If a scientific law is a compact description in advance of the regularities of a process, as the physicist Murray Gell-Mann has argued, then the evolution of the biosphere by Darwinian preadaptations is partially lawless and akin to what philosopher of mind Donald Davidson called “causally anomalous.” That is, the evolution of the swim bladder certainly has a causal account, but we cannot give it before hand, only in retrospect.
Perhaps only a post-Cartesian view of science beyond pure reductionism can adequately describe the biosphere and phenomena derived from it, such as civilization and the global economy. They may all be at least partially lawless, self-consistent and co-constructing, and yet are capable of erecting tremendous complexity even in the absence of any central organizing authorities.
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Add CommentI would like to inform the Authors that the "post-cartesian view of science beyond pure reductionism" has now been in effect for about a century.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNon-determinism, chaos, complexity and emergent properties have been identified in "hard" science as early as at the end of the XIX century by (among others) Poincaré, Weierstrass and Boltzmann, then studied by, among others, Hadamard, Cantor, Schroedinger, Prigogine, Lorenz, Mandelbrot (in addition to Maturana, Varela, and many other "soft" science champions).
This is the classical dualism between hard science on the one side and soft science on the other. Soft science is often more complex (see, e.g., biological systems or economics) but unfortunately its exponents are rarely equipped with the hard background (mathematics, advanced systems theory) that would be required to tackle such complexity.
Both parties should exert more humility and approach the others' field with rigor -as opposed to just passion, as it is often the case.
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Edited by paolomagrassi at 05/10/2008 1:42 AM
See http://science-community.sciam.com/blog/Paolomagrassis-Blog/580004022
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