Dear Organlearners,
Artur Ferreira da Silva <artsilva@individual.EUnet.pt> writes:
> If one changes ( or becomes) he/she always change the others, in a "by the
> way" sense. But one must be careful about not being "manipulative", and
> about thinking that one has "the right to change the other". [ those that
> for a long time imposed rules on you, were not trying to "change you" in a
> certain direction ?]
Artur, I agree with you.
But we must recognise that "becoming" can become very confusing. It is
because "becoming" operate on two levels: an inner level (dynamical,
content, semantical, etc) and an outer level (mechanical, form,
syntactical, etc). You are referring to the inner level. A change in any
system can happen either spontaneously or non-spontaneously. If the change
happens spontaneously, it means that it happens on the system's own
accord, i.e. without any work and control from other systems in the
surroundings. While it happens, the system may perform work on its
surroundings. A non-spontaneous change will only happen if the systems in
the surrounding perform sufficient work on the system. The system then
cannot act as a source of work, but becomes a drain of work.
How does a system changes spontaneously? The key here is to note that all
spontaneous changes are irreversible. Irreversible mean that the system
system uses (lowers) its "free energy" to "produce entropy". The quantity
entropy was discovered by Carnot roughly 150 years ago. Entropy is not
energy, but a quantity in its own right closely associated with energy.
Entropy determines the behaviour of energy. Up to 1970, in other words,
for more than 100 years, it was believed that entropy does only one thing,
namely to command the outward dissipation/dispersion/spreading of energy.
The New Science began with the realisation (Prigogine) that entropy can
also command the inward construction of energy into higher ordered
organisations.
When entropy gets produced, the buck does not stop there. The produced
entropy must also be manifested. It is first automatically manifested as
"diversity of becoming" which we call chaos. This chaos is dissipated
outwardly to the rest of the universe. If enough entropy is produced fast
enough, the system gets saturated with chaos. Thus the system is driven
into a bifurcation form which the second manifestation of the produced
entropy happens. It is manifested as "diversity of being" which we call
order. A higher does not emerge automatically. The emergence is highly
contingent. If the contingencies (seven essentialities of creativity) are
not fully operative, an immergence to a lower order rather than an
emergence to a higher order will happen.
The reason why spontaneous changes have to be prefered, is that if they
produce so much entropy that a bifurcation is reached, the chances is good
that the bifurcation will evolve into an emergence. This so because the
contigencies needed for an emergence are also needed for the entropy
production in the first place. However, if in the case of a
non-spontaneous change the entropy is produced in the surroundings so that
the system is innundated with it, there is no assurance that the
contingencies are operative in the system. In fact, the changes are very
good that some of them are not operative. Thus an immergence rather than
an emergence will result.
All of the above can be summarised by an old saying: "You can lead a
donkey to the water, but you cannot make it drink the water."
Artur, you also write:
> May I stress the "becoming" over the "being" ? In a certain sense "one is
> not a person"; one "becomes a person" ( when one does...). That is why
> "learning" ( not in the sense of accumulating knowledge, but in the sense
> of investigating/living/sharing/becoming) is so important.
Artur, I think that it is not so much a case of stressing "becoming", but
knowing that in a specific manifestation cycle of entropy production,
"becoming" comes before "being". Consider, for example, the mathematcian's
concept of a function f. They will write y = f(x). But what they mean (in
the sense of modern category theory) is
f
x -------------> y
where f is a "becoming" (a procdure or set of rules) which transforms the
original "being" x into the ultimate "being" y.
You also write:
> Learning is becoming...
to which I also have to agree. See how it all fits:
The production of entropy is first manifested as a diversity of becoming
and then as a diversity of being. This is the essence of creativity. In
other words, to create is to produce entropy. But to learn is to create.
Thus learning begins with the diversity of becoming.
Best wishes
--At de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre for Education University of Pretoria Pretoria, South Africa email: amdelange@gold.up.ac.za
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