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Andrew Beckwith

Thanks for reading!

If I'm understanding your counterexamples correctly, the idea is that we've developed technologies from the study of messier "non-isolable" systems. Flight is a compelling example because fluids are notoriously challenging for mathematical description, although of course there is an incredibly succesfull domain of fluid mechanics.

I do, however, think that the way we've developed flight and related technologies is still applying isolable-thinking to non-isolable systems. (Pardon the following incomplete understanding of flight). The basic principles of flight seems to depend on neatly separating processes in an isolable way, for example by decomposing it into separable forces of lift, drag, stiffness, etc. And the technology we get out of it - airplanes - are mechanical systems that necessarily have isolable/neatly decomposable properties. Organisms can fly, and to a certain extent the basic principles apply - generate lift - but the architecture that produces flight is nothing like the neatly decomposable machinery of airplanes.

For a better argument along the same lines I'd recommend Robert Rosen's Essays on Life Itself. He discusses flight and the differences between natural/artifical wings to highlight a similar ontological split between organisms and machines.

Stefan Weckbach

Thanks for reading!

I agree, it's challenging to think of what the science of non-isolable systems looks like. Our current science always depends on defining system boundaries and neatly differentiating the different kinds of influences on the system.

I certainly can't speak to the true ontology of the universe, but I agree that it's remarkable we can use different frameworks to describe reality, and maybe more remarkable that some of them even work to predict/control things!

The successes of physics are often in the form of invariance principles, which characterize many disparate phenomena independently of context, and are derived by studying isolable systems. Such systems are largely insensitive to context, and particularly useful for the science of mechanics, which underwrites virtually all of our technological advancement. The success of mechanics often compels us to assume its genericity - that mechanics is fundamental to all natural phenomena. Consequently, science sees the natural world as essentially mechanical, including even the biosphere. As it is argued, organisms (and other natural phenomena) are not isolable mechanical systems, but are instead composed of mutually supporting dissipative processes that span system-environment boundaries. The life sciences nevertheless implicitly or explicitly treat organisms as machines, leading to problems from mathematizing complex phenomena to interrogating mental processes. Organisms are members of a class of systems ontologically distinct from machines, dissipative structures; self-organizing, far from equilibrium systems. Some such systems are intrinsically end-directed, adaptive, and flexible - properties that typify life. The science of these non-isolable systems may not be reducible to mechanics, and may be embodied in what others have called a new physics. Our current scientific and technological paradigms stem from the historical sucesses of studying isolable systems. If we pursue a science of non-isolable systems not only will we better understand biology and other natural systems by fitting them into a more proper ontological category, but we may develop new technologies which are intrinsically flexible, adaptive, and autonomous.

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