Tim Boykett on Sun, 10 May 1998 23:55:43 +0200 (MET DST) |
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<nettime> CTL98 - Theory, Framework, Pseudoscientists |
CTL98 Theory and Practice Many of you will have received the call for proposals posted on this and other lists late in 1997 undet the rubric "Closing the Loop 98". In this notice we called for pseudo- and popular- scientists, artists, engineers and other interested parties to take part in a series of experiments in the Time's Up Laboratories in the Linz Harbour through 1998. As a result of the response, and based upon our own developing work on various aspects of the CTL methodology and approach, we would like to start a discussion on a more theoretical level with pseudoscientists and other interested entities. Are you a pseudoscientist? "We hereby reclaim the notion of pseudoscience from the dangerous misanthropes, misguided fools and assorted miscreants that have been labeled with it. We claim pseudoscience as a source of life and flavour, a way of approaching work in the world that loses the life-threatening deadness of creation science or elixir-toting quacks, even that professional cynicism of that bugbear of rationality writ large, the institutional scientist. We are pseudoscientists, and we are here to make waves. None of this accretion of results in a Baconian evolution with outbreaks of paradigm shifting as per the Kuhn model. No, pseudoscience is for those who never lost the glint in the eye from those kiddie scientist stories, who really believed they could change the world from the back garage, and who aren't yet sure that they can't." (excert from "The Theory of Hypercompetition", in preparation) As a part of the CTL 98 series, we would like to invite various interested parties to a meeting of minds in the Labs of Time's Up, late in June 1998. Prior to this, we would like to frame the discussion with some to-and-fro, some scene-setting chats. This could appear within <nettime>, or it might be more appropriate to set up shop independently. Whatever. Following this note I have posted two texts outlining some of the ideas that have been seen loitering around CTL98. -------- ---------------------- \ / TIME=B4S UP \ / Industriezeile 33 B -------------------------------------------- \/ A-4020 Linz Tim Boykett /\ ph:+43/732-787804 tim@bruckner.stoch.uni-linz.ac.at /xx\ fax: +43/732-795742 -------------------------------------------- /xxxx\ http://www.timesup.org -------- ---------------------- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Experimental Framework Abstract The following text outlines a possible experimental structure for the Closing the Loop series. Drawing upon the ideas of Maturana and Varela's autopoietic units, elementary systems theory and the ideas of autocatalysis in general, the framework presented here may contain the right ideas to frame various series of experiments. In connecting these ideas, we come to a framework that guides exploration, leading us to some of the more interesting questions and hopefully allowing us to determine which parts of the answers are in fact interesting. The following text surfs over various ideas from systems theory, whether of the biological, electromechanical or social, and collects the ideas of a calculus of variations. We start with the biomechanical unit, which we take to be our elementary unit of interest. Looking at the way in which this unit relates and refers to other units, biomechanical and other, we develop an idea of a calculus of variations on the flows into and out of this unit. =46rom here we begin to frame some questions relating to the analysis of these flows and their interrelations. In the unadulterated state, the biomechanical unit is an object experiencing perceptual influences that act upon certain interfaces, causing variations in the system. This system reacts at many levels, as many as there are levels to the biomechanical system. In particular we are interested in the autosomatic aspect, the automatisms, the responses of the biomechanical unit outside of some kind of conscious "control". Closing the loop of autosomatic physiological data to perceptual permutations using various models will allow the analysis of various biomechanical constraints and capabilities. The Biomechanical Unit Biomechanical systems must have a border, a limit, a skin that defines their boundaries with the outside world. Our biomechanical unit is a system with an internal effect occurring influenced (though not necessarily caused) by the exterior world, permutations effected by the world; this will be called the input. Certain properties of the unit will be visible, measurable, observable, these will be regarded as the system's outputs. Note that we do not necessarily make some kind of quantum assumption about observations necessarily effecting the system. We situate ourselves somewhat semiclassically, a pretense of objectivity. This will be of course seen to be a false assumption, but rather than fall into raptures of doubt and uncertainty, we propose to take a seperate approach that validates the subjective perception of the experimental subject as an objective value. But we shall return to this in more detail, for now let us assume a classical objective stance. Previously we have dealt with a school of biomechanical thought that relies upon a conscious effort, the higher brain functions, attempting to re-unify