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p.10 the history of science is a highly repetitive story of simple theories giving way to more complicated and sophisticated ones... It would be naive - and quite wrong - to think that the course of scientific progress provides a world-picture of increasing simplicity... The process at issue may be simple but is recursive, and involved working-out always engenders complexity.
p.11 the so-called Principle of Simplicity is really a principle of complexity-management: 'Feel free to introduce complexity in your efforts to describe and explain nature's ways, But only when and where it is really needed. In so far as possible, keep it simple! Only introduce as much complexity as you really need for your scientific purposes of description, explanation, prediction, and control.'
[JLJ - On the one hand, there is the case of trying to figure something out, on the other hand there is the case of trying to figure out something that is trying to trick you. In the second case, the 'trickster' is aware and actively using the fact that you are making simplifications as part of your efforts to 'go on.' Simplicity actually works against you as you fall into the trap, for things are not exactly as they appear to be. A little complexity is useful as a risk mitigation and protection against the unknown and unknowable.]
p.13 With any source of information or method of information acquisition, two salient questions arise:
- Utility: How useful is it...?
- Cost: How costly is its employment...?
p.13 Economy of effort is a cardinal principle of rationality that helps to explain many aspects of the way in which we transact our cognitive business.
p.14 It is particularly noteworthy from such an economic point of view that there will be some conditions and circumstances in which the cost of question resolution... is simply too high relative to its value. There are... circumstances in which the acquisition costs of information exceed the benefits or returns on its possession.
p.15 the acquisition and management of information is a purposive human activity - like many or most of our endeavours. And as such it involves the ongoing expenditure of resources for the realization of the objectives... The balance of costs and benefits becomes critical here
p.15 It is important, however, to distinguish economy of means from economy of product - procedural from material economy. Simple tools or methods can, suitably used, create complicated results. A simple cognitive method, such as trial and error, can ultimately yield complex answers to difficult questions.
[JLJ - Such is the explanation of how - in complex games of strategy such as chess - simple game pieces of limited capacity can combine their effects to create a complex and lasting pressure.]
p.15 in the final analysis, it is not that nature avoids complexity, but that we do so - in so far as we find it possible.
[JLJ - In the final final analysis, we do not need to avoid complexity where we have appropriate tools for reducing it to simpler terms that let us effectively or competitively decide how to 'go on.' Instead of avoiding a coil of rope that might instead be a poisonous snake, we can whack it with a stick from a distance - and then watch what happens. Diagnostic tests of all kinds can let us substitute an intelligent supposition for a complex unknown.]
p.19 we are well advised to accept unobservable entities not because their existence is somehow revealed in observation... but because experience shows that a methodology of inquiry predicated on such a simplifying assumption in the end affords our most efficient and effective [JLJ - use of] resources.
[JLJ - Perhaps an editing error. With Rescher you never know.]
p.19 induction is a self-improving process... By a cyclic feedback process of variation and trial, we learn to do induction more effectively.
p.20 To be sure, things need not be systematic to admit of systematic study and discussion
p.23 Its complexity is one of the most striking and characteristic features of reality in general - and indeed of anything in particular that is real.
[JLJ - ...which is why reduction of complex reality to the equivalent of blocks that we can play with should be one of the objectives of rationality.]
p.30 Our description of anything in nature is never exhaustive: they always admit of further elaborative detail... To be sure, we may always lose interest after a while. Our interest is always governed by some aspect of our own concerns and principles. And in due course further information becomes irrelevant to these.
p.33 we can only ever experience those features of a real thing that it actually manifests. But the preceding considerations show that real things always have more experientially manifestable properties than they can ever actually manifest in experience. The experienced portion of a thing is similar to the part of the iceberg that shows above water. All real things are necessarily thought of as having hidden depths that extend beyond the limits, not only of experience, but also of experientiability.
p.48 Complexity is a definitive and unavoidable feature of the real and as such has far-reaching - and profoundly humbling - implications for the nature of our knowledge.
p.49 There are two ways of looking at progress: as a movement away from the start, or as a movement towards the goal.
[JLJ - I have previously determined that an advantage in a complex game of strategy can be determined as much as by diagnostic tests of 1. the size of a mistake that would be required to return the game to even footing, or 2. the closeness of the 'typical' position of this sort to a victory for one or the other player once emergence is considered. Initially we might consider the first, but once the advantage becomes large we must begin to consider the second.]
p.138 The 'average' problems of survival and thriving that are posed by our lifestyle must be of the right level of difficulty for us - that is, they must be relatively easy. And this calls for excess capacity... To cope during times of peak demand, it [a brain] will need to have a great deal of excess capacity to spare for other issues at slack times. And so, any brain powerful enough to accomplish these occasionally necessary tasks must have the excess capacity to pursue at most normal times various challenging projects that have nothing whatsoever to do with survival.
p.139 Intelligence is the evolutionary specialty of Homo Sapiens.
p.146 it is not that our science as we now have it gets everything right. Rather, it is that such defects as there are simply do not matter for the issues currently in hand.
p.147 We arrive at the picture of nature as an error-tolerant system.
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