Dear Organlearners,
Leo Minnigh <L.D.Minnigh@library.tudelft.nl> writes, with respect
to ) "time" (patience) and "whole" (force):
>The third example is the experiment that Reynolds did. It is
>somewhat difficult to do it your self, but nearly in any
>encyclopedia you will find the illustration of his demonstration
>of turbulent flow in a glass tube. Through the tube some liquid
>is running. At the beginning of this tube some coloured liquid
>is added in the centre of the tube. This coloured liquid starts
>to show the turbulences in the flowing liquid. But did you have
>noticed that the first part of the track of the coloured liquid is
>just a straight line, indicating laminar flow? Only after some
>distance the first turbulences start (preceded by a short track
>of meander sinusoids). So here again, we see what we expected:
>bifurcation after some time and some distance!
>
>But dear readers, what had happened if Reynolds' tube was
>shorter? A length which was NOT sufficient to reach the
>bifurcation point of starting turbulences?? Although there was
>entropy produced, it was 'just' a laminar flow. After a lot of
>thinking
>these days and studying the essence of the Reynolds number,
>I came to the conclusion that there is something wrong here.
>Since the length of the tube is NOT incorporated in the formula
>of the Reynolds number, this number seems false.
>
>Is this the place for such scientific discussion? I am not sure,
>because I become so bewildered. I cannot believe that this
>conclusion is true.
Greetings Leo,
I think that your example is very important because it once again
illustrates the difference between "study of form -- mechanics" and "study
of content -- dynamics". This "form-content" or "mechanics-dynamics"
complementary dual can be found in all walks of life, from physical
phenomena (microscopical to macroscopical like the Reynolds example) to
spiritual phenomena.
Here is an example, taken from John Gunkler's recent contribution
"Knowledge Management in Academia LO20324". It concerns the birthday cake.
Its mechanical description would include things like its color, flavour,
the amount of icing, how it's decorated, its size and weight, etc. Its
dynamical description would be the recipe for baking and decorating it.
Another example, taken from religion. A mechanical description of a
religious life would include something like the Ten Commandments. A
dynamical description would include something like living by the power of
love.
The third example is from languages. The mechanics of a language concerns
its syntaxis with topics like morphology and grammer. The dynamics
concerns its semantics with topics like etymology and metaphors.
A last example is the Law of Entropy Production. Its dynamics concerns
topics such as entropic force-flux pairs, chaos, edge of chaos,
bifurcations, emergences or immergences, digestions, stability and
baggage. Its mechanics concerns the seven essentialities of creativity,
learning and self-organisation in general.
In all problems concerning the incomplete, the "form-content" duality is
essential to obtaining the solution. The problem is either an incomplete
form or an incomplete content. The solution is to generate a complete form
(by using the dynamics of the content) or to generate a complete content
(by using the mechanics of the form). Thus the "form-content" duality is
very important to systems thinking.
In your example fo the flow of a liquid through a tube, the Reynolds
number is typical of the mechanics of flow. (Traditional "hermitian"
quantum mechanics is also like this.) This number describes a criterium
for WHEN (mechanics) a turbulent flow will happen, but not HOW (dynamics)
it will happen. As you have noticed, the tube must be of sufficient length
before the turbulences will show up. The how tells us why. Entropy has to
be produced. Some of this extra entropy will be dispersed away as chaos.
This diversity of becoming is controlled by transmibility factors. The
rest of the entropy will lead to a local build up, pushing it to the edge
of chaos where stability factors become important. In other words, when
the force-flux pairs begin to operate, producing entropy, there will not
be instaneous edge of chaos with bifucations. There must be a lcoal build
up of entropy.
This time lapse between the beginning of entropy production and when the
edge of chaos has finally been reached, is very important to systems
thinking. During this time there is much stress on the system. This
stress put the stability of sub-structures to the test. Some may
disintegrate before the edge of chaos has been reached. Obviously, if
these unstable sub structures are crucial to the expected emergences,
immergences rather than emergences may happen. The sub structures may be
unstable in two major ways. They may be gradually be worn away by so
called ablative immergences. But they may also crumble away by explosion
or implosion. Consequently, if we decide to proceed to any edge of chaos,
it must be done in a bold and sure manner to minimise the time spent for
reaching the edge of chaos.
An intersting metaphor, if not an example, of this time lapse above is the
window between when a person contracts HIV up to its developement in full
blown AIDS.
>But let's leave this Reynolds number and go directly to the
>TOOLO number (Transition from Ordinary Organization to
>Learning Organization
(snip)
>Therefor, if in this case the length of the slope is too short,
>we could indeed wait till doomsday. Keep in mind that
>bifurcation points might be found near the end of the trajectory,
>not in the beginning. We also could wait till doomsday, of
>the amount of energy (water) is not enough.
>
>Concluding, the TOOLO trajectory might be long, so we should
>have patience. On the other hand, enough energy should be
>introduced.
Leo, when we speak energy, we must be specific. We must speak of "free
energy" because it is the "free energy" which is used to produce entropy.
Furthermore, we must pay attention to the source (origin) of free energy
which is actually used to drive the system to the edge of chaos If the
bulk of it comes from outside the system, the changes are very good that
the system will bifurcate into an immergence rather than an emergence. But
if the system draws on its own sources and control its own dissipation, it
is the opposite.
But as you have noticed, leaving too little time or too short a path to
reach the edge of chaos is perhaps the worst error of them all. Thus we
have to excercise patience coupled with strong actions.
Thank you very much for your most interesting contribution to our
dialogue.
Best wishes
--At de Lange <amdelange@gold.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
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