the so-called "higher" and "lower" brain functions, traditionally divided along the frontal lobe / cerebellum axis, or even trying to reunify the forebrain and the physical completely. This is not the way to progress for now, we need to balance our approaches. Whole body intelligence, the autosomic systems, immunity, waste disposal, healing, growth, unconcious reactions, these are the touchstones. In particular, the areas of the body that are traditionally outside the control of the concious mind, at least in the Western tradition (wherein we find ourselves). Biomechanical units abound. Perhaps the canonical example of a biomechanical unit is the human individual in its public or private sphere. But this is only one particular example. Moving sideways we can naturally look at other mammals and animals, plants and other meso-scale living entities. Falling down the ladder of scales, we can regard various subentities as biomechanical units; the microbes that surround us, either in their single states or as a mass, the digestive tract in which they collaborate, the immune system which may attempt to fight them off. Taking as a cue the idea of an assembly of microbes being a biomechanical unit, we can also look at groups of animals, humans included, with this lens, treating various collections of bodies as a single biomechanical unit. Between these scales we can begin to enclose certain pieces of hardware into biomechanical units, students with collections of books in an exam, people with artificial limbs or pacemakers, the bicyclist or hang-glider. In all these cases we have some defined body that makes up the unit. Though in all cases there is some flow across this boundary, there is also some idea of a skin, a surface at which this flow takes place, that defines the edge of the biomechanical unit as it is defined with this particular point of view. We also see that we will often subsume one unit inside another, the immune system inside the person inside the computer user inside the hacker network. A calculus of variations. "Information is a difference that makes a difference". We investigate a calculus of differences, of variations, a systematisation of the process of altering perceptual constraints, correlations of input variations to output oscillations. Genes are not specific pieces of DNA, they are genotypic changes in DNA structure that cause changes in the phenotype, the other DNA being environmental as is the cellular environment or even the effect of DNA from other bodies, one might even say ("The Extended Phenotype") that the limits of the phenotype expression of genetic material is not necessarily limited by the unit body that it is carried within. The partial derivatives in the physicist's arsenal presume that the other variable are held constant and we can look at infinitessimal changes in one variable causing infinitessimal differences in the function. Game theoretic analysis is often based around the idea of locating strategies that are optimal given that the other participants hold their strategies fixed. We are surrounded by systems and sciences where objects are analysed by varying one small part of them in isolation and monitoring the changes in the overall structure, then attempting to recombine these changes in a way that allows us to predict global behaviour under many simultaneous changes. In linear systems, we can add the effects of different variations of input, the responses add in the same way the inputs add. In experimental systems we can restart the machine, push the reset button, restart the simulation. We are dealing with biomechanical systems where this will often be difficult or downright impossible. Linearity is probably our first, and definitely a main analytical problem. The response of a system to a sum of changes is not the same as the sum of the individual responses to these changes. This is the ever-present failure of reductionist approaches, reiterating it is almost banal. But the expression science has its etymological roots in the same place as schism and sword, that is, to cut, to seperate. The way that science manages to be so successful is to reduce systems to elementary pieces and to analyse them in isolation, cut off from richer interactions with a complex environment. It is emphatically not the case that this approach is futile, it is apparent that this approach has many rewards. Although many people cry for the end of reductionist approaches to understanding the world, the methods will continue to be used for the simple reason that they work. The reason that they work has a lot to do with where one defines the border of the system in question. If a system is divided in such a way that there is little interrelation between the parts, and that interrelation can be simply defined and analysed, then an analysis of the system as the sum of the two subsystems will be successful. If, however, there is no such division, then the system in question must be regarded as a whole, it is "irreducible" in a strict scientific sense. Subsystems that interact linearly can be seen as examples of decomposable systems, the behaviour of the system as a whole is simply the sum of the behaviours of the parts. Systems that have other such summing machanisms are useful, but perhaps the greatest problem is to locate the natural lines of separation. This determination of natural lines of seperation may be helped by the ideas of