Boulding, Kenneth E. 1956. “General Systems Theory-The Skeleton of Science.” Management Science 2(3) (April): 197-208.
“General Systems Theory is a name which has come into use to describe a level of theoretical model-building which lies somewhere between the highly generalized constructions of pure mathematics and the specific theories of the specialized disciplines” 197
“The objectives of General Systems Theory…can be set out with varying degrees of ambition and confidence. At a low level of ambition but with a high degree of confidence it aims to point out similarities in the theoretical constructions of different disciplines, where these exist, and to develop theoretical models having applicability to at least two different fields of study. A t a higher level of ambition, but with perhaps a lower degree of confidence it hopes to develop something like a ‘spectrum’ of theories—a system of systems which may perform the function of a ‘gestalt’ in theoretical construction. Such ‘gestalts’ in special fields have been of great value in directing research towards the gaps which they reveal” 198
Two possible approaches to GST: Find common phenomenon to different schools of theory: an individual interacting with an environment, growth, information/communication, etc. Or, you could create a framework for mapping out the interaction of different theories across degrees of complexity.
Showing posts with label Complex Systems. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Complex Systems. Show all posts
Monday, March 1, 2010
Simon: The Architecture of Complexity
Simon, Herbert A. 1962. “The Architecture of Complexity.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 106(6) (December 12): 467-482.
“Roughly, by a complex system I mean one made up of a large number of parts that interact in a nonsimple way. In such systems, the whole is more than the sum of the parts, not in an ultimate, metaphysical sense, but in the important pragmatic sense that, given the properties of the parts and the laws of their interaction, it is not a trivial matter to infer the properties of the whole” (468).
“Thus, the central theme that runs through my remarks is that complexity frequently takes the form of hierarchy, and that hierarchic systems have some common properties that are independent of their specific content. Hierarchy, I shall argue, is one of the central structural schemes that the architect of complexity uses” (468).
“By a hierarchic system, or hierarchy, I mean a system that is composed of interrelated sub-systems, each of the latter being, in turn, hierarchic in structure until we reach some lowest level of elementary subsystem” (468).
“There is one important difference between the physical and biological hierarchies, on the one hand, and social hierarchies, on the other. Most physical and biological hierarchies are described in spatial terms…On the other hand, we propose to identify social hierarchies not by observing who lives close to whom but by observing who interacts with whom. These two points of view can be reconciled by defining hierarchy in terms of intensity of interaction” (469).
“We have shown thus far that complex systems will evolve from simple systems much more rapidly if there are stable intermediate forms than if there are not. The resulting complex forms in the former case will be hierarchic. We have only to turn the argument around to explain the observed predominance of hierarchies among the complex systems nature presents to us” (473).
“In hierarchic systems, we can distinguish between the interactions among subsystems, on the one hand, and the interactions within subsystems…The interactions at the different levels may be, and often will be, of different orders of magnitudes” (473-4).
“At least some kinds of hierarchic systems can be approximated successfully as nearly decomposable systems. The main theoretical findings from the approach can be summed up in two propositions: (a) in a nearly decomposable system, the short-run behavior of each of the component subsystems is approximately independent of the short-run behavior of the other components; (b) in the long run, the behavior of any one of the components depends in only an aggregate way on the behavior of the other components” (474).
“How complex or simple a structure is depends critically upon the way in which we describe it. Most of the complex structures round in the world are enormously redundant, and we can use this redundancy to simplify their description. But to use it, to achieve the simplification, we must find the right representation” (481).
“My thesis has been that one path to the construction of a non-trivial theory of complex systems is by way of a theory of hierarchy. Empirically, a large proportion of the complex systems we observe in nature exhibit hierarchic structure. On theoretical grounds we could expect complex systems to be hierarchies in a world in which complexity had to evolve from simplicity. In their dynamics, hierarchies have property, near-decomposability, that greatly simplifies their behavior. Near-decomposability also simplifies the description of a complex system, and makes it easier to understand how the information needed for the development or reproduction of the system can be stored in reasonable compass” (481-2).
“Roughly, by a complex system I mean one made up of a large number of parts that interact in a nonsimple way. In such systems, the whole is more than the sum of the parts, not in an ultimate, metaphysical sense, but in the important pragmatic sense that, given the properties of the parts and the laws of their interaction, it is not a trivial matter to infer the properties of the whole” (468).
“Thus, the central theme that runs through my remarks is that complexity frequently takes the form of hierarchy, and that hierarchic systems have some common properties that are independent of their specific content. Hierarchy, I shall argue, is one of the central structural schemes that the architect of complexity uses” (468).
“By a hierarchic system, or hierarchy, I mean a system that is composed of interrelated sub-systems, each of the latter being, in turn, hierarchic in structure until we reach some lowest level of elementary subsystem” (468).
“There is one important difference between the physical and biological hierarchies, on the one hand, and social hierarchies, on the other. Most physical and biological hierarchies are described in spatial terms…On the other hand, we propose to identify social hierarchies not by observing who lives close to whom but by observing who interacts with whom. These two points of view can be reconciled by defining hierarchy in terms of intensity of interaction” (469).
“We have shown thus far that complex systems will evolve from simple systems much more rapidly if there are stable intermediate forms than if there are not. The resulting complex forms in the former case will be hierarchic. We have only to turn the argument around to explain the observed predominance of hierarchies among the complex systems nature presents to us” (473).
“In hierarchic systems, we can distinguish between the interactions among subsystems, on the one hand, and the interactions within subsystems…The interactions at the different levels may be, and often will be, of different orders of magnitudes” (473-4).
“At least some kinds of hierarchic systems can be approximated successfully as nearly decomposable systems. The main theoretical findings from the approach can be summed up in two propositions: (a) in a nearly decomposable system, the short-run behavior of each of the component subsystems is approximately independent of the short-run behavior of the other components; (b) in the long run, the behavior of any one of the components depends in only an aggregate way on the behavior of the other components” (474).
“How complex or simple a structure is depends critically upon the way in which we describe it. Most of the complex structures round in the world are enormously redundant, and we can use this redundancy to simplify their description. But to use it, to achieve the simplification, we must find the right representation” (481).
“My thesis has been that one path to the construction of a non-trivial theory of complex systems is by way of a theory of hierarchy. Empirically, a large proportion of the complex systems we observe in nature exhibit hierarchic structure. On theoretical grounds we could expect complex systems to be hierarchies in a world in which complexity had to evolve from simplicity. In their dynamics, hierarchies have property, near-decomposability, that greatly simplifies their behavior. Near-decomposability also simplifies the description of a complex system, and makes it easier to understand how the information needed for the development or reproduction of the system can be stored in reasonable compass” (481-2).
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Weltman: Systems Theory in International Relations
Weltman, John J. 1973. Systems Theory in International Relations: A Study in Metaphoric Hypertrophy. Lexington, Mass: Lexington Books.
“The best-known application of this approach to international relations is embodies in Morton A. Kaplan’s System and Process in International Politics. Building on Kaplan’s framework and modifying it to suit their own purposes, other authors have employed systems theory in many studies. …We propose to analyze in this work the utility of this body of thought as a vehicle by which knowledge relating to the field of international relations may be advanced” (1). Utility will be defined as the explanatory power of the theory.
Kaplan’s definition of systems approach to IR: “A system of action is a set of variables so related, in contradistinction to its environment, that describable behavioral regularities characterize the internal relationships of the variables to each other and the external relationships of the set of individual variables to combinations of external variables” (3).
“Through the use of this concept it is possible to describe the state of the system, and to delineate the requirements for its continue dexistance. Processes contributing to these requirements are functional. The system is by definition in equilibrium. The regularities observable in its operation provide the limits of the equilibrium. A disequilibrium indicates the dissolution of the system; with the ordered pattern of interaction previously defining it no longer operative, the system can no longer be distinguished from its environment” (3).
Discussion of feedback, a term drawn from cybernetics (4).
“Marion J. Levy’s definition of Structure, as cited in Weltman: “The term structure as used here means a pattern, i.e., an observable uniformity ,of action or operation” (4) The definition of function: “The term function…is defined here as a condition, or state of affairs, resultant from the operation…of a structure through time” (4).
Martindale quote on holism and elementarism in Weltman: “Holism is the view tha the basic social reality consists of interrelated wholes which are superior to the individual and his acts…One cannot of course have a whole without parts, but the whole is prior to the parts in the sense that its operations are irreducible to these parts and their properties. Elementarism is the view that the basic social reality is constituted by individuals and their acts. Social events consist solely in their interaction. Any notion that interaction possesses new or emergent properties such that some sort of whole with irreducible properties of its own arises is a pure product of reification” (5).
There is a discussion of “sociological functionalism” with many references to “self sufficiency” “system maintaining” “system determined” (6-7).
In summarizing Merton: “Function is defined as an equilibrium-conducing operation” (7).
“But precisely what is the nature of this system called political? Easton answers this question by referring to what can only be called the function of the political within the larger context of the social system or society. The political system stems from and fulfills a need of the social system. Without fulfillment of this function of ‘authoritative allocation of values,’ a society cannot exist” (9).
The discussion moves from sociological functional theories to general systems theory, its structure, and ability to produce hypotheses of use. General Systems Theory is an attempt to create the language of a methodological approach that can be used across scientific fields.
