Reality does not exist. just perception. Symbols are nice floating
things. Each of is create our "realities" from our viewpoint and
experience. Each different. The wonder, perhaps even the basis of
religion, is that we come together despite that.

the complex.

since we have doing this for centuries, why? How many of us even live a
century?

Very few. And those that do become enfeebled by old age.

We are as temporary as spring flowers. Some of us write books

pressed petals:)




Jon Bennett wrote:
> Lewis,
> The practical problems that inspired your comments flow from the same
> stream that flowed through the minds of these past thinkers. They
> ,too, were dealing with practical problems, on the surface level and
> at the depths.
> I guess all problems are practical when you get down to it. It's just
> that when you start going deep into the sources and solutions of
> practical problems, you find they are rooted in something, well,
> complex, like the human mind, personality, and consciousness.
> As you well know economics is a great example of where the personal
> and the impersonal, the practical and the theoretical meet. What could
> be of more practical, real concern, as well as personal, than the
> meaning of words, and the ability of our minds and language to
> comprehend and express reality? Economics is a good place to see how
> the use of mathematical, logical, linguistic, social, political,
> artistic, and religious symbols interface with "practical" reality.
> And what could be of more practical value to a symbol creating and
> using creature as man, than the study of symbols and their relation to
> reality?
> Jon
>
> On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 9:02 PM, <MMBTUPR@...
> <mailto:MMBTUPR@...>> wrote:
>
>     from Lewis L. Smith
>
>     Thanks to Jon in his post of 14 Nov for relating my conjectures to
>     those of greater minds than mine. However, my actual motivation in
>     this case was practical rather inspired by great thinkers of the
>     past.
>
>     Mainstream [Neoclassical] economics is obviously intellectually
>     bankrupt as a result of the ongoing financial crisis. Among other
>     things, its rationality assumptions, its information availability
>     assumptions and its assumptions about the nature of individual
>     decision making and about the appropriate probability distribution
>     with which one should describe risk, for example, have all proved
>     to be false to a very large degree. Moreover, this has been seen
>     by some people for several decades !
>
>     So it is obvious we need a "better mousetrap" in the way of a
>     paradigm for economics. For various reasons, complexity seems to
>     fit the bill. But how can we talk about complex systems to others
>     ? What do we mean ? This problem confronts us regardless of what
>     Hegel said, for example.
>
>     I do plead guilty to using undefined terms, a sin committed by
>     those who use "emerging properties" in their definition of complex
>     systems. But it almost impossible to avoid. One just has to try to
>     minimize it.
>
>     Cordially. ###
>
>
>

Be patient Frank.

Deborah



Frank Smits (Symphoenix Ltd) wrote:
>
>
> All,
> I remain mainly a lurker these days, but they issue you address here,
> Lewis, is at the heart of what I am involved in these days.
> I have a background in complexity, chaos and creativity applied to
> social environments.
> I have been using this way of looking at my client organisations but
> found that unless I manage to frame the insights one can gain from
> complexity in the context of the experiences of people without this
> background it remains academic and has no resonance with them.
>
> Happy to share some thoughts on how some concepts can start to
> resonate in a social context.
>
> Regards,
> Frank Smits - Symphoenix Ltd
>
> m: +44 (0)7715 423 150
>
> Sent using BlackBerry®
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From: * mmbtupr@...
> *Date: *Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:02:48 EST
> *To: *<jonbenn@...>; <ISCE_complex-M@yahoogroups.com>
> *Subject: *Re: [ISCE_complex-M] Symbol and Reality
>
> from Lewis L. Smith
>
> Thanks to Jon in his post of 14 Nov for relating my conjectures to
> those of greater minds than mine. However, my actual motivation in
> this case was practical rather inspired by great thinkers of the past.
>
> Mainstream [Neoclassical] economics is obviously intellectually
> bankrupt as a result of the ongoing financial crisis. Among other
> things, its rationality assumptions, its information availability
> assumptions and its assumptions about the nature of individual
> decision making and about the appropriate probability distribution
> with which one should describe risk, for example, have all proved to
> be false to a very large degree. Moreover, this has been seen by some
> people for several decades !
>
> So it is obvious we need a "better mousetrap" in the way of a paradigm
> for economics. For various reasons, complexity seems to fit the bill.
> But how can we talk about complex systems to others ? What do we mean
> ? This problem confronts us regardless of what Hegel said, for example.
>
> I do plead guilty to using undefined terms, a sin committed by those
> who use "emerging properties" in their definition of complex systems.
> But it almost impossible to avoid. One just has to try to minimize it.
>
> Cordially. ###
>
>

Regards,
Frank Smits - Symphoenix Ltd

m: +44 (0)7715 423 150

Sent using BlackBerry®

Well, I learned a new fact Jon. Had no idea I was quoting from the book
of Ecclesiastes. Just thought it an old adage that made perfect sense.

