HomePage

Our goal for the Natural Relationship Wiki is to build a basic synthesis of relational complexity on the foundations developed by Robert Rosen. Rosen himself did not attempt a comprehensive synthesis of relational complexity as a general theory of nature (or world view); his interest was in its derivation and application to living systems, to help him answer his central question: "What is Life?"

In the pursuit of relational theory, however, Rosen discovered that the concepts needed to understand life extended beyond the current scientific view of reality; which was and still is constructed from concepts of physical state (measurables). In other words, it was necessary to "retreat to an earlier epistemological stage" and thus to broaden one's concept of reality in order to find the appropriate means for describing life. That means is, accordingly, more general than any theory of state interactions and changes alone. It necessarily involves a formal treatment of non-material reality that exists in relationship with measurable, or realized, systems. In other words, to have a broad enough view of the natural world to allow consideration of life and its properties, we must think in terms of the relationship between explicit and implicit realities.

Introducing the idea of an implicit reality to science is somewhat revolutionary, although there are many precedents in quantum theory and cosmology, two other domains besides life where the "limits of science" become obvious. When we look at the world as a system of determined objects, each measurable and defined (in terms of states), we look only at the "realized" aspect of nature. State-based theories, which comprise mechanistic science, model 'potentials' of the system — that is, what it might do or become — as a temporal prediction of state change. It therefore utilizes the tools of dynamic (time dependent) equations. It presumes that what might be, must be a strict derivative of what already is. We have become so used to this assumption of the continuity of systems through time that we hardly question its general truth.

System behaviors that deviate from the mechanical approach (also called the machine metaphor) can be said to possess potentials that are not strictly derivatives from the prior configuration of existing states. However, scientists have been reluctant to step too far outside of the traditional physical (state-based) orientation. Their attempts to model system potentials have thus been restricted to special cases of state change, such as non-linear dynamics and associated state-based equations.

Rosen's approach went much farther toward a general approach. Rather than limiting non-continuous change to a special type of temporal dynamics (thus preserving the idea that the future possibilities MUST be derived from present systems), he introduced "The Modeling Relation" as a natural object.

Modeling relations describe what we do in science. We model natural systems, encoding the model from observations and decoding it to predictions (or our own actions). If, however, we consider the case of studying a scientist as a natural system, it is clear that modeling relations must also be considered within natural systems. We must obviously grant something analogous to modeling to other sentient creatures, however there is actually nothing "mental" or "psychological" in the definition of a modeling relation, except perhaps what may produce them. Where they exist, modeling relations can be understood as relationships between material existence and potential existence. The model describes a potential, whereas the natural system being studied already exists in some form.

Potentials need not be mysterious, however. They do not have to enter the natural world from a non-material realm, if our concept of what material is and does is broad enough to include them. For example, the potential for water to emerge from the chemistry of the early Earth existed in the early physical and chemical conditions. We can write a modeling relation between 'water' as a natural system and 'model for water' as the implicit possibility of water being produced, in the entire Earth system. This example seems to conform to the physical assumptions mentioned before, namely that the 'potential' comes out of prior conditions. But by formulating the problem this way, we also allow for cases where it may not derive strictly from prior states in a mechanistic way. Such 'broader' cases appear whenever a causal system becomes isolated from the general system.

That condition is most obvious in living systems, but it also occurs in quantum systems and for the universe as a whole. It occurs in certain theoretical problems, such as "the 3-body problem" in orbital mechanics. First, to see it clearly, let's look at a living system, i.e., a system that is either an organism or that comprises organisms. Examples would include potentials for new species, new behavior, new thought, etc. We would not require, theoretically, that the new condition must conform to a set of dynamic equations showing how the new condition was derived from past ones. It may be possible to find such equations, but they may be essentially meaningless; mere approximations of what actually happened. In other words, while we may wish to believe that the evolution of Mankind proceeded along mathematically understandable lines of gradual change and adaptive selection, it may also be true that it did not - that something fundamentally new was 'invented' by the biology. The concept of emergence also tries to tie potentials to the past, however it is somewhat different in that emergence can apply to the effect of the whole organization of a system or nature generally, on the realization of something unique and specific, rather than requiring that it be shown to result from a series of previous unique and specific entities. This difference may seem minor, but it allows a rational analysis of novelty without presuming before the investigation, that what seems novel is fundamentally not (i.e., the assumption that it derives from state space at a previous time). Our strongest justification for relaxing temporal state-transition uniqueness, at least in the physical sciences, has been the quantum discoveries, where it is clear that the prediction of future states cannot be based on any precise transition from past ones. As a result, quantum description tends to be statistical and probabilistic. That too, attempts to preserve the idea that previous states may yet be found responsible for the probabilities.

If we consider a living system, the inability to describe apparent novelty in terms of preceding 'states' of the organism or ecosystem is obvious, if not generally accepted to be fundamental. In other words, we may continue to believe a unique sequence of transitions is responsible for biological novelty, and certainly such sequences are intimately involved, but we recognized the enormity of the problem of proving that assumption. A theory and associated analytical approach that does not make such an assumption thus becomes highly justified and warranted, on the grounds that our theory should not constrain description beyond constraints we actually see in nature. It makes no sense, for example, to describe the trajectory of a rock that has been thrown, as a straight line. That over-constrains its theoretical behavior. And yet something analogous has always been done in science for the opposite reason - so as to not overcomplicate a theory beyond what is needed. Describing the surface of the Earth in terms of plane geometry is an example of both problems. Before people were aware of the curvature, restricting the mathematics to a plane made some sense. But as soon as the errors became important, it was obvious that a more general theory was needed.

Rosen's modeling relation, taken along with all of its implications, can provide a new general theory of nature that does not exclude novel behaviors associated with complex and living systems. It is general in that it also can provide a theoretical foundation for the origins, or ontology, of mechanical systems. They exist without contradiction as a special case of relational complexity.

It is thus possible to propose A GENERAL, SCIENTIFIC, RELATIONAL THEORY OF NATURE BASED ON MODELING RELATIONS AS THE FUNDAMENTAL REALITY.

THE PRIMARY GOAL

This is a pre-conference collaboration site for the upcoming annual meeting of the International Society for Systems Science (ISSS), to be held in Madison Wisconsin in July, 2008.

The main goal is to describe the relational theory in clear and teachable terms, basing this description on the fundamental reality of modeling relations. We hope to build a new curriculum for understanding and teaching this approach as a natural philosophy and as a robust scientific method for analysis of natural systems. This synthesis will be developed by a core group of researchers who have been studying these concepts. By developing this on a wiki, however, we will expose it to critical peer review and comment.

Participants are welcome in any of three activities. These are:

1. Development of the synthesis

2. Development of educational materials and programs

3. Research applications in any field (physics, biology, ecology, social science, psychology, theology, ethics, futurism, mysticism, spirituality, philosophy, psychotherapy and healing, medicine, religion, etc.)


SEE BASIC CONCEPTS