Abstract
I criticize Herbert Simon's argument for the claim that complex natural systems must constitute decomposable, mereological or functional hierarchies. The argument depends on certain assumptions about the requirements for the successful evolution of complex systems, most importantly, the existence of stable, intermediate stages in evolution. Simon offers an abstract model of any process that succeeds in meeting these requirements. This model necessarily involves construction through a decomposable hierarchy, and thus suggests that any complex, natural, i.e., evolved, system is constituted by a decomposable hierarchy. I argue that Stuart Kauffman's recent models of genetic regulatory networks succeed in specifying processes that could meet Simon's requirements for evolvability without requiring construction through a decomposable hierarchy. Since Kauffman's models are at least as plausible as Simon's model, Simon's argument that complex natural systems must constitute decomposable, mereological or functional hierarchies does not succeed.
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References
Bechtel, William and Richardson, Robert C.: 1993, Discovering Complexity, Princeton University Press, Princeton.
Dawkins, Richard: 1996, Climbing Mount Improbable, Viking, London.
Kauffman, Stuart: 1993, The Origins of Order, Oxford University Press, New York.
Simon, Herbert A.: 1969, The Sciences of the Artificial, The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
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Zawidzki, T.W. Competing Models of Stability in Complex, Evolving Systems: Kauffman vs. Simon. Biology & Philosophy 13, 541–554 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1006567306546
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1006567306546