The triangle is is about leisure in a sense. Turns to evolution of the
mind.

We divided labor. Instead of digging into the dirt and starving, we
somehow learned to come together as a group and provide for one another
so that we weren't all grubbing around and starving. Thus we got past
the base level of the triangle.

Once the mind is freed from hunger and fear, it can grow

But the cycles continue. Thus "nothing new under the sun"

In that for every "thinker" that runs the world, how many are grubbing
out an existence? That is when greed came in.

Deb



Jon Bennett wrote:
> Deb,
> I'm not sure I understand the Maslow connection to this post on symbol
> and realty.
> But I see you've quoted the Bible again, "Nothing new under the sun",
> from Solomon in the book of Ecclesiastes.
> And to combine these two ideas, also in Ecclesiastes, Solomon says of
> leisure, "Vanity of vanity, all is vanity"
> Jon
>
> On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 12:40 AM, shumate <dshumate@...
> <mailto:dshumate@...>> wrote:
>
>     It all comes down to Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Leisure is at the
>     top. All basic needs met.
>
>     Nothing new under the sun.
>
>     Deb
>
>
>     >
>     >
>
>
>     ------------------------------------
>
>     Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>     (Yahoo! ID required)
>
>     ISCE_complex-M-fullfeatured@yahoogroups.com
>     <mailto:ISCE_complex-M-fullfeatured@yahoogroups.com>
>
>
>
>

It all comes down to Maslow's  hierarchy of needs.  Leisure is at the
top.  All basic needs met.

Nothing new under the sun.

Deb


>
>

Things to Ponder:
          This really is interesting.......
     Just keep scrolling down.
     This is very interesting!
     After reading it, you'll go 'duh,
     I didn't know that.'


     'Stewardesses'
     []
     is the longest word typed with only the left hand



     And 'lollipop'  []
     is the longest word typed with your right hand.
     (Bet you tried this out mentally, didn't you?)



     No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver,
     or purple.
     []
     []

     'Dreamt' is the only English word that ends in the letters 'mt'.
     (Are you doubting this?)
     []

     Our eyes  []are always the same size from birth,
     but our nose []and ears
     []
     never stop growing.


     The sentence:
     'The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog'
     uses every letter of the alphabet.
     (Now, you KNOW you're going to try this out for accuracy, right?
     []

     The words 'racecar,'  []
     'kayak' []
     and 'level'  []
     are the same whether they are read
     left to right or right to left (palindromes).
     (Yep, I knew you were going to 'do' this one.)

     There are only four words in the English language which end in 'dous':
     tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.
     (You're not doubting this, are you?)

     There are two words in the English language that have all five
     vowels in order: 'abstemious' and 'facetious.' (Yes, admit it, you
     are going to say, a e i o u)
     TYPEWRITER   []  is the longest word
     that can be made using the letters only on one row of the keyboard.
     (All you typists are going to test this out)

     A cat has 32 muscles in each ear.
     []

     A goldfish  []  has a memory span of three seconds.
     (Some days that's about what my memory span is.)

     A 'jiffy' is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.
     []
     A shark  []is the only fish that can blink with both eyes.




     A snail  []  can sleep for three years.
     (I know some people that could do this too.!)



     Almonds are a member of the peach  []family.


     An ostrich's eye []is bigger than its brain.
     (I know some people like that also)



     Babies []are born without kneecaps.
     They don't appear until the child reaches 2 to 6 years of age.

     February 1865 is the only month in recorded history not to have a
     full moon.

     []



     In the last 4,000 years, no new animals have been domesticated.
     []

     If the population of China walked past you,  8 abreast,
     the line would never end because of the rate of reproduction.


     []

     Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors


     []

     Peanuts  []are one of the ingredients of dynamite!

     []



     Rubber bands []last longer  when refrigerated.



     The average person's left hand does 56%  of the typing. []



     The cruise liner, QE 2
     []
     moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns.



     The microwave  []was invented  after a researcher walked by a radar
     tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.
     (Good thing he did that.)



     The winter of 1932 was so cold that   Niagara Falls
     []
     froze completely solid.



     There are more chickens []than people in the world.



     Winston Churchill
     []
     was born in a ladies' room during a dance.



     Women blink []nearly twice as much as men.



     Now you know more than you did before!!