“The view of reality lying behind the more ambitious formulations of the utility of general systems theory can be neither proved nor disproved; it can only be stated. It is basically a metaphysical scheme which seeks to find in reality an ultimate orderliness above and beyond the ken of normal scientific methods of verification. Systems theory in the study of international relations is a mode of analysis growing out of, and conditioned by, two pervasive currents of thought—functional sociology and general systems theory. These modes of thought do exhibit certain points of common concern. They are both essentially holistic; each would find more in the whole than the sum of its parts. They approach this point of common concern, whoever, by different, and one might say complementary, routes. The functional sociologists are more concerned with activity than with the entity within which this activity occurs, to which it is related, and in terms of which it is assessed. The whole often appears as a residual, whose definition is important less for operational utility than for logical completeness. What is secondary for functional sociology is primary in general systems theory. The nature of the entity within which activity occurs is paramount, often to the exclusion of direct concern with the concrete activity itself” (14).
“Given the non-operational or tautological nature of the bulk of the ‘essential rules’ of his systems, it follows that Kaplan’s conclusions concerning systemic stability and transformation are not compelling. Too often these statements refer merely to end results of processes…We are left with little to enable us to predict in concrete circumstances which one among several possible transformations will occur…Conclusions as to stability or transformation—if they are not make indeterminate as above—turn on hypotheses as to international relations which are not made an explicit part of the systems analysis. It is possible to trace through Kaplan’s work a series of assumptions of this sort, which, rather than systemic analysis, provide the basis from which his conclusions follow. Thus Kaplan assumes rather than demonstrates a tendency toward instability as the state structure approaches bipolarity” (34).
The next book explored is Haas and Beyond the Nation-State. The same criterion are used to judge the use of the theory.
“It should of course be obvious that this analysis too could easily be formulated without the intrusion of the concepts of systems theory…That third parties find their positions enhanced by the occurrence of conflict between others is a commonplace of the folk wisdom of political thought…Haas has attempted to rework the systems approach so as to eliminate the occurrence of causal statements purporting to explain phenomena by reference to an attribute of the system. This he has attempted to do by introducing his ‘concrete, actor-oriented’ system. Unfortunately, by doing away with the type of explanation mentioned, he has left us with little but an undifferentiated mass of data. It is only by introducing criteria of importance and behavioral assumptions which are systemic and autonomous that this data can be made to yield explanations and interpretations. At best the conceptualizations of systems theory become simply redundant in this process. At worst the approach can serve to absolutize arbitrary interpretations by concealing their origins, and to lend seeming objectivity to mere value preferences. Furthermore, Haas is unable to demonstrate the necessity of the systems approach in arriving at his substantive conclusions or in making predictions” (47-8).
Next is Rosecrance and his Action and Reaction in World Politics. “Rosecrance’s analysis falls into three parts. First there is a series of historical essays describing nine periods of international politics…Next, these nine periods are translated into nine international systems. On the basis of this systemic analysis Rosecrance then explains the mutations of international politics in terms of the interactions of four factors whose influence in the present day he assesses” (49).
“The conclusions Rosecrance derives, supposedly through the vehicle of systemic analysis, are simply the themes of his historical analysis in slightly different form…Thus, the distinction between stable and unstable historical periods is correlated in most instances simply with the presence or absence of international war; and historical analyses in terms of a regulative mechanism often strike the reader as serving no useful purpose furthering explanation of the materials at hand” (60).
Chapter 6 is highly germane for my work. It is on balance of power in the international system and the stability.
“It may be that systems theory should not be regarded as an explanatory scheme, but only as a suggestive device. It does not serve to verify hypotheses, but merely to provide them. It should be understood, then, primarily as a sort of bank of ideas and novel interpretations” (79). However, we have plenty of hypotheses, and what we need is a way to solve them. “The systems approach, then, seems to ahev little utility either as an explanatory scheme or a suggestive device” (79).
“The best-known application of this approach to international relations is embodies in Morton A. Kaplan’s System and Process in International Politics. Building on Kaplan’s framework and modifying it to suit their own purposes, other authors have employed systems theory in many studies. …We propose to analyze in this work the utility of this body of thought as a vehicle by which knowledge relating to the field of international relations may be advanced” (1). Utility will be defined as the explanatory power of the theory.
Kaplan’s definition of systems approach to IR: “A system of action is a set of variables so related, in contradistinction to its environment, that describable behavioral regularities characterize the internal relationships of the variables to each other and the external relationships of the set of individual variables to combinations of external variables” (3).
“Through the use of this concept it is possible to describe the state of the system, and to delineate the requirements for its continue dexistance. Processes contributing to these requirements are functional. The system is by definition in equilibrium. The regularities observable in its operation provide the limits of the equilibrium. A disequilibrium indicates the dissolution of the system; with the ordered pattern of interaction previously defining it no longer operative, the system can no longer be distinguished from its environment” (3).
Discussion of feedback, a term drawn from cybernetics (4).
“Marion J. Levy’s definition of Structure, as cited in Weltman: “The term structure as used here means a pattern, i.e., an observable uniformity ,of action or operation” (4) The definition of function: “The term function…is defined here as a condition, or state of affairs, resultant from the operation…of a structure through time” (4).
Martindale quote on holism and elementarism in Weltman: “Holism is the view tha the basic social reality consists of interrelated wholes which are superior to the individual and his acts…One cannot of course have a whole without parts, but the whole is prior to the parts in the sense that its operations are irreducible to these parts and their properties. Elementarism is the view that the basic social reality is constituted by individuals and their acts. Social events consist solely in their interaction. Any notion that interaction possesses new or emergent properties such that some sort of whole with irreducible properties of its own arises is a pure product of reification” (5).
There is a discussion of “sociological functionalism” with many references to “self sufficiency” “system maintaining” “system determined” (6-7).
In summarizing Merton: “Function is defined as an equilibrium-conducing operation” (7).
“But precisely what is the nature of this system called political? Easton answers this question by referring to what can only be called the function of the political within the larger context of the social system or society. The political system stems from and fulfills a need of the social system. Without fulfillment of this function of ‘authoritative allocation of values,’ a society cannot exist” (9).
The discussion moves from sociological functional theories to general systems theory, its structure, and ability to produce hypotheses of use. General Systems Theory is an attempt to create the language of a methodological approach that can be used across scientific fields.
“The view of reality lying behind the more ambitious formulations of the utility of general systems theory can be neither proved nor disproved; it can only be stated. It is basically a metaphysical scheme which seeks to find in reality an ultimate orderliness above and beyond the ken of normal scientific methods of verification. Systems theory in the study of international relations is a mode of analysis growing out of, and conditioned by, two pervasive currents of thought—functional sociology and general systems theory. These modes of thought do exhibit certain points of common concern. They are both essentially holistic; each would find more in the whole than the sum of its parts. They approach this point of common concern, whoever, by different, and one might say complementary, routes. The functional sociologists are more concerned with activity than with the entity within which this activity occurs, to which it is related, and in terms of which it is assessed. The whole often appears as a residual, whose definition is important less for operational utility than for logical completeness. What is secondary for functional sociology is primary in general systems theory. The nature of the entity within which activity occurs is paramount, often to the exclusion of direct concern with the concrete activity itself” (14).
“Given the non-operational or tautological nature of the bulk of the ‘essential rules’ of his systems, it follows that Kaplan’s conclusions concerning systemic stability and transformation are not compelling. Too often these statements refer merely to end results of processes…We are left with little to enable us to predict in concrete circumstances which one among several possible transformations will occur…Conclusions as to stability or transformation—if they are not make indeterminate as above—turn on hypotheses as to international relations which are not made an explicit part of the systems analysis. It is possible to trace through Kaplan’s work a series of assumptions of this sort, which, rather than systemic analysis, provide the basis from which his conclusions follow. Thus Kaplan assumes rather than demonstrates a tendency toward instability as the state structure approaches bipolarity” (34).
The next book explored is Haas and Beyond the Nation-State. The same criterion are used to judge the use of the theory.
“It should of course be obvious that this analysis too could easily be formulated without the intrusion of the concepts of systems theory…That third parties find their positions enhanced by the occurrence of conflict between others is a commonplace of the folk wisdom of political thought…Haas has attempted to rework the systems approach so as to eliminate the occurrence of causal statements purporting to explain phenomena by reference to an attribute of the system. This he has attempted to do by introducing his ‘concrete, actor-oriented’ system. Unfortunately, by doing away with the type of explanation mentioned, he has left us with little but an undifferentiated mass of data. It is only by introducing criteria of importance and behavioral assumptions which are systemic and autonomous that this data can be made to yield explanations and interpretations. At best the conceptualizations of systems theory become simply redundant in this process. At worst the approach can serve to absolutize arbitrary interpretations by concealing their origins, and to lend seeming objectivity to mere value preferences. Furthermore, Haas is unable to demonstrate the necessity of the systems approach in arriving at his substantive conclusions or in making predictions” (47-8).
Next is Rosecrance and his Action and Reaction in World Politics. “Rosecrance’s analysis falls into three parts. First there is a series of historical essays describing nine periods of international politics…Next, these nine periods are translated into nine international systems. On the basis of this systemic analysis Rosecrance then explains the mutations of international politics in terms of the interactions of four factors whose influence in the present day he assesses” (49).
