Reduction, Kauffman, and (presumably this is where its going) God

Examining his biographical information it is clear that Dr. Kauffman is an extraordinarily accomplished and widely respected scientist. This suggests his insights are worth considering and, further, that I am well out of my element in critiquing them. And yet, “fools rush in …” There are a number of oddly questionable elements evident in the presentation of his argument in this (apparently) first in a series of essays. Here is a sample:

He at least insinuates that it is appropriate to lump together with no distinction, under the rubric of the aspects of a reductionist approach that he is criticizing, the efforts to identify “natural laws” associated with the Galilean inclined plane experiment, the “biosphere, human economy, human culture and our historicity”. For anyone with an even passing understanding of the utterly divergent methods and analyses applied to understanding the principles in these different areas, such a broad brush representation seems at least disingenuous, applied merely to bolster his position. Indeed, there is a very strong case to be made, of which Dr. Kauffman must surely be aware, that the extraordinary, unparalleled, stunning success of the reductionist approach in some of these areas – e.g., the physical sciences – is what has prompted its incorrect, incomplete and/or inappropriate application in others – e.g., historicity. The failure of the approach in one of these areas does not and should not be used wholesale to indict its application to another as he seems to be doing.

He resorts to a shameless straw man argument and even then his conclusion from it is patently and demonstrably wrong: the physicist who has no mechanism in the tools of the trade to “pick out pumping blood as of special interest” from the properties of the heart. The root of this determination by Dr. Kauffman seems to me to arise from an assumption that our straw physicist is only capable of a completely literal interpretation of an abbreviated three step version of the “scientific method” taught in 7th grade science class. But, of course, there is a vast literature that unequivocally demonstrates that the true practice of (even reductionist) science goes well beyond this limited and ineffective approach. Finally, I hope I really do not need to list the nearly endless litany of advances and insights the reductionist sciences have achieved that lie outside Dr. Kauffman’s tightly circumscribed interpretation of its practice.

Also, I have become extraordinarily skeptical of philosophical arguments that venture into, or worse, rely on appeal to quantum theory. There are, of course, many intriguing and puzzling consequences of quantum theory but I’ve just seen too many appeals to it that are gross misrepresentations and nothing more than quantum woo. In fact, I feel disposed to venture a new principle: Futzinfarb’s corollary to Godwin’s law is that “any general philosophical argument that degenerates into an appeal to quantum theory must be ignored”. I’ll have to give Dr. Kauffman a narrow pass on Futzinfarb’s corollary, as his assertions about the implications of quantum mechanics for evolution are probably fundamentally correct: that its principles (laws) preclude a reproducible time evolution of the universe. The fatally flawed conclusion drawn from this, though, is that since the principles of quantum theory cannot be applied to reproducibly predict the time evolution of various systems, that there is “no law.” This is little more than an a priori assumption, really a prejudice, about what kinds principles are admissible as natural laws. Dr. Kauffman appears simply unwilling to entertain even the possibility that we may inhabit a universe governed by specific reductive principles (laws) that have intrinsically irreproducible consequences. It’s just the icing on the cake that this position contrasts with his critique of an a priori reductionist approach to understanding.

There are other things that deeply bother me about this piece on which I will not elaborate here. Though he may have profound insights about the nature of the universe, this gravely flawed introduction is troubling has left me deeply skeptical.