be no more than an emergent phenomenon: > > > http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/13/science/13gravity.html?_r=1&partner=rss&em c=rss > > > > > > "God keep me from ever completing anything. This whole book is but a draft--nay, but the draft of a draft. Oh, Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience!" > > Melville, "Moby Dick" > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