“The conclusions Rosecrance derives, supposedly through the vehicle of systemic analysis, are simply the themes of his historical analysis in slightly different form…Thus, the distinction between stable and unstable historical periods is correlated in most instances simply with the presence or absence of international war; and historical analyses in terms of a regulative mechanism often strike the reader as serving no useful purpose furthering explanation of the materials at hand” (60).
Chapter 6 is highly germane for my work. It is on balance of power in the international system and the stability.
“It may be that systems theory should not be regarded as an explanatory scheme, but only as a suggestive device. It does not serve to verify hypotheses, but merely to provide them. It should be understood, then, primarily as a sort of bank of ideas and novel interpretations” (79). However, we have plenty of hypotheses, and what we need is a way to solve them. “The systems approach, then, seems to ahev little utility either as an explanatory scheme or a suggestive device” (79).
Monday, June 29, 2009
Moeller: Luhmann Explained
Moeller, H. 2006. Luhmann Explained. Chicago: Open Court.
Excellent overview of Luhmann's Systems Theory. Outlines all key concepts, roots analysis in historical processes, focuses on functional differentiation, explores globalization and then analyzes mass media. I will not present an outline of this as most of this has been copied in other abstracts.
Excellent overview of Luhmann's Systems Theory. Outlines all key concepts, roots analysis in historical processes, focuses on functional differentiation, explores globalization and then analyzes mass media. I will not present an outline of this as most of this has been copied in other abstracts.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Luhmann: System as Difference
Luhmann, N. 2006. System as difference. Organization 13, no. 1: 37.
There are three movements in system theory: the study of closed systems, the move to open systems and finally to self-referential systems. The move from closed to open took into consideration the impact of environment on system. The article touches on Parson's understanding of boundary maintenance, where the system was not an "essence" but rather a process of establishing an outside and an inside. What about the more radical understanding of systems? "Now one can say: a system is the difference between system and environment" (38).
"I thus begin with the claim that a system is difference-the difference between system and environment" (38).
Theories on differentiation are explored, and Luhmann settles on those of George Spencer Brown. These theories involve a mark, which represents a distinction. Luhmann describes these as marks on a paper. There are laws. The "law of calling" states that, "...if I repeat the same distinction (the same mark) several times, then the value of the repeated distinctions taken together is equal to the value of one single distinction" (41). The "Law of Crossing". "A mark can be crossed within the boundary it marks and thus, as it were, be negated. This means that a second distinction can be applied to the first one in such a manner that the original distinction is cancelled" (41-2). The mark of Spencer Brown is a 90 degree angle, a vertical line connected to a horizontal line.
The third concept introduced was originally introduced by Kauffman (1987) and it is an arrow that has been bent to become a self-referential circle.
The distinction has two parts: "...namely the distinction proper, marked by the vertical line, and the indication, marked by the horizontal line" (44).
"...the first point that we enter under the heading 'applications to systems theory' is: a system is a form with two sides" (46).
"Let me summarize these two points once again. The first statement concerns the analysis of form: a system is a difference. The second statement says that a system only needs one single operation, one single type of operation, in order to reproduce the difference between system and environment if the system is to continue to exist...In the case of the social system, we have identified communication as this type of operation. Communication is connected to communication" (48).
There are three movements in system theory: the study of closed systems, the move to open systems and finally to self-referential systems. The move from closed to open took into consideration the impact of environment on system. The article touches on Parson's understanding of boundary maintenance, where the system was not an "essence" but rather a process of establishing an outside and an inside. What about the more radical understanding of systems? "Now one can say: a system is the difference between system and environment" (38).
"I thus begin with the claim that a system is difference-the difference between system and environment" (38).
Theories on differentiation are explored, and Luhmann settles on those of George Spencer Brown. These theories involve a mark, which represents a distinction. Luhmann describes these as marks on a paper. There are laws. The "law of calling" states that, "...if I repeat the same distinction (the same mark) several times, then the value of the repeated distinctions taken together is equal to the value of one single distinction" (41). The "Law of Crossing". "A mark can be crossed within the boundary it marks and thus, as it were, be negated. This means that a second distinction can be applied to the first one in such a manner that the original distinction is cancelled" (41-2). The mark of Spencer Brown is a 90 degree angle, a vertical line connected to a horizontal line.
The third concept introduced was originally introduced by Kauffman (1987) and it is an arrow that has been bent to become a self-referential circle.
The distinction has two parts: "...namely the distinction proper, marked by the vertical line, and the indication, marked by the horizontal line" (44).
"...the first point that we enter under the heading 'applications to systems theory' is: a system is a form with two sides" (46).
"Let me summarize these two points once again. The first statement concerns the analysis of form: a system is a difference. The second statement says that a system only needs one single operation, one single type of operation, in order to reproduce the difference between system and environment if the system is to continue to exist...In the case of the social system, we have identified communication as this type of operation. Communication is connected to communication" (48).
Friday, June 12, 2009
Phelan: What is Complexity Science, Really?
Phelan, SE. 2001. What is complexity science, really? Emergence 3, no. 1: 120-136.
"It is my contention that much of the work in complexity theory has indeed been pseudo-science, that is, many writers in this field have used the symbols and methods of complexity science...to give the illusion of science even though they lack supporting evidence and plausibility" (120).
"The purpose of this article is twofold: to provide a working definition of complexity science; and to use this definition to differentiate complexity science from complexity pseudo-science" (120).
The author then explores arguments in philosophy of science, moving from empiricism, to positivism, to historicism, to constructivism. The author argues that complexity theory offers a new way of studying regularities that is methodologically different from previous science. Science has always been about reducing complexity.
"Complexity science posits simple causes for complex effects. At the core of complexity science is the assumption that complexity in the world arises from simple rules. However, these rules...are unlike rules...of traditional science. Generative rules typically determine how a set of artificial agents will behave in their virtual environment over time, including their interaction with other agents. Unlike traditional science, generative rules do not predict an outcome for every state of the world. Instead, generative rules use feedback and learning algorithms to enable the agent to adapt to its environment over time" (130-1).
Three things that complexity science is not: general systems theory, a postmodern science and a set of "metaphores or analogies based on resemblance thinking" (132).
"Complexity science, defined earlier as the search for generative rules, does not embrace the radical holism of systems theory. Complexity scientists are seeking simple rules that underpin complexity...In contrast, systems theory almost seems to surrender to complexity because it is not particularly interested in the identification of regularities. Regularities do not exist in open systems, almost by definition.
"It is my contention that much of the work in complexity theory has indeed been pseudo-science, that is, many writers in this field have used the symbols and methods of complexity science...to give the illusion of science even though they lack supporting evidence and plausibility" (120).
"The purpose of this article is twofold: to provide a working definition of complexity science; and to use this definition to differentiate complexity science from complexity pseudo-science" (120).
The author then explores arguments in philosophy of science, moving from empiricism, to positivism, to historicism, to constructivism. The author argues that complexity theory offers a new way of studying regularities that is methodologically different from previous science. Science has always been about reducing complexity.
"Complexity science posits simple causes for complex effects. At the core of complexity science is the assumption that complexity in the world arises from simple rules. However, these rules...are unlike rules...of traditional science. Generative rules typically determine how a set of artificial agents will behave in their virtual environment over time, including their interaction with other agents. Unlike traditional science, generative rules do not predict an outcome for every state of the world. Instead, generative rules use feedback and learning algorithms to enable the agent to adapt to its environment over time" (130-1).
Three things that complexity science is not: general systems theory, a postmodern science and a set of "metaphores or analogies based on resemblance thinking" (132).
"Complexity science, defined earlier as the search for generative rules, does not embrace the radical holism of systems theory. Complexity scientists are seeking simple rules that underpin complexity...In contrast, systems theory almost seems to surrender to complexity because it is not particularly interested in the identification of regularities. Regularities do not exist in open systems, almost by definition.
Axelrod and Cohen: Harnessing Complexity
Axelrod, RM, and MD Cohen. 2001. Harnessing complexity: Organizational implications of a scientific frontier. Basic Books.
Complex Adaptive Systems are systems where there are a large number of participants interacting in various ways. There may be a wide variety of participants. Old patterns may continue forward, or they may change quickly.
The goal is not to try to overcome complexity, but to harness complexity.
The authors claim to make important contributions to the field of complexity: "These include the critical role of nonrandom interactions in adaptation, the contrast of biological with informational copying, the relationships between credit allocation and measures of performance" (xii-xiii).
"In our analysis there are there key processes in a Complex Adaptive System. These key processes provide the basis of our three central chapters: Variation, Interaction, and Selection. We see variation, interaction, and selection as interlocking sets of concepts that can generate productive actions in a world that cannot be fully understood. We show how the very complexity that makes the world hard to understand provides opportunities and resources for improvement over time" (xv).
In the first chapter of this pop book, the vocabulary of the framework is explicated: agents, strategy (how agents respond to environment), population, system, selection, adaptation, co-evolution (4-8).
Complex Adaptive Systems make prediction difficult if not impossible.
"Agents, of a variety of types, use their strategies, in patterned interaction, with each other and with artifacts. Performance measures on the resulting events drive the selection of agents and/or strategies through processes of error-prone copying and recombination, thus changing the frequencies of the types within the system" (154).
Complex Adaptive Systems are systems where there are a large number of participants interacting in various ways. There may be a wide variety of participants. Old patterns may continue forward, or they may change quickly.
The goal is not to try to overcome complexity, but to harness complexity.