a theory of biomechanical units. If one can divide a system into a collection of biomechanical units in some kind of systematic way, units with well defined interrelations, perhaps even very simple interrelations, than one can begin to analyse these units individually, and perhaps even find ways to sum the behaviours of these systems in such a way as to obtain the behaviour of the whole system as a sum of its parts. The second major problem indicated above is that of the "start state". We cannot reset most biomechanical systems, once they have been started, they are off and running and there is no red button to reset, reinitialise and restart them to observe their behaviour once again in the same of a different context. There is no simple solution to this, no clever rewording of the problem where we attempt a workaround by redefining our terms, or even by developing new terms. It would seem that one of the ubiquitous features of biomechanical systems is the existence of long term correlations, memory effects, stored information, a history of sorts that comes with every nontrivial system. It may be the case that such problems can be overcome with careful work, but somehow we doubt it; perhaps even the attempt to find ways of returning to zero is morally suspect when dealing with human or other living subjects. The definition of black boxes of various kinds, whether they be models of memory or computationally intractable systems, oracles and such, may be a road out of this mess. Attempts to take the unanalysable aspects of a system and to reframe them as a generic but unknown dynamic system may pan out. A general systems theory begins to deal with this by attempting to define the complexity of a system independently of the internal structure of the system; ideas of dimensionality, free variables, universality, degrees of freedom occur repeatedly in economic, sociological, mathematical, physical, psychological and computation models of complexity. Permutations Regarding a biomechanical system as a unit is of great help in analysing its structure. The definition of borders of the unit can be at times difficult, but in view of this difficulty there is also the benefit of probable correctness. Many different definitions of the border of a unit, or rather, there are many different overlapping biomechanical units in our world, many contained within one another. In this knowledge, it is often good, and will be of value to our researches, to define biomechanical units that include several other biomechanical sections, or even some non-biomechanical parts. In particular, taking a biomechanical observer and the observed object, we can regard this collection as a biomechanical unit. We can then modify the connection between the observed and the observer, using various mappings or permutations. The inputs to this biomechanical system are not light levels or fluctuations of pressure, but rather the parameters of modifications to these quantities. This new, larger system is once again a biomechanical system in the same way that the previous system was. Now we can apply a science of variations, we are acting in a system with an intrinsic structure, we do not take as our parameters the entire information flow, but rather the permutations to this flow. We do not attempt to refer to an external observed object as a seperate and thus objectively defined object, we are more interested in the perception of this object by the subsumed biomechanical entity. The input to this unit then becomes the modifications to the perceptual flow between the object and the observer, this can be more carefully defined and investigated than attempting to deal with modifications to an arbitrary input. Closing the Loop It is to be expected that the observables of the system, the output, relate something of the internal structure of the system. Even mathematically in systems theory it is provable that certain properties of the internal sytructure of a dynamical system can be determined using only the time series of the output, for instance the dimension of the internal state. These observables can also be used to measure certain meta-phenomena. The action of forming a loop, of using the variations in this output to vary the input parameters in a causal and preprogrammed way, is the overarching framework of the program. The resonances and oscillations of this loop, of the parameters and variations thereof that can be discerned upon it, are the area of focus. The multitude of methodologies and metaphors that one can employ here are a bonus, the testing of falsifiable pseudoscientific theories is one of many aims. It is important that we scavenge as many possible theories of control or feedback as we possibly can from the various fields in which these theories are developed. Given various theories of control, feedback in linear and nonlinear systems, interactions of agent complexes as models of the mind, market forces and psychological modelling in the stock market, toy universes plundered from technical institutes, we begin to develop ways of interacting with biomechanical units, to develop experiments that test theories in all possible situations, or only in one, hopefully interesting situation. Conclusion The above discussion of loop closing and scientific modelling leads us to a conclusion where we expect that experiments formulated in such a context, feeding output data via appropriate