Hi thirtyseven (why do I hear a hot brit’s accent when I jot that down?? maybe that’s 47 I keep thinking of ...) - Checked out your Levels of Scale article, and wanted to reply post. Overall, I think it’s a great idea. I agree with its major tenets of whole/part organization, and I also agree with some of the reply comments that some levels of scale are arbitrary. However, I would disagree with some of the comments that seemingly implied that all of them are reducible to more basic levels. I think what some folks assumed is that in some way that physical matter, being the least common denominator in all of these things, makes these things ultimately reducible to properties of matter - which I don’t think we would want to do, even if it were possible.
Along the lines of “building a house with quantum mechanics,” the principles of architecture - i.e., form, function, and aesthetics - are issues you would want to consider when building your home. Schrodinger’s Cat, although very much alive (or is he dead?) when it comes to explaining the state of the materials the builder will use, is ultimately useless in helping us decide these questions. Similarly, medicine is practiced at the systemic or the biochemical levels that use organic chemistry as the principle building blocks. How the kidney ultimately is composed is a physical question and perhaps biochemical. But why our patient’s kidney isn’t functioning properly and it’s impact on her overall immune system is a medical one - ultimately about health optimization - and isn’t reducible to physics or really even biochemistry. Similarly, when undergoing a psychoanalysis for determining why you’d ever care to even think about these things, the individual and his personal history: temperament, relationship with parents, and style of reacting to stress are some of the issues that the analyst will be watching for. These are much higher level questions than the ones that can be addressed with the properties of matter.
So, in sum, while I love the concept and agree with most of the comments, I’d just add the caveat that while first principles are useful in describing how the components of a system came to be, ultimately it’s second principles that will describe the dynamics of that system---the synergies of which are usually not describable in terms of first principles. I do think Ken Wilber does a fair job in his discussions on this in A Brief History of Everything and Sex, Ecology, and Spirituality. Hope that’s helpful. Would love to hear how this project is progressing. Thanks, Keith