The authors claim to make important contributions to the field of complexity: "These include the critical role of nonrandom interactions in adaptation, the contrast of biological with informational copying, the relationships between credit allocation and measures of performance" (xii-xiii).
"In our analysis there are there key processes in a Complex Adaptive System. These key processes provide the basis of our three central chapters: Variation, Interaction, and Selection. We see variation, interaction, and selection as interlocking sets of concepts that can generate productive actions in a world that cannot be fully understood. We show how the very complexity that makes the world hard to understand provides opportunities and resources for improvement over time" (xv).
In the first chapter of this pop book, the vocabulary of the framework is explicated: agents, strategy (how agents respond to environment), population, system, selection, adaptation, co-evolution (4-8).
Complex Adaptive Systems make prediction difficult if not impossible.
"Agents, of a variety of types, use their strategies, in patterned interaction, with each other and with artifacts. Performance measures on the resulting events drive the selection of agents and/or strategies through processes of error-prone copying and recombination, thus changing the frequencies of the types within the system" (154).
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Clemens: Complexity Theory as a Tool for Understanding and Coping with Ethnic Conflict and Development Issues in Post-Soviet Eurasia
Clemens, WC. 2002. Complexity Theory as a Tool for Understanding and Coping with Ethnic Conflict and Development Issues in Post-Soviet Eurasia. International Journal of Peace Studies 7, no. 2: 1-16.
This piece uses complexity theory to explore why some central Asian transitioned away from the USSR more peacefully than others. The focus of analysis is on the concept of "fitness".
"Complexity theory is anchored in nine basic concepts: fitness, coevolution, emergence, agent-based systems, self-organization, self-organized criticality, punctuated equilibrium, and fitness landscapes (Lewin, 1992; Kauffman, 1993, 1995, 2000; Axelrod, 1997; Axelrod and Cohen, 1999; Lewin and Regine, 2000; Richards, 2000)" (3).
Fitness, as a concept drawn from complexity theory, emphasizes how the organizational structure of a system determines its ability to cope with change. Organizational structures can vary from very chaotic to very hierarchically ordered. Fit systems are those that fall between chaos and rigidity.
This piece uses complexity theory to explore why some central Asian transitioned away from the USSR more peacefully than others. The focus of analysis is on the concept of "fitness".
"Complexity theory is anchored in nine basic concepts: fitness, coevolution, emergence, agent-based systems, self-organization, self-organized criticality, punctuated equilibrium, and fitness landscapes (Lewin, 1992; Kauffman, 1993, 1995, 2000; Axelrod, 1997; Axelrod and Cohen, 1999; Lewin and Regine, 2000; Richards, 2000)" (3).
Fitness, as a concept drawn from complexity theory, emphasizes how the organizational structure of a system determines its ability to cope with change. Organizational structures can vary from very chaotic to very hierarchically ordered. Fit systems are those that fall between chaos and rigidity.
Monday, December 15, 2008
Cerny: Globalization and the Changing Logic of Collective Action
PG Cerny, “Globalization and the changing logic of collective action,” Theory and Structure in International Political Economy: An International Organization Reader 49, no. 4 (1999): 595-625.
Globalization has changed the way that rational decisions are made. No longer is the state the unitary locus of collective action problems. There are not a plurality of structural drivers of decision making.
"Globalization is defined here as a set of economic and political structures and processes deriving from the changing character of the goods and assets that comprise the base of the international political economy--in particular, the increasing structural differentiation of those goods and assets" (596).
"In particular, I argue that the more that the scale of goods and assets produced, exchanged and/or used in a particular economic sector or activity diverges from the structural scale of the national state--both from above (the global scale) and from below (the local scale)--and the more that those divergences feed back into each other in complex ways, then the more that the authority, legitimacy, policymaking capacity, and policy-implementing effectiveness of states will be challenged from both without and within. A critical threshold may be crossed when the cumulative effect of globalization in strategically decisive issue-areas undermines the general capacity of the state to pursue the common good or the capacity of the state to be a true civil association; even if this threshold is not crossed, however, it is arguable that the role of the state both as playing field and as unit becomes structurally problematic" (597).
Collective action problems are typically addressed from the level-of-analysis of the agent. Cerny argues that this may not be helpful and instead deploys a structural account of decision making capacity: "Choices are always made within specific 'structured fields of action'" (597).
While all assets are goods and all goods are assets, the distinction made in this piece is between those things meant to be kept for their value, including means of production, and those things intended for exchange. Similar distinctions have been made by others between industry and trade or use value and exchange value.
The history of political-economies of scale is analyzed. This I did not document.
10 hypotheses are put forward that are quite interesting, and rely on a nuanced understanding of system, structure and equilibrium. From the final hypothesis: "Finally, under these conditions the state will lose its structural primacy and autonomy as a unitary actor in the international system. The anarchy of the international system will no longer be one of states competing for power but one of nonfeudal rivalries and asymmetric cooperation among a range of interests and collective agents reflecting differentiated economic activities with diverse goods/assets structures..The main question that remains to be asked is whether such a system will tend toward chaos or toward a certain stability of a plurilateral kind" (625).
Globalization has changed the way that rational decisions are made. No longer is the state the unitary locus of collective action problems. There are not a plurality of structural drivers of decision making.
"Globalization is defined here as a set of economic and political structures and processes deriving from the changing character of the goods and assets that comprise the base of the international political economy--in particular, the increasing structural differentiation of those goods and assets" (596).
"In particular, I argue that the more that the scale of goods and assets produced, exchanged and/or used in a particular economic sector or activity diverges from the structural scale of the national state--both from above (the global scale) and from below (the local scale)--and the more that those divergences feed back into each other in complex ways, then the more that the authority, legitimacy, policymaking capacity, and policy-implementing effectiveness of states will be challenged from both without and within. A critical threshold may be crossed when the cumulative effect of globalization in strategically decisive issue-areas undermines the general capacity of the state to pursue the common good or the capacity of the state to be a true civil association; even if this threshold is not crossed, however, it is arguable that the role of the state both as playing field and as unit becomes structurally problematic" (597).
Collective action problems are typically addressed from the level-of-analysis of the agent. Cerny argues that this may not be helpful and instead deploys a structural account of decision making capacity: "Choices are always made within specific 'structured fields of action'" (597).
While all assets are goods and all goods are assets, the distinction made in this piece is between those things meant to be kept for their value, including means of production, and those things intended for exchange. Similar distinctions have been made by others between industry and trade or use value and exchange value.
The history of political-economies of scale is analyzed. This I did not document.
10 hypotheses are put forward that are quite interesting, and rely on a nuanced understanding of system, structure and equilibrium. From the final hypothesis: "Finally, under these conditions the state will lose its structural primacy and autonomy as a unitary actor in the international system. The anarchy of the international system will no longer be one of states competing for power but one of nonfeudal rivalries and asymmetric cooperation among a range of interests and collective agents reflecting differentiated economic activities with diverse goods/assets structures..The main question that remains to be asked is whether such a system will tend toward chaos or toward a certain stability of a plurilateral kind" (625).
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Jervis: System Effects: Complexity in Political and Social Life
Jervis, R., 1997. System Effects: Complexity in Political and Social Life, Princeton University Press.
“We are dealing with a system when (a) a set of units or elements is interconnected so that changes in some elements or their relations produce changes in other parts of the system, and (b) the entire system exhibits properties and behaviors that are different from those of the parts” (6).
Jervis begins the book with a quote about double hulled ships, and a claim that this will surely decrease oil spills. He makes a general point that the results of double-hulling a ship are to some degree unknown (unknowable?). His point carries over to WWI and deals with causation: the reason countries engaged in war was not singly faceted but complex. “As these cases show, it is difficult to know what will happen in a system, but at minimum we can say that a change at one point will have wide ranging effects” (9).
“The phrase ‘The whole is greater than the sum of its parts; can call up images of metaphysical ‘holism’ and organic metaphors. That is not what I have in mind. If we are dealing with a system, the whole is different from, not greater than, the sum of the parts. Reductionism—seeking to understand the system by looking only at the units and their relations with one another—is not appropriate. Many academic disciplines have come to this conclusion, although often using different terminologies. Economics rests in part on an understanding of the ‘fallacy of composition.’ Biologists who study entire organisms see the world differently than their colleagues who work on the level of cells of molecules. Interactional psychology rests on the parallel sense that what seem to be immutable personality traits are in fact formed by the interaction between the individual and her surroundings, including, if she is in therapy, the behavior of the therapist, which in turn, is influenced by her” (13-4).
However, Jervis does not see emergence as representing the core of his analysis, but rather interconnection. Interconnection represents the overdetermined nature of the relationships between various variables at different levels of analysis. The interconnected nature of all variables in an open system makes it neigh impossible to forecast future events and the results of future interaction.
While this chapter read almost nihilistic/relativist in its approach to understanding the outcomes from these systems, this is clearly not the scope of the remainder of the book. The second chapter deals with system effects, something that I greatly need to read about, but not at this moment.
“We are dealing with a system when (a) a set of units or elements is interconnected so that changes in some elements or their relations produce changes in other parts of the system, and (b) the entire system exhibits properties and behaviors that are different from those of the parts” (6).