Susanne K. Langer*

* **1895-1985*

*Preface to the First Edition *

*The "new key" in Philosophy is not one which I have struck.  Other people have struck it, quite clearly and repeatedly.  This book purports merely to
demonstrate the unrecognized fact that it is a new key, and to show how the main themes of our thought tend to be transposed into it.  As every shift of
tonality gives a new sense to previous passages, so the reorientation of philosophy which is taking place in our age, bestows new aspects on the ideas
and arguments of the past.

Our thinking stems from that past, but does not
continue it in the ways that were foreseen.  Its cleavages cut across the old lines, and suddenly bring out new motifs that were not felt to be implicit in the premises of the schools at all; for it changes the questions of philosophy.*

*The universality of the great key-change in our thinking is shown by the fact that its tonic chord could ring true for a mind essentially preoccupied
with logic, scientific language, and empirical fact, al-though that chord was actually first sounded by thinkers of very different school.  Logic and
science had indeed prepared the harmony for it, unwittingly; for the study of mathematical "transformations" and "projections," the construction of alternative descriptive systems, etc., had raised the issue of symbolic modes and of the variable relationship of form and content.

But the people who recognized the importance of expressive forms for all human under-standing were those who saw that not only science, but myth, analogy, metaphorical thinking, and art are intellectual activities determined by symbolic modes"; and those people were for the most part of the idealist school.

The relation of art to epistemology was first revealed to them through reflection on the phenomenal character of experience, in the course of the great transcendentalist "adventure of ideas" launched by Immanuel Kant.  And, even now, practically all serious, ,and penetrating philosophy of
art is related somehow to the idealistic tradition.  Most studies of artistic significance, of art as a symbolic form and a vehicle of conception, have been made in the spirit of post-Kantian metaphysics.*

*Yet I do not believe an idealistic interpretation of Reality is necessary to the recognition of art as a symbolic form.  Professor Urban speaks of
"the assumption that the more richly and energetically the human spirit builds its languages and symbolisms, the nearer it comes . . . to its
ultimate being and reality," as "the idealistic minimum necessary for any adequate theory of symbolism."  If there be such a "Reality" as the idealists assume, then access to it, as to any other intellectual goal, must be through some adequate symbolism; but I cannot see that any access to the source or "principle" of man's being is presupposed in the logical and psychological study of symbolism itself.

 We need not assume the presence of a transcendental "human spirit," if we recognize, for instance, the function of symbolic transformation as a natural activity, a high form of nervous response, characteristic of man among the animals.  The study of symbol and meaning is a starting-point of philosophy, not a derivative from Cartesian, Humean, or Kantian premises; and the recognition of its fecundity and depth may be reached from various positions, though it is a historical fact that the idealists reached it first, and have given us the most illuminating literature on non-discursive symbolisms—myth, ritual, and art.

Their studies, however, are so intimately linked with their metaphysical speculations that the new key they have struck in philosophy impresses one,
at first, as a mere modulation within their old strain.  Its real vitality is most evident when one realizes that even studies like the present essay, springing from logical rather than from ethical or metaphysical interests, may be actuated by the same generative idea, the essentially transformational nature of human understanding.*

----- Original Message -----

From: mmbtupr@...

To: TomL1777@... ; ISCE_complex-M@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Thursday, November 12, 2009 2:31 PM

Subject: Re: [ISCE_complex-M] Re: Complexity vs Complicatedness

 

               from   Lewis L. Smith

I finally got the diagram which combines eight different definitions of complexity.

It show flows of concepts, info and impacts, but I don't see its relation to a definition of complexity. Probably I am having a slow day.

Also I object to the phrase "complexity theory". My strong impression is that most complexity researchers have given up on the one-time hope of achieving something on the order of Newton's Mechanics.

What we have is a discipline which studies related phenomena in fields such as biology, economics, lakes, neuro systems, physiology, political science, river systems, sociology et cetera.

Cordially.  ###

Thus, Newton's fundamental assumption of "true knowledge" as a "knowledge of God" and therefore of the "unity of truth"-must be understood as a products of His will and therefore manifestations of His activity in the world the -the truth that humans must work to uncover, then, is precisely the evidence of God's activity-such truth, for Newton was one.

  by enjoining humans to uncover the evidence of God's activity in the world, Newton re figures "unity" as the unity of various parts making up the larger whole of God's two Books, of the universe as a whole.

This narrative refiguring of the "Word" and the "Book of Nature" leads Newton to envision a difficult, incomplete, and perhaps unending task of "man's" Fall.

Dobbs--

Human beings had once known how to worship God properly, and had understood the true religion. But humanity had slipped into idolatry...and the knowledge of true religion had been corrupted or lost. However, true religion might be restored.

