Was: Which came first?
Gray Southon wrote:
>I have been impressed with the writings of George Soros who
>highlights >the fact that with social systems, the theory is in fact
>part of the system,
>and is capable of changing the system itself. He describes these as
>reflexive systems. He claims that this aspect has been ignored by
>social
>scientists, and argues that it demands a very different approach to
>theory
>and knowing in social science than is used in natural sciences.
>Ironically, this reflexitivity is very much part of everyday life,
>and I
>find explains complexity, uncertainty and irreversibility in a much
>simpler, and yet more sophisticated way than chaos theory, entropy or
>NMR analogies.
Hi Gray,
I also have read Goros latest book (yes, it is already available in German
language! Sometimes they are really fast.) and am also quite impressed.
I understood that Goros introduced the term "reflexive systems" in order
to be able to point to the illness. Goros made his fortune by being aware
of this reflexibility while others weren't. Today, where everybody on the
financial market tries to anticipate this reflexibility this yields just
instability and is - together with the lack of values other than money -
the root cause for the worldwide financial crisis.
Goros may have answered the question "Which came first?" with: First there
must be values in the thinking of people that are not subject to
reflexibility, thus which can serve as kernals for a minimun degree of
necessary stability and around which reality (reflexively including
thinking) can grow and prosper. The acceptance of such values is within
the free choice of people. These values may not be beneficial for the
individual in certain situations, but their acceptance is vital for
stability of society - BECAUSE of the reflexive relationship between
thinking and reality.
Specifically I want to comment:
>Ironically, this reflexitivity is very much part of everyday life
I would have subscribed your sentence before I read Goros, but not
anymore: Goros distinguishes everyday life from historical moments. (He
has a full chapter on his theory of history.) Within this frame (which I
would subscribe now) everyday life consists of either cognition (reality
acts on thinking) or participation (thinking acts on reality). In contrast
to this, historical events are reflexive: thinking and reality change
together - the whole world is not the same anymore. Goros stresses that
these moments are rare. This rareness is an sign from reality to help to
find out the way of the "reflexive viscious circle": When thinking starts
to think of thinking as being reflexive, suddenly everything becomes
reflexive and reality is mostly excluded. This is a virus on identity. I
have to explain this:
Therefore I have to elaborate on reflexive systems and values a littlebit
while using At de Langes terms. Everyday life is a sequence of cognition
and participation. It is digestive (not necessarily learning). Historical
events can either be emergences or immergences. Emergences lead to higher
order in thinking and reality while thinking and reality become more
archaic again if an immergence took place. According to At de Lange,
emergences are highly contingent - seven essentialities need to be
established.
In order to see the influence of constant values on the occurence of
emergences (Goros target is what he calles the open society) or
immergences, I will pick out sureness (identity-categoricity) and
fruitfulness (connect-beget).
The first value I check is: identity. Identity is something which many
people value very much: I am I! There is a big (often hidden) fear to
loose ones identity. Unfortunately, these people take this identity for
real. And this is the point, where the identity becomes uncategorical -
the identity should provide sureness, but it doesn't. In fact sureness is
impaired. This uncategorical identity then tries to find sureness within
itself, dreaming of eternal life and such things.
This has a bad impact on fruitfulness. For the poor identity fears to give
up its identifications, this prevents it to connect with other aspects of
reality, to test reality, thus impairing fruifulness as a consequence. I
may say: Uncategorical identiy (impaired sureness) sacrifices curiosity
(impair fruitfulness) in order not to give up itself. It is due to the
reflexive property of reality and thinking, that such uncategorical
identity can stay stable for quite a while. But when it comes to
bifurcation, immergence is the necessary outcome.
Now let us check another value: to close the gap between thinking and
reality. This is the Goros value. Goros explained in his book, that his
fear was always, not to be close enough to reality. Identity was not a
value. He felt delight, when he was able to identify an uncategoricity, a
gap between his thinking as a result of his connecting to reality - He
loved the discovery of mistakes he made. Sureness and fruiffullness were
established fully, enabeling curiosity and intuition to develop to high
maturity.
With this value, Goros was a little less "autopoietic" than others who are
captured within their identities. Goros thought that his way of living is
natural and had to learn about the others. He learnt a lot: He learnt
about the patterns of the gap of other peoples thinking to reality, and
about how such patterns evolve over time. He started to gamble with the
effects of others impaired sureness. And he was tremendously successful in
terms of earned money.
Now a third value grew up: reflexibility. This is for many people,
especially in finance, identical to Goros success. But reflexibility is
only a property of systems, its not a value. Goros has harsh word for
financial fundamentalism and deconstructivism. Sureness is impaired,
because identiy is totally thrown over bord due to the damage that
happened when identity let reflexibility in (the virus I mentioned above)
and fruitfulness is impaired, because thinking is only related to
thinking, not to reality anymore. Goros is right when he expects
immergences as a result of this chaos of becoming.
Goros original value "close the gap between thinking and reality" is now
in danger as well. If thinking and reality are only reflexive, the whole
is built on sand. The erosion, that Goros started himself is transforming
his rock on which he built to sand.
It is constant values that withstand the erosion due to reflexivity, that
keeps the rock together and that makes the search for reality worthwhile,
although we can know that we will never reach the goal to know reality.
Finally three questions:
What values can resist and overcome the devastating effect of
reflexibility as a value and form the ground of stability and emergences?
Is it the same question, when I ask:
"What makes a learning organisation?"
?
Liebe Gruesse,
Winfried
--"Winfried Dressler" <winfried.dressler@voith.de>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>