Jervis begins the book with a quote about double hulled ships, and a claim that this will surely decrease oil spills. He makes a general point that the results of double-hulling a ship are to some degree unknown (unknowable?). His point carries over to WWI and deals with causation: the reason countries engaged in war was not singly faceted but complex. “As these cases show, it is difficult to know what will happen in a system, but at minimum we can say that a change at one point will have wide ranging effects” (9).
“The phrase ‘The whole is greater than the sum of its parts; can call up images of metaphysical ‘holism’ and organic metaphors. That is not what I have in mind. If we are dealing with a system, the whole is different from, not greater than, the sum of the parts. Reductionism—seeking to understand the system by looking only at the units and their relations with one another—is not appropriate. Many academic disciplines have come to this conclusion, although often using different terminologies. Economics rests in part on an understanding of the ‘fallacy of composition.’ Biologists who study entire organisms see the world differently than their colleagues who work on the level of cells of molecules. Interactional psychology rests on the parallel sense that what seem to be immutable personality traits are in fact formed by the interaction between the individual and her surroundings, including, if she is in therapy, the behavior of the therapist, which in turn, is influenced by her” (13-4).
However, Jervis does not see emergence as representing the core of his analysis, but rather interconnection. Interconnection represents the overdetermined nature of the relationships between various variables at different levels of analysis. The interconnected nature of all variables in an open system makes it neigh impossible to forecast future events and the results of future interaction.
While this chapter read almost nihilistic/relativist in its approach to understanding the outcomes from these systems, this is clearly not the scope of the remainder of the book. The second chapter deals with system effects, something that I greatly need to read about, but not at this moment.
Monday, March 17, 2008
Luhmann: Social Systems
Luhmann, Niklas. (1995). Social systems. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.
"What distinguishes autopoietic systems from machines and the closed systems of classical equilibrium thermodynamics is the recursivity of their operations: they ‘not only produce and change their own structures’ but ‘everything that is used as a unit by the system is produced as a unit by the system itself’” (xx).
“The theory of self-referential systems maintains that systems can differentiate only by self-reference, which is to say, only insofar as systems refer to themselves…in constituting their elements and their elemental operations” (9). “The…distinction between ‘closed’ and ‘open’ systems is replaced by the question of how self-referential closure can create openness” (9).
“Our thesis, namely, that there are systems, can now be narrowed down to: there are self-referential systems…there are systems that have the ability to establish relations with themselves and to differentiate these relations from relations with their environment” (13).
“There is agreement within the discipline today that the point of departure for all systems-theoretical analysis must be the difference between system and environment” (16). “The environment receives its unity through the system and only in relation to the system…Accordingly, the environment has no self-reflection or capacity to act” (17).
“As a paradigm, the difference between system and environment forces systems theory to replace the difference between the whole and its parts with a theory of system differentiation. System differentiation is nothing more than the repetition of system formation within systems” (18) “…the entire system multiplies itself as a multiplicity of system/environment differences” (18).
“The difference between system and environment must be distinguished from a second, equally constitutive difference: namely, the difference between element and relation” (20).
“Just as there are no systems without environments or environments without systems, there are no elements without relational connections or relations without elements” (20).
“Whether the unity of an element should be 0065lained as emergence ‘from below’ or as constitution ‘from above’ seems to be a matter of theoretical dispute. We opt decisively for the latter. Elements are elements only for the system that employs them as units and they are such only through this system. This is formulated in the concept of autopoiesis. One of the most important consequences is that systems of a higher (emergent) order can possess less complexity than systems of a lower order because they determine the unity and number of the elements that compose them’ thus in their own complexity they are independent of their material substratum…Thus emergence is not simply an accumulation of complexity, but rather an interruption and new beginning in the constitution of complexity” (22-3).
“We will call an interconnected collection of elements ‘complex’ when, because of immanent constraints in the elements’ connective capacity, it is no longer possible at any moment to connect every element with every other element” (24).
Autopoiesis: Self referent systems are systems ‘for themselves’, that are, “…independent of the cut of observation by others” (33). “ON the level of this self-referential organization, self-referential systems are closed systems, for they allow no other forms of processing in their self-determination. Thus. Social systems have no use for consciousness, and personal systems no use for frequency changes in the neuronal system” (34).
“The living system is inaccessible to the psychic system; it must itch, hurt, or in some other way attract attention in order to stir another level of system formation—the consciousness of the psychic system into operation” (40).
Chapter 2: Meaning
This chapter only concerns psychic and social systems.
“Psychic and social systems have evolved together. At any time the one kind of system is the necessary environment of the other…Persons cannot emerge and continue to exist without social systems, nor can social systems without persons…Both kinds of systems are ordered according to it [a common achievement, namely, meaning], and for both it si binding as the indispensable, undeniable form of their complexity and self-reference. We call this evolutionary achievement ‘meaning’” (59). Meaning forces a narrowing down of options and leads directly to selection. Anything of importance is perceived vis-Ã -vis meaning.
Meaning exists on the plane between what should be and what is. “…meaning processing constantly shapes anew the meaning-constitutive difference between actuality and potentiality. Meaning is the continual actualization of potentialities” (65).
Information is the key to allowing meaning to be understood as beyond a mere tautology. Meaning is a tautology because it defines itself by the system in that it exists. Meaning is, “…processing of itself by itself” (67). Information is, “…an event that selects system states” (67).
Information is, by definition, something that informs. Thus, once it has been digested by a system, is ceases to be information and essentially dies. Information selects system states, that is, new data that enters the system allows the system to reiterate itself.
“Thus no meaning-constituting system can escape the meaningfulness of all its own processes. But meaning refers to further meaning. The circular closure of these references appears in its unity as the ultimate horizon of all meaning: as the world” (69). The world takes on a character that is transcendent, god-like: “The historical semantics of different concepts of ‘world’ has reflected in many ways this double status of the world as simultaneously containing and transcending itself as description: …the relationship to a God who can be experienced everywhere as the center of the world, but nowhere as its boundary” (69).
Chapter 3: Double Contingency
“…action cannot take place if alter makes his action dependent on how ego acts, and ego wants to connect his action to alter’s. A pure circle of self-referential determination, lacking any further elaboration, leaves action indeterminate, makes it indeterminable. This is not a matter of mere behavioral agreement, nor of coordinating the interests of intentions of different actors. Instead, it concerns a basic condition of possibility for social actions as such. No action can occur without first solving this problem of double contingency…” (103).
The basic situation of double contingency is then simple: two black boxes, by whatever accident, come to have dealing with one another” (109). This situation is very reminiscent of Sartre’s construction of the self’s relation to the other.
Chapter 4: Communication and Action
Are social systems made up of actions, or communications? What is the relationship between the two? “…the basal process of social systems, which produces their elements, can only be communication” (138).
Action is necessary for interpreting communication; communication does not imply action. “The difference between constitution and observation can and must e built back into the theory. In this chapter, the concepts of communication and action accomplished that. Communication is the elemental unit of self-constitution; action is the elemental unit of social systems; self-observation and self-description…Therefore the question of which individuals, atoms, and elements compose social systems cannot be answered more simply. Any simplification at this point would mean a loss in the wealth of references, which a general theory of social systems can hardly afford” (175).
Chapter 5: System and Environment
“Everything that happens belongs to a system (or to many systems) and always at the same time to the environment of other systems...every increase in complexity in one place increases the complexity of the environment for all other systems (177).
Chapter 6: Interpenetration
“This chapter deals with a specific environment of social systems: human beings and their relations to social systems” (210). Relations of interpenetration and binding are a core feature of the relationship between human beings and social systems, as well as human beings and other human beings.
“The foregoing theoretical preparations allow us to formulate a question. We distinguished social interpenetration from interhuman interpenetration. Moreover, by examining problems of complexity and relationships of interpenetration, we explained the advantages of binary schematisms. Our question now is: is there a binary schematism that can serve both kinds of interpenetration at once, that works in a way functionally diffuse enough to reduce the complexity of both social interpenetration and interhuman interpenetration? The answer is yes. This is the special function of morality” (234). “Morality is a symbolic generalization that reduces the full reflexive complexity of doublely contingent ego/alter relations to expressions of esteem and by this generalization open up (1) room for the freeplay of conditionings and (2) the possibility of reconstructing complexity through the binary schematism esteem/distain [seen as the effect of morality on subjects’ view of other, or ego’s view of alter]” (236).
“To be sure, legs remain leg and ears remain ears, despite all sociocultural evolution. As environment, the body is given in advance to society…But as a highly complex agglomeration of systems, one that can therefore be conditioned, the body has a meaning that allows complexity in social systems to appear as available: one immediately sees, takes into account, and anticipates that one can behave in one way or another. But this unity of complexity, as well as this immediacy in orienting to it, are not the body itself; they become a unity and an immediacy only in the difference schemata produced by interpenetration” (251).
Chapter 7: The Individuality of Psychic Systems
Social systems represent the environment for psychic systems. While individualists believe that the psychic system can be observed sans the social system, this account clearly claims that this is not possible. “Every versions of individualist reductionism has encountered the objection that, as reductionism, it cannot be fair to the ‘emergent’ properties of social systems” (256).
“The contention that social systems are not composed of individuals and cannot be created out of bodily or psychic processes does not mean, of course, that there are not individuals in the world of social systems. On the contrary, a theory of self-referential autopoietic social systems provokes the question of psychic systems’ self-referential autopoiesis and with it the question of how psychic systems can establish their self-reproduction, the ‘stream’ of their ‘conscious life,’ from one moment to the next so that its closure is compatible with an environment of social systems” (257).
