Complex Systems and Elements

Reply to ToothyMaw
Imagine having a car and wanting to build a plane out of the car parts. If you take the car apart how will that help you in your project? why?

You might find googling around about "dynamical system" and "dynamical system subsystem" useful! "splitting up" a complex system into component parts has some interesting philosophy associated with it, as the subsystems' interactions tend to be part of what makes the complex system "complex", see the discussion around non-aggregativity in that link.

I went on an extended and incomplete acid trip[hide=*] (fuelled by some study of Deleuze and Guattari's "A Thousand Plateaus") [/hide] rant about some (maybe?) related topics here. There was some other metaphysical discussion related to how parameters individuate themselves out of pre-established systems in this thread.

Reply to magritte
Not seeing it.

Reply to fdrake
Thanks dude.

Reply to magritte Its more like scavenging a plane for parts and then modifying those parts to make a heater and then assessing if the modified parts are still part of the original parts. If those parts could be unmodified could they be used for building a plane again? If so, then the makeup of the heater is compatible with that of the plane. Kind of a crap analogy though imo.

Quoting ToothyMaw

Kind of a crap analogy though imo.

That's partially the point, a simple crap analogy is the place to start. A car and a plane are extremely similar from a systems perspective, cut off the wings and there's a car. When taken apart, the parts will reveal themselves to be very complex. Materials, designed shapes, machining, tolerances, the way the parts must fit to create functioning subsystems are the work of 500 years of culturally acquired cumulative knowledge and technology. Even if it is an exact copy of the car, it will never work as well as an original because you are lacking a lot of the undocumented educated intuition of the original engineers..

Natural systems are vastly more complex than this because we are not familiar with 99% with what went into their construction.
Quoting fdrake

It is funny how we live on, telling our stories on our stage like green idiots, but what else could we do? We are not the greater themes that guide our movements, we are those movements. Our actions are embedded in a process of development that guides us in all ways by telling us the ways to be guided, but has nothing to do with what am I doing now, I am a self guiding process towards ends I am sensitive to (thank you, dear myth and dear light) but cannot comprehend.

Quoting magritte

That's partially the point, a simple crap analogy is the place to start. A car and a plane are extremely similar from a systems perspective, cut off the wings and there's a car. When taken apart, the parts will reveal themselves to be very complex. Materials, designed shapes, machining, tolerances, the way the parts must fit to create functioning subsystems are the work of 500 years of culturally acquired cumulative knowledge and technology. Even if it is an exact copy of the car, it will never work as well as an original because you are lacking a lot of the undocumented educated intuition of the original engineers..

If anything I would say that the plane, as a system, is far more complex than any of the individual parts - unlike a function mapping the mathematical trajectory it follows (if that's more what you are talking about). It depends upon so many different factors to fly, including all the parts working in unison. What you seem to be saying is that disentangling the system and its subsystems is what is truly difficult. Or am I wrong? The plane is literally composed of thousands of interacting parts and who knows how many subsystems.