I can't resist.
this is from M. Mitchell Waldrop (1992). Complexity: The Emergng Science
atthe Edge of Order and Chaos. Simon & Schuster, p. 330
The complex approach....is total Taoist. In Taoism there is no inherent
order. ...The universe in Taoism is perceived as vast, amorphous, and
ever-changing. You can never nail it down. the elements always stay the
same, yet they're always rearranging themselves. So it's like a
kaleidoscope: the world is a matter of patterns that change, that partly
repeat, but never quite repeat, that are always new and different.
Molly
Jay Lemke wrote:
>
> Two quick notes in this thread --
>
> I am about to start talking with some people who do complex social
> systems analysis using some of the economic models ala Santa Fe, esp.
> game theory approaches. Will be interesting to see how the traditions
> of these disciplines play out in relation to my own views. I think
> that a lot of what complex systems theory has been used to do is more
> to critique classical economic theory rather than fully present an
> alternative (e.g. Arrow), but of course a lot of people are working on
> this. Sometimes you can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs
> first! :)
>
> In conversational and related sorts of improvisation, I think that
> there is again a bit too much emphasis on the originality of what is
> emergent. That is what tends to privilege the bottom-up aspects. The
> top-down perspective should help us to understand how it happens that
> people wind up improvising the same sorts of culturally and
> historically specific patterns over and over again!
>
> Typical outcomes do NOT always result from mechanical, algorithmic
> procedures. They can and often do also result from more
> improvisational convergences of the apparently independent choices of
> many actors (or at least two in a classic CA phone conversation). But
> this is because, so my view of multi-level relations in complex
> dynamics says, there are always already existing longer-term patterns
> in the community, which have an impact on each actor, often in ways
> that we do not pay attention to (as in the case of the social contexts
> for learning to walk) because we are so fixed on individual action as
> the motor of outcomes.
>
> Emergence normally happens subject to contraint from above (at least
> for complex, evolved, developing eco-social systems). It would not
> happen at all without such constraint. The term "constraint" should be
> taken in a purely formal sense. Functionally such constraints are
> clearly enabling of the emergence. Order does not come from nowhere
> ... it always comes from prior order (except perhaps at the beginning
> of the universe, and even then, who knows?) ... but when new levels
> are emergent BETWEEN prior levels of organization, the KIND of order
> that emerges may be sui generis ... but the origins of that new order
> can be traced to the ways in which the higher level order (N+1) sets
> the bounds on the combinatorial patterns among units at the lower
> (N-1), to 'catalyze' the new emergent order that _is_ level N.
>
> We do not have good metaphors for what I just termed "catalyze" ...
> the relationship is not quite the same as "produce" (which is too like
> cause and does not apply across levels), or "afford" (which is closer
> but seems more like the relation from below, as with 'constitute")
> ..... words are wanted!
>
> Finally, as to the issue of whether emergence is in the eye of the
> beholder, there is a certain sense in which it is. There is a question
> as to what counts as "order" ... and I have found some interesting
> patterns in what counts as emergent for us (basically an alternation
> between quantitative and qualitative modes of order from one level to
> the next) that suggests to me that we operate with two principles of
> order and that we make sense of all new order by juggling these two
> principles. (For the basics of this, see
> http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/education/jlemke/papers/gent.htm ,
> esp. the appendix.)
>
> Even in the thermdynamics of entropy, there is a certain need for the
> analyst to construct a measure which is sensitive to a kind of order,
> and otherwise one may not see it .... which is a way of saying that
> from "nature's" point of view, it is all the same, whether we see it
> as increasing order or not.
>
> Emergence is, after all, an explanatory framework, not an absolute
> reality outside of our interests and participation in/with the systems
> we explain.
>
> It is important, however, not to confuse NEWNESS or the perception
> that something new has come along with EMERGENCE of a new levels of
> organization and a corresponding new mode of order in a system. Not
> everything new represents a new level of organization. It is not
> enough that something looks new to us (and maybe does not to the
> natives of a community); it must require explanation in terms of a new
> level of organization, and in my model that means a distinct timescale
> and a specific set of relationships to phenomena at levels/timescales
> an order of magnitude or more below and above it.
>
> Conversely, as I said at the beginning of this message, not everything
> which is emergent has to be new! ... frequently it is the same old
> pattern re-emerging once again, though perhaps each time with slightly
> different details in the trajectory that gets us there.
>
> JAY.
>
> ---------------------------
> JAY L. LEMKE
> PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION
> CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK
> JLLBC@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
> <http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/education/jlemke/index.htm>
> ---------------------------
>
>
>
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