Weiss, part four

Hierarchy: a biological necessity



To stress the need for viewing living organisms as hierarchically

ordered systems, ponder the following facts. The average cell in the human body

consists of about eighty per cent of water and for the rest contains about 10^5

macromolecules…

Weiss, part three



Reductionism and holism



Weiss next tries to define basic criteria that mark a complex of parts for designation as a system. First, however, he talks about the controversy in biology between "reductionism" and "holism". The former finds its advocates in the field of "molecular biology". The latter term can be used to imply a deliberate “self-limitation of…

Weiss, part two

From analysis to synthesis



By looking from single objects to their interrelations with others,

one reverses his direction from analysis to synthesis. By doing this,

one discovers simple rules which describe the interrelations between…

A summary of Weiss's main points, as far as relevant to the purpose of this blog, follows.

Emphasis is largely mine. This is a long article, from which I retain the headings of the…

We continue with Piaget and Inhelder:



“There is a second difference between physical experience and logico-mathematical experience or deduction. Whilst the latter, proceeding by means of reflective abstractions, leads to progressive purification (whose final stages are today those of the formalization peculiar to "pure" mathematics), physical experience is always a sort of "mixture". There is in fact no "pure" experience in…

In this series of blog posts, I will summarize and quote parts of some books that deal with the problems of reductionism.

The first book that draw my attention, was the famous book "Beyond reductionism", New perspectives in the life sciences, which is a report from the Alpbach Symposium held in 1968. Participants were, among others, Arthur Koestler [holons!], J.R. Smythies, Ludwig von Bertalanffy [systems theory], Paul Weiss, Jean Piaget[developmental psychology], Paul Maclean…

For all the mavericks, misfits, seers.. enjoy the following video:

http://wayseermanifesto.com/

At my scribd page you will now find the famous book of Frederic Myers on his research on the afterlife.

See http://www.scribd.com/doc/52660404/Frederic-Myers-Human-Survival-After-Death

While at my page, be so kind to Like it!

Thanks,

Martin