--- Ian Murray <seamus2001 at attbi.com> wrote: >
>
> It's not quite that precarious. One of the things
> that I neglected to
> mention about Russell, Hegel etc. was that with the
> paradoxes of set
> theory and attempts to give them a dynamics in the
> quest for
> resolution/managability, the issue of viciuos
> circles with regards to
> the issue of foundationalism in epitemology and
> theories of science
> was transformed by Russell's student G. Spencer
> Brown. This ran
> somewhat parallel with the development of
> cybernetics and then in the
> '70's Francisco Varela, having fled Chile, started
> using GSB's models
> to map the dynamics of the nervous and immune
> systems. His work really
> made trouble for the input/output style of AI
> modeling and was picked
> up by Fernando Flores and Terry Winograd one of whom
> -can't remember-
> was a Heidegger fan. Anyway, the field of
> biomathematics has exploded
> and it's impossible to keep up--go figure. However,
> Varela's work is
> rather influential in France where he wound up doing
> Aids-immune
> system research. The guy was a genius and
> appreciated dialectics and
> really helped move some debates in interesting and
> profound directions
> for a biological and *ecologically* motivated
> epistemology which would
> be of enormous benefit if more people wrestled with
> the issues as he
> framed them. His take on the responsibility of
> scientists and
> technology designers is etremely challenging.
> Recursion leads to
> virtuous circles...robust maps and maps of maps of
> metabolisms and
> other manifestations of cellular and organismic and
> ecological
> complexity........
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