[From Rick Marken (951024.1540)]
Bill Powers (951024.1010 MDT) --
francisco arocha( 95/10/24 08.51 EST) --
Joel Judd (951024.0750 CST) --
It's very nice to have some additional people (and I'm also thinking of
Shannon Williams as well as the standard bunch) arguing on my side. All
well said.
I second that emotion.
This whole way of framing the observations shows only that you [Bruce
Abbott] are up to your eyeballs in a particular theoretical frame of
reference which is so ingrained that you don't even recognize theoretical
statements when you are making them. Everything you are saying sounds
completely reasonable to you, I'm sure, and I'm also sure that you can't
understand why most of the PCTers on this net find your descriptions
doggedly biased in favor of a non-PCT world view. Speak up, PCTers, am I
right about that?
I'd have to give that a big "oui" (or, as we say in Lake Wobegon, "you
betcha").
Best
Rick
[Martin Taylor 951025 11:00]
Bill Powers (951024.1010 MDT)
+Rick Marken (951024.1540)
This whole way of framing the observations shows only that you [Bruce
Abbott] are up to your eyeballs in a particular theoretical frame of
reference which is so ingrained that you don't even recognize theoretical
statements when you are making them....
+I'd have to give that a big "oui" (or, as we say in Lake Wobegon, "you
+betcha").
I'd third that, with the addition that it applies to all of us, almost
all the time. Perhaps all the time.
The unrecognized "theoretical statements" get recognized only when pointed
out by someone using a different "ingrained" theoretical frame of reference,
to whom the statements seem weird. The others that are presumably there
just don't get recognized at all.
Martin
[From Bill Powers (931214.1445 MST)]
Tom Bourbon, Martin Taylor (931214.xx) --
My own problem with confusion and language has to do with words
that say things that aren't so. "Attractor" is such a word.
Attractors do not attract anything. They don't even exist. They
are metaphors. "Attraction" is a word from a much older kind of
vocabulary, one that also used terms like "affinity" and
"propensity" and "abhorrence" and "impetus" in speaking of
physical phenomena. A marble orbiting around in a bowl (like the
ball on a roulette table) is not "attracted" to the center of the
bowl. It is continually accelerated downward, while its
tangential motion, through interaction with the surface of the
bowl, accelerates it upward and radially. There is no attractor
in the bottom of the bowl. The only attractor for which the
metaphor is appropriate is the mass of the earth.
I think that most phenomena that are dealt with in this
metaphorical way can be explained much more precisely in terms
much closer to basic physical principles.
Consider "chaotic" oscillators. Instead of just accepting the
surface phenomenon as if it is something new depending on new
principles, why not analyze the situation and see if some
physical explanation in simpler terms isn't already available? In
a nonlinear oscillator, there are many potential modes of
oscillation at multiple frequencies, not necessarily harmonics of
the fundamental. Below a certain amplitude, these modes become
locked together, entrained, and we see a single coherent
waveform. The frequencies of the different modes, because of the
nonlinearity, are not inherently harmonically related, but there
is sufficient energy transfer between modes to lock them into
harmonic relationships.
Under certain changes of conditions, there is insufficient
entrainment and the modes become independent. As they are
inherently incommensurate, we now see a nonrepeating waveform,
one that is not purely random yet which is unpredictable in
detail without knowledge of the underlying modes of oscillation.
Changing the conditions even more might restore the
commensurateness of the modes, or most of them, and still further
changes can cause them to become unlocked again. The waveforms
may be complex, but they could be understood from basic
principles. If one tried.
···
-------------------------------------------------------------
Best,
Bill P.
My own problem with confusion and language has to do with words
that say things that aren't so. "Attractor" is such a word.
Attractors do not attract anything. They don't even exist. They
are metaphors.
Almost. "Attractor" is a term like "eigen-value": it is a "made-up",
yes, metaphorical, term to describe a property of a MATHEMATICAL
system. In other words, it is a feature of the MODEL, and NOT a
feature of the OBJECT of the model. If you set up a certain system of
equations, and runit forward in time, it will show certain phenomena,
and if the orbits stay in a certain region etc., then it is said to
have an "attractor".
Now, if you are of "weak mind", and commit the ancient REFERENTIAL
FALLACY of mistaking the map for the territory, the word for the
object, then if you are faced with some system, and give it some
mathematical description, and that mathematical DESCRIPTION has an
attractor, then you might be inclined to think that the object ITSELF
"has" an attractor, and that there is some "attraction" going on in
the object system.
Perhaps this is what these "dynamicsts" are doing.
O----------------------------------------------------------------------------->
Cliff Joslyn, Cybernetician at Large, 327 Spring St #2 Portland ME 04102 USA
Systems Science, SUNY Binghamton NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
cjoslyn@bingsuns.cc.binghamton.edu joslyn@kong.gsfc.nasa.gov
V All the world is biscuit shaped. . .