modification methods back to vary the input, may lead to some interesting phenomena in the biomechanical pseudosciences. Abstraction and modelling play an important function here, moving into new realms of free association, but we also note that the experiment must remain in the forefront if we are not to fall into traps of impotence that are often associated with ivory tower or corporate career scientism or garage crackpot paranoia. Version 2 tb april 98 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Pseudoscientists What is this "pseudoscience" business? It's got something to do with the undeterred feeling that science, writ large, small or in italics, is something that is good and interesting, or at least value-free and interesting. That there are too many redefinitions of science that don't quite meet my specs for what it is that makes my ears prick up when I hear the word. That abstraction in all its glory is a good thing, that there are connections, that things can be valuably seen in solitary situations, also in connection, that there are ways of talking about all these things that are not completely meaningless. Perhaps it's the romance, perhaps I want justification for having bad hair. These notes are an attempt for me to piece together what it is that makes me wear the badge "pseudo scientist" without shame, why it is that a scientist is a good person, why this thing is interesting. Some distinctions. Some definitions belong to the beginning of every good pseudo-scientific text. We need to know what is being said, not falling into the obfuscation or intellectual brow-beating-techniques of art critics, politicios and popular scientists. For us, popular science denotes all those science-type things that are based on some kind of popularity, whether it's occult National Enquirer stuff or peer-reviewed journals. Science itself is about separation and cutting, using the etymology of the word, it's about abstraction and understanding, as compared to development, which is about product, technology, use. Of course development of tools is necessary for science, one needs scalpels to cut, but science is not about knives. Scientists are by their nature mad, they are unusual, they are other, whether solitary crazies in the wilderness or groups in ivory towers. A scientists is someone, or even something, that does science. I speak from the position of a confessed pseudo scientist, I am not in a twelve-point program. The expression "pseudo" science is meant, above all, to push buttons and ensure that we do not get lumped with all them other sorts of scientists. Since most things are useless by their nature, so will our science be "useless", angels on pins, but infinitely important to us, in the same way that any obsession becomes all-consuming. Our researches are not meant to be barren, although there are not, a priori, tangible results in the sense of new machines or protocols or systems. We produce understanding which by its nature must be transmitted to be regarded as real. We are not Gnostics, looking for intimate knowledge of the universe for our own sake, we are explorers bringing back maps to new treasures. We seek to explain, in much the same way that many seek to represent. Thus there must be texts, diagrams, discussions. This is a parallel universe to that of the working day of the pseudo scientist, it is not the creation of these texts that are important, it is the development of understanding and abstraction behind them. The job of the pseudoscientist might be said to be the opposite of the (classical) artist. The artist creates a specific version of a general idea, a work that is an embodiment of some thoughts, feelings, intuitions that have apparently happened. The pseudo scientist does the opposite, the development of abstractions, reasoning and intuiting about those abstractions, developing methods to convey those abstractions in ways that do not become concrete, that survive bad photocopying, that can be explained in the dust with a stick as well as with an interactive high-tech computer thing. In these developments of abstractions, the pseudoscientist will run across similarities that span widths unexpectedly, there will be connections where truths in one area can be transported across to truths in another area via the bridge of abstraction. Understanding in one area can be spread, shared, developed through appropriate imagery, similarity, difference. The depth of applicability is always in question. Thus the pseudoscientist returns to perhaps the most romantic of all things scientific, the laboratory, where experiments must be carried out. Technology must be developed, devices sonstructed, situations composed that let the scientists see what is going on, methods to look inside systems, to analyse, record, translate and transpose. These experiments must be reproducible, but the eqipment does not need to be reliable beyond some measure of accuracy. This is not technological development of idiot-proof consumer electronics, it's about searching for understanding. Though it probably looks pretty cool as it produces its results. --- # distributed via nettime-l : no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a closed moderated mailinglist for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@desk.nl and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # URL: http://www.desk.nl/~nettime/ contact: nettime-owner@desk.nl