Re: November methodology

Bill Barowy (wbarowy who-is-at mail.lesley.edu)
Mon, 8 Nov 1999 11:03:12 -0500

The problem of boundaries is related to knowing what we know -- a question
asked by cybernetists of the individual organism, but still relevant to the
organism as distributed over many individuals. Certainly it is true that
an organization can know more than the individual, and seemingly in
contradiction, it can also know less than each individual. I won't belabor
the first point, because Jay has already expressed it well, but will try to
clarify the second point. Organizations of more than one too often become
"dysfunctional", and it is a deeper issue than, for example, a business
that ignores what an experienced employee has to say.

Rather, in the inseparability of knowing and doing, what an organization
does, how it functions, can undermine its own best functioning. I think
only in academia have I encountered the belief that only discursive
knowledge about social systems counts. Everyone else seems to believe the
opposite. Communication, of course, is one mode of knowing/doing that is
invaluable, but taking it in isolation from other modes to be of premier
importance diminishes the richness of human activity.

With regard to more of the doing side of knowing/doing, Kahneman and
Tversky provide a good example of the bounded collective rationality when a
community holds an election. Each individual, voting their best interests,
contribute to the election outcomes, that in their combination, due to the
simple summation of votes, together with the banding of special interests,
may be in no ones' best interests. Yrj=F6's work, from courtrooms to health
organizations, provide other examples.

I would be the last to disagree with Jay about accepting our limitations,
especially with regard to learning, with its diverse modes of
knowing/doing, and proactive change in personal and social dimensions, as
the life of Frederick Douglass is a punctuation on how one can exceed the
boundaries of time and class.

Recognizing bounds is not tantamount to accepting them. Rather, the
determination of boundaries may be a first step to exceeding them,
proleptically, through directed development. Knowing what we can do, and
possibly know, helps us to make choices, as there will always be choices,
some bringing near-term benefits, and others that only offer investments
across longer scales of time. We may choose to do things because 'they
are hard', and because we expect new doing/knowing ecologies to emerge from
our efforts. Yet some of these choices may not be "wise". In the
energetic limits to growth we may choose to do things that, in future
retrospect, were not possible or led to our own ruin.

Applied to both to individuals and their collectives, understanding
boundaries can be also be essential to autopoiesis, without which organisms
fail to function by failing to sustain themselves, as living beings, or as
social and economic collectives of living beings. Ecological examples are
the overfishing of the north sea herring, and the peruvian anchovy, for
which we, collectively through our competing with ourselves, decimated the
resources that sustain our lives. Similarly, companies overestimate their
markets and go under regularly. Staying alive, and functioning vitally
together with the remainder of society, is also inseparable from our
knowing. We must take care in being without limits.

So I end with a question that has emerged in this writing. As we believe
that individual and organization co-constitute each other, the development
of one accompanies the development of the other. In this dynamic and
unpredictable co-evolution that follows from the co-adaptation of
individual and society, including technology, defining long-term endeavors
may prove foolhardy. How can we possibly ever do anything but know and do
incrementally, within some timescale in which society is relatively
invarient?

Bill Barowy, Associate Professor
Lesley College, 31 Everett Street, Cambridge, MA 02138-2790
Phone: 617-349-8168 / Fax: 617-349-8169
http://www.lesley.edu/faculty/wbarowy/Barowy.html
_______________________
"One of life's quiet excitements is to stand somewhat apart from yourself
and watch yourself softly become the author of something beautiful."
[Norman Maclean in "A river runs through it."]