Chapter 8: Structure and Time
Structure is not a sensible way for a theory of autopoietic systems to develop. Self-referential theories to not fall into the structuralist or structuralist functionalist realm of sociological theories. That structure is being discussed in chapter 8 of this book indicates its relative importance to the theory.
Chapter 9: Contradiction and Conflict
Chapter 10: Society and Interaction
Chapter 11: Self-Reference and Rationality
Chapter 12: Consequences for Epistemology
"What distinguishes autopoietic systems from machines and the closed systems of classical equilibrium thermodynamics is the recursivity of their operations: they ‘not only produce and change their own structures’ but ‘everything that is used as a unit by the system is produced as a unit by the system itself’” (xx).
“The theory of self-referential systems maintains that systems can differentiate only by self-reference, which is to say, only insofar as systems refer to themselves…in constituting their elements and their elemental operations” (9). “The…distinction between ‘closed’ and ‘open’ systems is replaced by the question of how self-referential closure can create openness” (9).
“Our thesis, namely, that there are systems, can now be narrowed down to: there are self-referential systems…there are systems that have the ability to establish relations with themselves and to differentiate these relations from relations with their environment” (13).
“There is agreement within the discipline today that the point of departure for all systems-theoretical analysis must be the difference between system and environment” (16). “The environment receives its unity through the system and only in relation to the system…Accordingly, the environment has no self-reflection or capacity to act” (17).
“As a paradigm, the difference between system and environment forces systems theory to replace the difference between the whole and its parts with a theory of system differentiation. System differentiation is nothing more than the repetition of system formation within systems” (18) “…the entire system multiplies itself as a multiplicity of system/environment differences” (18).
“The difference between system and environment must be distinguished from a second, equally constitutive difference: namely, the difference between element and relation” (20).
“Just as there are no systems without environments or environments without systems, there are no elements without relational connections or relations without elements” (20).
“Whether the unity of an element should be 0065lained as emergence ‘from below’ or as constitution ‘from above’ seems to be a matter of theoretical dispute. We opt decisively for the latter. Elements are elements only for the system that employs them as units and they are such only through this system. This is formulated in the concept of autopoiesis. One of the most important consequences is that systems of a higher (emergent) order can possess less complexity than systems of a lower order because they determine the unity and number of the elements that compose them’ thus in their own complexity they are independent of their material substratum…Thus emergence is not simply an accumulation of complexity, but rather an interruption and new beginning in the constitution of complexity” (22-3).
“We will call an interconnected collection of elements ‘complex’ when, because of immanent constraints in the elements’ connective capacity, it is no longer possible at any moment to connect every element with every other element” (24).
Autopoiesis: Self referent systems are systems ‘for themselves’, that are, “…independent of the cut of observation by others” (33). “ON the level of this self-referential organization, self-referential systems are closed systems, for they allow no other forms of processing in their self-determination. Thus. Social systems have no use for consciousness, and personal systems no use for frequency changes in the neuronal system” (34).
“The living system is inaccessible to the psychic system; it must itch, hurt, or in some other way attract attention in order to stir another level of system formation—the consciousness of the psychic system into operation” (40).
Chapter 2: Meaning
This chapter only concerns psychic and social systems.
“Psychic and social systems have evolved together. At any time the one kind of system is the necessary environment of the other…Persons cannot emerge and continue to exist without social systems, nor can social systems without persons…Both kinds of systems are ordered according to it [a common achievement, namely, meaning], and for both it si binding as the indispensable, undeniable form of their complexity and self-reference. We call this evolutionary achievement ‘meaning’” (59). Meaning forces a narrowing down of options and leads directly to selection. Anything of importance is perceived vis-Ã -vis meaning.
Meaning exists on the plane between what should be and what is. “…meaning processing constantly shapes anew the meaning-constitutive difference between actuality and potentiality. Meaning is the continual actualization of potentialities” (65).
Information is the key to allowing meaning to be understood as beyond a mere tautology. Meaning is a tautology because it defines itself by the system in that it exists. Meaning is, “…processing of itself by itself” (67). Information is, “…an event that selects system states” (67).
Information is, by definition, something that informs. Thus, once it has been digested by a system, is ceases to be information and essentially dies. Information selects system states, that is, new data that enters the system allows the system to reiterate itself.
“Thus no meaning-constituting system can escape the meaningfulness of all its own processes. But meaning refers to further meaning. The circular closure of these references appears in its unity as the ultimate horizon of all meaning: as the world” (69). The world takes on a character that is transcendent, god-like: “The historical semantics of different concepts of ‘world’ has reflected in many ways this double status of the world as simultaneously containing and transcending itself as description: …the relationship to a God who can be experienced everywhere as the center of the world, but nowhere as its boundary” (69).
Chapter 3: Double Contingency
“…action cannot take place if alter makes his action dependent on how ego acts, and ego wants to connect his action to alter’s. A pure circle of self-referential determination, lacking any further elaboration, leaves action indeterminate, makes it indeterminable. This is not a matter of mere behavioral agreement, nor of coordinating the interests of intentions of different actors. Instead, it concerns a basic condition of possibility for social actions as such. No action can occur without first solving this problem of double contingency…” (103).
The basic situation of double contingency is then simple: two black boxes, by whatever accident, come to have dealing with one another” (109). This situation is very reminiscent of Sartre’s construction of the self’s relation to the other.
Chapter 4: Communication and Action
Are social systems made up of actions, or communications? What is the relationship between the two? “…the basal process of social systems, which produces their elements, can only be communication” (138).
Action is necessary for interpreting communication; communication does not imply action. “The difference between constitution and observation can and must e built back into the theory. In this chapter, the concepts of communication and action accomplished that. Communication is the elemental unit of self-constitution; action is the elemental unit of social systems; self-observation and self-description…Therefore the question of which individuals, atoms, and elements compose social systems cannot be answered more simply. Any simplification at this point would mean a loss in the wealth of references, which a general theory of social systems can hardly afford” (175).
Chapter 5: System and Environment
“Everything that happens belongs to a system (or to many systems) and always at the same time to the environment of other systems...every increase in complexity in one place increases the complexity of the environment for all other systems (177).
Chapter 6: Interpenetration
“This chapter deals with a specific environment of social systems: human beings and their relations to social systems” (210). Relations of interpenetration and binding are a core feature of the relationship between human beings and social systems, as well as human beings and other human beings.
“The foregoing theoretical preparations allow us to formulate a question. We distinguished social interpenetration from interhuman interpenetration. Moreover, by examining problems of complexity and relationships of interpenetration, we explained the advantages of binary schematisms. Our question now is: is there a binary schematism that can serve both kinds of interpenetration at once, that works in a way functionally diffuse enough to reduce the complexity of both social interpenetration and interhuman interpenetration? The answer is yes. This is the special function of morality” (234). “Morality is a symbolic generalization that reduces the full reflexive complexity of doublely contingent ego/alter relations to expressions of esteem and by this generalization open up (1) room for the freeplay of conditionings and (2) the possibility of reconstructing complexity through the binary schematism esteem/distain [seen as the effect of morality on subjects’ view of other, or ego’s view of alter]” (236).
“To be sure, legs remain leg and ears remain ears, despite all sociocultural evolution. As environment, the body is given in advance to society…But as a highly complex agglomeration of systems, one that can therefore be conditioned, the body has a meaning that allows complexity in social systems to appear as available: one immediately sees, takes into account, and anticipates that one can behave in one way or another. But this unity of complexity, as well as this immediacy in orienting to it, are not the body itself; they become a unity and an immediacy only in the difference schemata produced by interpenetration” (251).
Chapter 7: The Individuality of Psychic Systems
Social systems represent the environment for psychic systems. While individualists believe that the psychic system can be observed sans the social system, this account clearly claims that this is not possible. “Every versions of individualist reductionism has encountered the objection that, as reductionism, it cannot be fair to the ‘emergent’ properties of social systems” (256).
“The contention that social systems are not composed of individuals and cannot be created out of bodily or psychic processes does not mean, of course, that there are not individuals in the world of social systems. On the contrary, a theory of self-referential autopoietic social systems provokes the question of psychic systems’ self-referential autopoiesis and with it the question of how psychic systems can establish their self-reproduction, the ‘stream’ of their ‘conscious life,’ from one moment to the next so that its closure is compatible with an environment of social systems” (257).
Chapter 8: Structure and Time
Structure is not a sensible way for a theory of autopoietic systems to develop. Self-referential theories to not fall into the structuralist or structuralist functionalist realm of sociological theories. That structure is being discussed in chapter 8 of this book indicates its relative importance to the theory.
Chapter 9: Contradiction and Conflict
Chapter 10: Society and Interaction
Chapter 11: Self-Reference and Rationality
Chapter 12: Consequences for Epistemology
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Rossbach: Corpus Mysticism
Rossbach, Stefan. (2004). ""Corpus Mysticum": Nicklas Luhmann's evocation of world society". In M. Albert & L. Hilkermeier (Eds.), Observing international relations : Niklas Luhmann and world politics (pp. xiv, 254 p.). London ; New York: Routledge.
The thrust of this chapter is that Luhmann’s creation of international society was through speculation, vision and mysticism. “I will argue that Luhmann is representative of a tradition of thought known as ‘contemplative gnosis’…I will argue that there is a fundamental flaw in Luhmann’s understanding of society because he failed to explain how the ‘totality of communication’ could possibly constitute a ‘system’” (44).
