The Digestor and Obfuscation LO21579

AM de Lange (amdelange@gold.up.ac.za)
Tue, 11 May 1999 15:33:00 +0200

Replying to LO21506 --

Dear Organlearners,

Jon Krispin <jkrispin@prestolitewire.com> writes:

>First of all, At - Thank you for taking the time to articulate
>Ostwald's digestion and making connections to evolutionary
>changes.

Greetings Jon,

Thank you. You have made my day.

I will answer your contribution in two replies to make each shorter.
The other contribution will deal with the work of Richard Herrnstein.
In this one I want to attend to other matters raised by you.

>I especially wanted to thank you for the effort you made to
>make explicit the role that the essentialities play in determining
>the possibility of a new level of order emerging from a system
>that may have used its free energy for one level of organization
>and may now be rich in free energy for another path.

I think that you have grasped the key to the relationship between
evolutionary (modelled by the Digestor) and revolutionary (modelled by
the Brusselator) changes.

There is also another way to look at it. Evolutionary changes happen
in terms of the orders which have been created in the past.
Revolutionary changes create new orders for the future. The one cannot
happen without the other because the past and the future are linked to
the present. We can create only with the present and not with the past
(it is gone) or the future (it still has to happen).

A revolution can trigger easily another revolution, but cannot sustain
it. A revolution have to evolve by digestion into maturity before it
can sustain another revolution. Evolutionary growth can be sustained
easily, but cannot revolunise itself. An evolution requires a
bifurcation before it can digest along a new path.

>I am still not fluent enough in the essentialities to make these
>connections on my own.

Take care not to become discouraged. On the one hand we have to become
in fluent in every new thing which we learn. We first learn it
emergently at the edge of chaos -- our minds in a turmoil until the
effective connection is made. There is little fluency in this because
it is erratic by nature. Then we learn digestively. This is where the
fluency comes in. Every digestion we make in terms of our original
learning emergence is an advancement in fluency.

But on the other hand we should bear in mind the nature of the seven
essentialities themselves. Let us use the Digestor as a model for
dialogue. The seven essentialities represent an extremely high value
in M. In other words, they can easily become most intimidating. This
happens when some of them (usually one) are appraised and the rest
denounced. Unfortunately, this can happen easily when we make use of
(1) the Law of the Excluded Middle (LEM) and
(2) our preferance for one of the seven essentialities.
(See one of my replies to John Gunkler of the topic "Junk science"
where I discuss LEM in more detail.)

It happens as follows. Assume that we are particularly fond of the
essentiality "fruitfulness". Our character profile will include a
desire for innovation down to a meddling with things which we know
nothing of. Then, some time or another, we use LEM to exclude each of
the other six. For example, when encountering sureness, we think
"either fruitfulness or sureness but not both". Since we try to
fulfill our desires, we chose fruitfulness rather than sureness. But
each such an exclusive choice for fruitfulness hits anly another nail
in the coffin.

We have to try and understand that the Law of the Excluded Middle
stops applying at a certain level of complexity because it has emerged
into something else. Through the years I have given many examples. Do
you still remember the "twin syndrome" in the Primer on Entropy? I
still remember how heated the dialogue became on the issue of "fuzzy
logic". A prime example is the issue on chaos and order. Some people
insist (using LEM) that entropy measure only chaos and that order is
measured by something else, for example negentropy or synergy.

You may not have thought about it, but even obfuscation depends on
LEM. Fortunately for us, natural languages have developed long before
Frege formalised the LEM. Thus our natural languages are rich in words
with two or more different meanings. In technical and disciplicary
languages the drive is still to produce terminlogy with singular
meanings. But we are now emerging from the age of simplicity into the
age of complexity. How long this drive for singular meanings in
technical and disciplinary languages will continue, is an open
question.

>At, again I have to thank you. Your attempt to draw the
>parallels between entropy production and the world of the
>mind have opened up a new level of understanding for me.
>The parallels that I have been able to see between the
>mechanisms of the physical world and behavior have been
>for me an extraordinary source of energy - to the point where
>I feel almost obligated to share the thoughts that I have with
>others so that they may experience what I have been able to
>experience (and give me feedback on these ideas, so that
>my learning may continue).

