Re: november notions/questions

Jay Lemke (jllbc who-is-at cunyvm.cuny.edu)
Tue, 09 Nov 1999 02:13:45 -0500

Diane is reading me a bit obliquely, but still provocatively.

I'm not mainly interested in 'measuring' anything, just in understanding
how 'moments' on one timescale come to add up, for us and for others, to
what we like to call 'lives' on a vastly different timescale. I have no
doubt that there are many different ways in which moments contribute to
longer-term matters like identities, enduring desires, etc. Different kinds
of communities, and for people occupying differently constructed relative
positions within a community, the logics of cumulation or emergence may be
quite different. I was also not specifically focussing on Others as such.
In general I take both a selfish and maybe a more altruistic interest in
Others: for what they tell me about me (in my way of seeing them as
different and so defining the place from which I do that kind of seeing;
and in what I can manage to hear of what they tell me about how I look/act
to them) and then also for what I might put on the table that could be of
use to them. Perhaps, insofar as 'it takes a village' some Others might
sometime ask for my help in collaboration; though for most tasks I assume
they/we can do quite well for ourselves. An interesting question if we/they
need each other really, or if it's only true that the larger scale systems
of which we are both a part need both of us, and maybe need both of us in
some specific sorts of relations to one another.

Well, (2), science desires predictability, but you ain't gonna get it on
long timescales, as many of us have already noted. In fact the
'internalist' version of science (which is not science as we know it) seems
to be no good for control, but also quite content without predictability.
Complex systems are predictable only for processes which operate on a time
scale where they are tightly constrained by a level above (strong
attractors of dynamics). On the timescales where the N+1 constraints
change, level N processes are much less predictable. More radically, one
can always get emergent phenomena on intermediate scales that are totally
unpredictable and which, once they occur, ramify both up and down. (See my
Gent paper on my website, referenced earlier, for some discussion of this.)
And finally, there can be 'fluctuations' at N-1 which exceed the filtering
tolerances and lead to sudden changes at level N as well (even if N+1 stays
pretty constant). So what you can 'predict' in a sense is what you can
expect to find to be more or less (usually less) predictable.

It is wonderful to watch what happens when people whose identities are very
control-oriented find that performing their 'scientific' identities lead
them to discover the grounds of essential unpredictability in phenomena ...
and they then try to find a new twist on the identity that relishes this
unpredictability! Today in many areas of natural science, and incipiently
in social science, unpredictability (emergence/chaos) is suddenly becoming
a fundamental explanatory principle for profound questions such as the
origin of life or of consciousness. It is becoming scientific now to love
unpredictability! Amazing what we will do to keep our ego's inflated!

JAY.

At 11:32 AM 11/8/99 -0700, you wrote:
>jay -
>
>i may be missing the obvious here -
>
>but (1) why measure the 'moments' of Other's lives?
>
>(2) if the desires structured in science are predictive,
>what might be predicted through these 'measurings'?
>
>diane
>
>
>
>
>
> ' 'We have destroyed something by our presence,' said Bernard, 'a
>world perhaps.'
> (Virginia Woolf, "The Waves")
>
>+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
>diane celia hodges
>university of british columbia, vancouver / university of colorado, denver
>
>Diane_Hodges who-is-at ceo.cudenver.edu

---------------------------
JAY L. LEMKE
PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION
CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK
JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
<http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/education/jlemke/index.htm>
---------------------------