Rossbach looks at how Luhmann’s theory may have been heavily influenced by mystical thinkers, specifically Nicholas of Cusa. Luhmann’s thoughts vis-Ã -vis autopoiesis originated after his possible influence by this mystical thinker. Theories were meant to help people see the ‘blind spots’ in history. Cusa called the oneness of observer and observation God. Rossbach claims that Luhmann calls this “world” (47).
Rossbach claims that Luhmann himself understands that his approach is devoid of any foundation. He also claims that such universal theorizing has a long history in mysticism. He concludes by claiming that the theory is flawed, rooted in mysticism, though incredibly complex.
The thrust of this chapter is that Luhmann’s creation of international society was through speculation, vision and mysticism. “I will argue that Luhmann is representative of a tradition of thought known as ‘contemplative gnosis’…I will argue that there is a fundamental flaw in Luhmann’s understanding of society because he failed to explain how the ‘totality of communication’ could possibly constitute a ‘system’” (44).
Rossbach looks at how Luhmann’s theory may have been heavily influenced by mystical thinkers, specifically Nicholas of Cusa. Luhmann’s thoughts vis-Ã -vis autopoiesis originated after his possible influence by this mystical thinker. Theories were meant to help people see the ‘blind spots’ in history. Cusa called the oneness of observer and observation God. Rossbach claims that Luhmann calls this “world” (47).
Rossbach claims that Luhmann himself understands that his approach is devoid of any foundation. He also claims that such universal theorizing has a long history in mysticism. He concludes by claiming that the theory is flawed, rooted in mysticism, though incredibly complex.
Diez: Politics, Modern Systems Theory and the Critical Purpose of IR Theory
Diez, Thomas. (2004). "Politics, Modern Systems Theory and the critical purpose of International Relations Theory". In M. Albert & L. Hilkermeier (Eds.), Observing international relations : Niklas Luhmann and world politics (pp. xiv, 254 p.). London ; New York: Routledge.
Diez sees the added value of a Modern Systems Theory (MST) approach coupled with an IR approach in the following ways: “(a) the problemetization of the nation state as the basic unit of political organization and international politics, and especially the idea that nations are normatively integrated; (b) the provision of a global framework for the analysis of an increasingly functionally organized society in which territorial demarcations become less important; and (c) the advancement of a radically constructivist epistemology, which however enables scientific engagement in the form of second-order observations” (30). Diez does not believe that there is much to gain from any of this. “My argument in this chapter is that the similarities between work loosely grouped under the ‘poststructuralim’ label and MST mean that we can do most of what MST would enable us to do on the basis of a different set of approaches that is already present in IR theory, while we would lose the critical impetus provided by poststructuralism if we bought into MST wholesale” (30-1).
He then looks at Foucault and Luhmann and agrees that there must be a project that does not strive towards universal norms and that the job of the theorist is to open space for individuals to claim their own identities. “…there is a lot more room for agency in discursive accounts of international politics if they are conceptualized in a poststructuralist frame than there is in MST” (32). MST restricts the activist positions that are possible to take with Luhmann’s approach.
“In short, my suggestion is that a Foucauldian approach is not only able to illuminate the issues for which IR theorists of a critical persuasion may want to consult Luhmann, but that it is in fact better suited to doing so, since it does not come with a whole package of rather problematic assumptions” (42). The MST approach depoliticizes theory and removes the agent, according to Diez. Foucault already provided a critique of structure and overdetermined power. Luhmann just reiterates this with more constraints and a different set of language.
Diez sees the added value of a Modern Systems Theory (MST) approach coupled with an IR approach in the following ways: “(a) the problemetization of the nation state as the basic unit of political organization and international politics, and especially the idea that nations are normatively integrated; (b) the provision of a global framework for the analysis of an increasingly functionally organized society in which territorial demarcations become less important; and (c) the advancement of a radically constructivist epistemology, which however enables scientific engagement in the form of second-order observations” (30). Diez does not believe that there is much to gain from any of this. “My argument in this chapter is that the similarities between work loosely grouped under the ‘poststructuralim’ label and MST mean that we can do most of what MST would enable us to do on the basis of a different set of approaches that is already present in IR theory, while we would lose the critical impetus provided by poststructuralism if we bought into MST wholesale” (30-1).
He then looks at Foucault and Luhmann and agrees that there must be a project that does not strive towards universal norms and that the job of the theorist is to open space for individuals to claim their own identities. “…there is a lot more room for agency in discursive accounts of international politics if they are conceptualized in a poststructuralist frame than there is in MST” (32). MST restricts the activist positions that are possible to take with Luhmann’s approach.
“In short, my suggestion is that a Foucauldian approach is not only able to illuminate the issues for which IR theorists of a critical persuasion may want to consult Luhmann, but that it is in fact better suited to doing so, since it does not come with a whole package of rather problematic assumptions” (42). The MST approach depoliticizes theory and removes the agent, according to Diez. Foucault already provided a critique of structure and overdetermined power. Luhmann just reiterates this with more constraints and a different set of language.
Albert: On the Modern Systems Theory of Society and IR
Albert, Mathias. (2004). "On the Modern Systems Theory of society and IR: contacts and disjunctures between different kinds of theorizing". In M. Albert & L. Hilkermeier (Eds.), Observing international relations : Niklas Luhmann and world politics (pp. xiv, 254 p.). London ; New York: Routledge.
From Albert’s Introduction to the Volume:
From the onset, this volume concludes that Modern Systems Theory (MST) and IR are not well suited for each other: “The chapters in this volume are an attempt to provide possible answers to this question [why bring another approach to IR?], particularly also giving room to answers which in the end conclude that Modern Systems Theory and International Relations make uneasy bedfellows” (1).
Two reasons why IR hasn’t taken up MST are given: firstly, it has been late to be translated into English, and, secondly, that it is, “an extremely complex kind of theory; as a theory of society, it consists of three different sets of theories connected to each other: a theory of social systems, a theory of social differentiation, and a theory of social evolution” (2). Understanding the limited interactions between MST and IR, this volume attempts to, “…stage a number of encounters between element s of Luhmann’s theory of society and parts of contemporary IR theorizing” (3).
Chapter 2: On the Modern Systems Theory of society and IR: contacts and disjunctures between different kinds of theorizing
There are two reasons that Albert believes that a fruitful encounter with Luhmann may be ripe in IR: Firstly, ideas of international society are increasingly of importance and secondly, because MST provides a very through and all-encompassing theory of society.
The idea of globalization plays a major role in IR theory. Albert wonders whether or not MST is applicable to IR because it doen’t see national separation as being anything beyond a social construct. World Society is the largest iteration of human system organization, and the nation doesn’t play much of a role. Thus, the idea of “international relations”, “…becomes highly problematic” (16).
Albert then looks at classic sociological visions of society, initially focusing on the post-Westphalian version of state society. However, these models of society are limited because they do not see the global system as a whole.
“For MST, all social systems are constituted by a difference between system and environment and are communicative systems” (17). “…communication here is conceptualized as being produced and reproduced in recursive networks of communication…communication is thus seen as being produced within the system alone” (17). “If social systems are constituted by communication and by communication alone, then society is the highest-order social system which comprises all communication” (17).
Albert finds that the difference between MST and IR is not that one is more substantive than the other, but rather that it there is a qualitative difference: “It is different in kind regarding ‘what’ is observed and ‘how’ it is observed” (21). In MST, the observer is also observed.
Also, Albert believes that it may be possible to prove MST empirically wrong. Because MST believes that functional differentiation is the most important differentiation between lower and upper forms of organization, there is less of a focus on societal differentiation. If it can be shown that the world is comprised of different societies, then MST may be wrong. Put concisely by Albert: “…if world society is conceived in the Luhmannian sense of being constituted by the fact that all communication can connect to all other communication, that, so to speak, the ‘world’ is embedded or implied in each communication, and if this world society achieves its unity only through its internal differentiation which is primarily a functional differentiation between its subsystems, then it makes no sense to speak of societies in the plural” (24). From this reading of Luhmann, there are no interesting or meaningful readings of IR.
MST provides a comprehensive view of world society. IR provides a comprehensive view of international political relations. The two are, in a way, mutually exclusive (28-9).
From Albert’s Introduction to the Volume:
From the onset, this volume concludes that Modern Systems Theory (MST) and IR are not well suited for each other: “The chapters in this volume are an attempt to provide possible answers to this question [why bring another approach to IR?], particularly also giving room to answers which in the end conclude that Modern Systems Theory and International Relations make uneasy bedfellows” (1).
Two reasons why IR hasn’t taken up MST are given: firstly, it has been late to be translated into English, and, secondly, that it is, “an extremely complex kind of theory; as a theory of society, it consists of three different sets of theories connected to each other: a theory of social systems, a theory of social differentiation, and a theory of social evolution” (2). Understanding the limited interactions between MST and IR, this volume attempts to, “…stage a number of encounters between element s of Luhmann’s theory of society and parts of contemporary IR theorizing” (3).
Chapter 2: On the Modern Systems Theory of society and IR: contacts and disjunctures between different kinds of theorizing
There are two reasons that Albert believes that a fruitful encounter with Luhmann may be ripe in IR: Firstly, ideas of international society are increasingly of importance and secondly, because MST provides a very through and all-encompassing theory of society.
