Dear Organlearners,
Bill Harris <billh@lsid.hp.com> writes:
> Yes, I've read some of Prigogine's work a few years ago and found his
> ideas illuminating. Unfortunately, I've forgotten too much of what I
> read, although I still have those articles around.
Bill, I think very much along the lines of Prigogine. But that is to be
expected. He is almost synonymous with the birth and growth of
irreversible thermodynamics since the late fourties. As a young researcher
in 1969, I was finally forced to realise that traditional physics and
chemistry were no match for the complexity of soils. Thus I began to look
for some branch of science tough enough to do the job. It was night! The
first light break through when I paged through a textbook on irreversible
thermodynamics. It was one written by Prigogine!
The Prigoginian school of thought is presently very active in trying to
uncover why emergences far from equilbrium seems to be so unpredictable.
They have assumed an innate uncertainty in the system to be the cause of
uncertain immergences. In my opinion, this is very unfortunate. I rather
believe that an insufficient certainty in the observer AS PART OF THE
SYSTEM to be the cause of uncertain immergences, some of them concerning
the observer and the others concerning the rest of the system. In this
sense I find rather comfort with Einstein who once wrote to Max Born:
You believe in the God who plays dice, and I in complete law
and order in a world which objectively exists and which I, in a
wildly speculative way, am trying to capture. I firmly believe,
but I hope someone will discover a more realistic way, or
rather a more tangible basis than it has been my lot to do.
> So, question no. 1: do you have a pointer to a tutorial, if possible
> paper-, not book-length, about your concept of the seven essentialities of
> systems?
No. And I am very reluctant to produce such a tutorial before I had the
oppotunity to describe their discovery and explain their meaning in my
book. I have two main reasons which I also tried to honour in the book.
The one reason is that each essentiality is incredibly complex.
Futhermore, the complexity of each essentiality is not fixed or static,
but it has to complexify as the complexity of the emergence increases. A
person who have specialised in, say chemistry, will view and must view
these essentialities different form a person who have specialised in say
economics.
Let me explain this reason by a metaphor. Think of each essentiality as a
subject, say mathematics. To think of mathematic as something simple is
probably the worst error which we can make. A physicist will view
mathematics differently than an economist. Another serious error we can
make is to believe that only mathematicians have the right to have a view
on mathematics.
The other reason is that these essentialities are not independant, but
that they depend on each other. Consequently they can be grouped to arrive
at less than seven essentials, or they can be split to arrive at more than
seven essentials. Hence the number of combinations we can make of them
runs into the millions. That is why it has been so difficult through the
ages to define exactly what is essential to emergences - why emergences
seemed to be so uncertain and unpredictable.
Let me explain this last paragraph also by a metaphor. Think of the
essentialities as the organs of our body: the heart, the lungs, the liver,
the stomach, the brain, etc. The heart has its own structure and function,
but to think that it can act as a system independently from the rest of
the organs, is a deadly fallacy.
> In other words, what was this entropy we were producing? How would I
> identify it?
There are two main facets to be identified. Firstly, identifiy the
"conditions" which will produce entropy (even if you do not know what
entropy is or how the produced entropy manifests itself.) The "conditions"
is the presence of force-flux pairs. When trying to perceive a force, try
to think of DIFFERENCES in QUALITIES. When trying to perceive a flux, try
to think of PROCESSES involving QUANTITIES. Both a force and its
corresponding flux have to be present.
Here is a material example for you as electrical engineer. Voltage
difference (the force) and ampere flow (the flux) form a force-flux pair.
The entropy produced is usually manifested as heat (chaos of motion). But
in a computer (through its very transitorised design) it is also
manifested as a ensemble of on-off states (order of structure), making use
of various configurations (gates).
Secondly, identify the manifestations. When entropy gets produced, it
cannot stop there. It has to be manifested. Firstly, it is automatically
manifested as chaos (variety) of becoming (function, process, motion).
When the bifucration (saturation) point is reached, it is also
contingently manifested as order (variety) of being (structure, object).
Consider again a computer chip as example. At low voltages, it will merely
draw current and produce heat without any switching of transistors.
Increasing the voltage and hence the current caused by it increases the
production of entropy and hence its first manifestation as heat. At a
certain voltage the switching begins erractically. This is an indication
that the bifurcation point is being approached. The erratic switching may
be considered as impaired emergences. At a higher voltage point the chip
begins to operate as designed. This is the bifurcation point. From then on
the entropy produced is also manifested as order of structure, namely
patterns of on-off switched states. To allow for further changes in this
order of structure, the chip has to draw on more current than at the
bifurcation point.
Bill, I have given you as an example to think about in terms of your
experiences. But what about the others who have different experiences?
> In some general sense, if it is the energy required for the present state,
> then I may begin to catch on. We were indeed supplying a lot of "energy"
> in the sense of mental and emotional effort to the task of figuring out
> what and how we were going to be. We indeed were fortunate to have only
> the most limited (but clear) set of external constraints, giving us
> relatively large amounts of freedom within which to work.
You are almost correct in your catching. But please remember that you
cannot swop energy and entropy because they are different quantities.
Thus you cannot use the word energy as you have used it above. If you
definitely want to use the word energy, then you should you have written:
" In some general sense, if it is the FORMATIVE ASPECT OF THE energy
required for the present state, .....".
Why? Entropy has to do with the form of energy - conversely, energy has to
do with the content of entropy! But please remember, this duality
relationship between energy-&-entropy as content-&-form, is not a
Prigoginian thought. You will not find this thought anywhere else than at
present with me. It is one of my insights which is either true or false. I
have checked it for many years and for me it still remains to be true. But
I might deceive myself and thus it can be false. So be careful in using
this relationship.
> > But when the surroundings produce the entropy needed, the seven
> > essentialities of the system itself need not be fully operative. In fact,
> > they are very seldom fully operative. Thus emergences will almost never
> > happen. Consequently the system will almost never self-organise when
> > manipulated by the surroundings.
>
> In other words, "leading by doing less" (at least less of what managers
> normally do) is the prescription for generating self-organizing systems?
> That indeed matches my experience from my work; the "less" I did, the more
> we got. (Of course, in another sense, I really didn't do "less"; that was
> the hardest work I had ever done. It just didn't involve producing the
> work product or service, nor did it involve telling the rest of the group
> how to produce it.
...snip...
I agree. Should you have written "leading by doing less ON OTHERS", you
would have said it perfectly.
> > The more complexer systems become, the less they will respond favourably
> > to manipulations from the outside. In other words, the more complex they
> > become, the less they will behave as expected if such behaviour results
> > from coercive manipulation. The sooner we realise this, the better for all
> > of us.
>
> Yes, that message comes from a number of directions. System dynamics
> teaches a similar story.
But we must realise what is the basic reason for this message - the
increasing complexity of each essentiality for increasing complexity of
emergences. Never think of complexity as something static. This is an
error freuqntly made by most commentators on complexity theory.
> Thanks for your help, At. I look forward to understanding this more. If
> I can get to the bottom of how we generated (my terms, not yours, although
> they may be identical in this case --- I'm still learning) an open
> environment so that I can begin to transmit those ideas to others, I will
> feel I've made important progress.
Bill, I am homoured to be of help. Prigogine often speak of a renaissance
which is about to happen, one what may even surpass what has happened in
Greece 2500 years ago. I believe that what you have written is one of the
keys to this renaissance - we have to open up. Or to put it somewhat
different - we have to build bridges over the abysses which we have
created through many millenia.
Best wishes
--At de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre for Education University of Pretoria Pretoria, South Africa email: amdelange@gold.up.ac.za
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>