One comes finally to that powerful fountain of motivation that kept Newton at his furnace year after year...-the knowledge of God's activity in the world.

...His actions are His glory...His actions, the "issues" of His will, are indeed "the only glory by which God manifests Himself to His creatures, and which His creatures are able to behold in Him, the reason why His creatures worship Him, and the life and soul of all worship we can give Him...

"Children of Eternity"

  The following comments come from a book entitled "The Presence of the Past. They are from a chapter 2 "Changeless Laws, Permanent Energy.

Sheldrake is pointing out a serious problem with these ideas in an evolutionary paradigm, or as we may say a complexity paradigm.

Sheldrake:

"In the seventeenth century, the metaphor was quite explicit: the laws of nature were framed by God, the Lord of all Creation. His laws were immutable; his writ ran everywhere and always."

"Although many people no longer

believe in such a God, his universal

laws have survived him to this day.

But when we pause to consider the

nature of these laws, they rapidly

become mysterious. They govern matter

and motion, but they are not

themselves material nor do they move.

They cannot be seen or weighed or

touched; they lie beyond the realm of

sense experience.  They are

potentially present everywhere and

always. They have no physical source

of origin. Indeed, even in the

absence of God, they still share many

of his traditional attributes. They

are omnipresent, immutable,

universal, and self-subsistent.

Nothing can be hidden from them, nor

lie beyond their power."

"Eternal laws made sense when they were ideas within the mind of God, as they were for the founding fathers of modern science. They still seemed to make sense when they governed an eternal universe from which God's mind had been dissolved. But do they any longer make sense in the context of the big bang and an evolving universe?"

"Gravitational force depended on the being of God; it was an expression of his will. Likewise, the absolute mathematical space and time in which all matter existed was none other than an aspect of God. "containing in himself all things as their principle and place."

From Newton:

"He is eternal and infinite, omnipotent and omniscient; that is, his duration reaches from eternity to eternity' his presence from infinity to infinity: he governs all things, and knows all things that are or can be done....He endures forever and is everywhere present; and by existing always and everywhere, he constitutes duration and space."

....."He is all similar, all eye, all ear, all brain, all arm , all power to perceive, to understand, and to act; but in a manner not at all human,, in a manner not at all corporeal, in a manner utterly unknown to us."

Sheldrake:

"This aspect of Newton's thought was soon forgotten. The hidden forces permeating the space of the universe were soon attributed to matter itself; they arose from material reality rather than from God. And when God was finally dissolved away from Newton's vision, what was left was a word machine in absolute mathematical space and time, containing inanimate forces and matter, and entirely governed by mathematical laws."

"Kepler went further that discovering mathematical relationships: he believed that the mathematical harmony discovered in the observed facts were the cause of these facts, the reason why they are as they are. God created the world in accordance with the principle of perfect numbers; hence the mathematical harmonies in the mind of the  creator provide the cause, " why number, the size and the motives of the orbits are as they are and not otherwise."

"God created the world in accordance with numerical harmonies and that is why he made the human mind in such a way that it could truly know only by means of quantity."

Seldrake:

"Galileo too, believed the mathematical order is owing to God, who thinks into the world its rigorous mathematical necessity, and who also permits by the mathematical method an absolute certainty of scientific knowledge."

"Everything in nature worked entirely mechanically; in other words everything was inanimate-except human minds. Thus Descartes eliminated from the world all such disturbances as life, will, and intentions. Nothing had its own principle of life or its own source of movement: these came from God. And the mathematical laws of nature were God-given metaphysical truths: "The metaphysical truths styled eternal have been established by God, and like the rest of his creation, depend entirely on him."

"For Descartes, however, with the world and all living beings within it inanimate, God became the sole living principle of everything, including rational human minds. As he said himself,' The majority of men do not think of God as an infinite and incomprehensible being, and as the sole author from whom all thins flow; they go no further that the letters of his name...The vulgar imagine him as a finite thing.'

The biting irony is that this piece of liberal nonsense (ie giving rights to
anyone who believes in anything) will actually undermine democracy.

But then again I tend to view liberals esp Hamsptead or Long Island type
liberals as quasi fascists. They certainly show a remarkable intolerance to
anyone that has beliefs differing from them. At least that's my experience.

Anyway this is not really talking about complexity so I'll shut up.

Frank

--- In ISCE_complex-M@yahoogroups.com, Jon Bennett <jonbenn@...> wrote:
>
> Since we are having such a time definint complexity, and not to mention its
> relation to religion, I thought this might be of interest to some.
>
> http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/swfuller/entry/the_dawn_of/
>