Jon, as I have experienced and now see it, this rejuvenation comes
from both sides. For you the material world rejuvenates your spiritual
world. For others the spiritual world rejuvenates the material world.
However, what we must also try to perceive, is why this rejuvenation
has happened. It is because we are now laying bridges over the abyss
between the material world of the brain and the abstract world of the
mind. The laying of bridges is a much higher order activity than
maintaining exclusions.

Jon, you and many others may think that I do not learn. I learn
actually much from all the contributions of you fellow learners. I
learn both emergently and digestively. For example, last year I learnt
by trying to keep a wholesome picture on the developments of this list
for the past three years that trying to combine judgement and dialogue
is like trying to mix oil and water. Your exposition on the work of
Richard Herrnstein and connection to the Digetsor have also send my
mind rushing through deep waters. I will report on that.

>Prior to the past six months or so, I felt as if I had nearly
>reached equilibrium in my own thinking about behavior,
>organizations, and learning. As I have experienced it, I had
>reached a state of equilibrium where the free energy for further
>organization at that level was almost depleted. But, unbeknowst
>to me, the free energy for a new level of organization was plentiful.
>By connecting (essentiality fruitfulness) with the thinking that you
>and others on the list have shared, I have been able to experience
>emergences of thought that I may never have had on my own.

If I may dare one small prediction. You now experience "steeping
stones" in the other world. But soon you will also experience the
holes between the "stepping stones" in both worlds. It is then when
the fun begins, exploring the unknown. You will become intensely aware
of transdiciplinary thinking. You will wonder why it (in my opnion one
of the main characterestics of Systems Thinking) has not received much
more attention.

>For example, I was not overly impressed with Meg Wheatley's
>book, Leadership and the New Science, because I could not
>determine which of her metaphorical conclusions and points were
>"obfuscation" and which were of some value.

She did a valuable service. In my opinion she has drawn "patterns of
correspondence" (adjunctions) between Managerial science and the "new
science". When a person draws adjunctions between two subjects, it
concerns form and thus not content. It is a revolutionary activity at
the edge of chaos. Should we look for content, we will have to supply
that evolutionary close to equilibrium.

>I think that it is too early to tell which is the case at this point
>regarding these ideas. However, I feel certain that these
>ideas are worth investigating.

I have the same opinion. The more I study the history of certain
concepts, the more I come under the impression how they developed like
life forms. There is not such a thing as an instantaneous and perfect
emergence of a concept. It has to be subjected to a number of
emergences and digestions before we can leave it.

>Which begs another question: At what point does
>generalization/extrapolation of any theory become obfuscation?
>I'm not sure that the conclusion can be drawn with foresight.

Jon, this is a very important question. I can formulate it somewhat
different words. How far should our understanding go? Hopefully, some
day, we will tackle the topic "Limits of understanding".

>But I have read numerous texts on chaos theory, relativity,
>quantum physics, and 3 books by Ilya Prigogine on
>thermodynamics, entropy and entropy production. The
>accounts that At has given of these ideas are representative
>of what I have read in these other sources.

Not quite on all respects. You ought to bear in mind that I have made
some discoveries of my own which influenced my thinking.

For example, although Prigogine finds Einstein's abhorance of
Probability Theory in the framework of science enticing, he still
falls back on PT as a mode of explaining. I also try to avoid PT to
explain things. It does not mean that I avoid PT all together. PT is a
powerful way of describing things. Prigogine thinks that the New
Science will bring an end of certitude, that we will never be sure
again. I see it almost the opposite! We develop in sureness (as with
any of the other six essentialities), continuously by digestions and
discontinuous by emergences. Humankind never had an age of absolute
sureness, although many humans have imagined their age to be one of
absolute sureness.

>I, for one, find these parallels to be compelling, and I have
>invested a considerable amount of time articulating the
>connections that I have made for others to examine.

Jon, thank you very much for these inputs.

>To me, the obvious next step is to see how much further
>the model can be extended. Is this really a step into oblivion?

Does it really matter? Some will try to jump on the bandwagon while
others will try to overturn it. It will always be like that as it
always have been. As for me, I do not care for the band wagon at all.
There are many other wagons needing our attention.

As for the work of Richard Herrnstein and your extensions on it, give
me time to think it through.

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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