The idea of globalization plays a major role in IR theory. Albert wonders whether or not MST is applicable to IR because it doen’t see national separation as being anything beyond a social construct. World Society is the largest iteration of human system organization, and the nation doesn’t play much of a role. Thus, the idea of “international relations”, “…becomes highly problematic” (16).
Albert then looks at classic sociological visions of society, initially focusing on the post-Westphalian version of state society. However, these models of society are limited because they do not see the global system as a whole.
“For MST, all social systems are constituted by a difference between system and environment and are communicative systems” (17). “…communication here is conceptualized as being produced and reproduced in recursive networks of communication…communication is thus seen as being produced within the system alone” (17). “If social systems are constituted by communication and by communication alone, then society is the highest-order social system which comprises all communication” (17).
Albert finds that the difference between MST and IR is not that one is more substantive than the other, but rather that it there is a qualitative difference: “It is different in kind regarding ‘what’ is observed and ‘how’ it is observed” (21). In MST, the observer is also observed.
Also, Albert believes that it may be possible to prove MST empirically wrong. Because MST believes that functional differentiation is the most important differentiation between lower and upper forms of organization, there is less of a focus on societal differentiation. If it can be shown that the world is comprised of different societies, then MST may be wrong. Put concisely by Albert: “…if world society is conceived in the Luhmannian sense of being constituted by the fact that all communication can connect to all other communication, that, so to speak, the ‘world’ is embedded or implied in each communication, and if this world society achieves its unity only through its internal differentiation which is primarily a functional differentiation between its subsystems, then it makes no sense to speak of societies in the plural” (24). From this reading of Luhmann, there are no interesting or meaningful readings of IR.
MST provides a comprehensive view of world society. IR provides a comprehensive view of international political relations. The two are, in a way, mutually exclusive (28-9).
Hayek: Law, Legislation and Liberty: Chapter 2: Cosmos and Taxis
Hayek, Friedrich A. Von. (1982). Law, legislation, and liberty : a new statement of the liberal principles of justice and political economy (New pbk. ed.). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Chapter 2: Cosmos and Taxis
Hayek spends this chapter distinguishing between two types of orders: those that are made and those that are grown. “By ‘order’ we shall throughout describe a state of affairs in which a multiplicity of elements of various kinds are so related to each other that we may learn from our acquaintance with some spatial or temporal part of the whole to form correct expectations concerning the rest, or at least expectations which have a good chance of proving correct” (36). He claims that the concept of order has been hijacked by those who favor authoritarianism, as they see it relating to command and obedience. “A spontaneous order…has in many respects properties different from those of a made order” (36).
Spontaneous orders have been studied for a long time in the field of economics and biology, claims Hayek. These orders focus on self-organization and self-generation. These orders are endogenous to a system. On the other hand, made orders are exogenously controlled; these are constructions and can be called organizations.
The title of this chapter derives from Greek words that separate made orders from spontaneous orders. “Taxis” is an order that is constructed, much like, “an order of battle”. “Kosmos”, on the other hand, is a grown order, or a spontaneous order.
“One of our main contentions will be that very complex orders, comprising more particular facts than any brain could ascertain or manipulate, can be brought about only through forces inducing the formation of spontaneous orders” (38). These systems have drivers that abstractly relate to one another. To preserve these orders, all one needs, “…is that a certain structure of relationships be maintained…” (39). These orders have no overarching purpose, or telos (not his words), though they can prove very handy for individuals and groups of people. These orders involve the regular interaction of small units that are relatively consistent. “The important point is that the regularity of the conduct of the elements will determine the general character of the resulting order but not all the detail of its particular manifestation” (40). And, to prediction: “…we shall be able to predict only the general character of the order that will form itself, and not the particular position which any particular element will occupy relatively to any other element” (40).
Spontaneous orders arise because all of the elements that are compromise these orders obey simple sets of rules in their, “…responses to their immediate environment” (43). Some of these rules, for example, can be seen in human interaction in the market place. “In a modern society based on exchange, one of the chief regularities in individual behavior will result from the similarity of situations in which most individuals find themselves in working to earn an income; which means that they will normally prefer a larger return from their efforts to a smaller one, and often that they will increase their efforts in a particular direction if the prospects of return improve. This is a rule that will be followed at least with sufficient frequency to impress u8pon such a society an order of a certain kind” (45).
While society has the features of a spontaneous order, a government, or made order, also exists. These two orders co-exist. The example of a cell and a cell’s nucleus is used to explain this relationship. The government is meant to fill the role of a, “maintenance squad of a factory” (47), or the group that keeps everything free to operate smoothly on its own.
Organizations, just like spontaneous orders, also rely on rules. This is so that the corporate knowledge can exceed that of any individual. This knowledge is far and above what any one individual can possess, and thus it is impossible to constrain through made orders. A spontaneous order, “…arises from each element balancing all the various factors operating on it and by adjusting all its various actions to each other, a balance which will be destroyed if some of the actions are determined by another agency on the basis of different knowledge and in the service of different ends. What the general argument against ‘interference’ thus amounts to is that, although we can endeavor to improve a spontaneous order by revising the general rules on which it rests, and can supplement its results by the efforts of various organizations, we cannot improve the results by specific commands that deprive its members of the possibility of using their knowledge for their purposes” (51).
Humans can not know the effects of their policy interventions. Thus, “…the only possibility of transcending the capacity of individual minds is to rely on those super-personal ‘self-organizing’ forces which create spontaneous orders” (54).
Chapter 2: Cosmos and Taxis
Hayek spends this chapter distinguishing between two types of orders: those that are made and those that are grown. “By ‘order’ we shall throughout describe a state of affairs in which a multiplicity of elements of various kinds are so related to each other that we may learn from our acquaintance with some spatial or temporal part of the whole to form correct expectations concerning the rest, or at least expectations which have a good chance of proving correct” (36). He claims that the concept of order has been hijacked by those who favor authoritarianism, as they see it relating to command and obedience. “A spontaneous order…has in many respects properties different from those of a made order” (36).
Spontaneous orders have been studied for a long time in the field of economics and biology, claims Hayek. These orders focus on self-organization and self-generation. These orders are endogenous to a system. On the other hand, made orders are exogenously controlled; these are constructions and can be called organizations.
The title of this chapter derives from Greek words that separate made orders from spontaneous orders. “Taxis” is an order that is constructed, much like, “an order of battle”. “Kosmos”, on the other hand, is a grown order, or a spontaneous order.
“One of our main contentions will be that very complex orders, comprising more particular facts than any brain could ascertain or manipulate, can be brought about only through forces inducing the formation of spontaneous orders” (38). These systems have drivers that abstractly relate to one another. To preserve these orders, all one needs, “…is that a certain structure of relationships be maintained…” (39). These orders have no overarching purpose, or telos (not his words), though they can prove very handy for individuals and groups of people. These orders involve the regular interaction of small units that are relatively consistent. “The important point is that the regularity of the conduct of the elements will determine the general character of the resulting order but not all the detail of its particular manifestation” (40). And, to prediction: “…we shall be able to predict only the general character of the order that will form itself, and not the particular position which any particular element will occupy relatively to any other element” (40).
Spontaneous orders arise because all of the elements that are compromise these orders obey simple sets of rules in their, “…responses to their immediate environment” (43). Some of these rules, for example, can be seen in human interaction in the market place. “In a modern society based on exchange, one of the chief regularities in individual behavior will result from the similarity of situations in which most individuals find themselves in working to earn an income; which means that they will normally prefer a larger return from their efforts to a smaller one, and often that they will increase their efforts in a particular direction if the prospects of return improve. This is a rule that will be followed at least with sufficient frequency to impress u8pon such a society an order of a certain kind” (45).
While society has the features of a spontaneous order, a government, or made order, also exists. These two orders co-exist. The example of a cell and a cell’s nucleus is used to explain this relationship. The government is meant to fill the role of a, “maintenance squad of a factory” (47), or the group that keeps everything free to operate smoothly on its own.
Organizations, just like spontaneous orders, also rely on rules. This is so that the corporate knowledge can exceed that of any individual. This knowledge is far and above what any one individual can possess, and thus it is impossible to constrain through made orders. A spontaneous order, “…arises from each element balancing all the various factors operating on it and by adjusting all its various actions to each other, a balance which will be destroyed if some of the actions are determined by another agency on the basis of different knowledge and in the service of different ends. What the general argument against ‘interference’ thus amounts to is that, although we can endeavor to improve a spontaneous order by revising the general rules on which it rests, and can supplement its results by the efforts of various organizations, we cannot improve the results by specific commands that deprive its members of the possibility of using their knowledge for their purposes” (51).
Humans can not know the effects of their policy interventions. Thus, “…the only possibility of transcending the capacity of individual minds is to rely on those super-personal ‘self-organizing’ forces which create spontaneous orders” (54).
Luisi: The Emergence of Life: Autopoiesis: The Logic of Cellular Life
Luisi, P. L. (2006). The emergence of life : from chemical origins to synthetic biology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Chapter 8: Autopoiesis: The Logic of Cellular Life
Autopoiesis was coined by Varela and Maturana in the early 1970’s . It did not initially receive much attention, but slowly began to creep into scientific discourse. Probably most notably, it would used by Luhmann (1984) to describe social systems.
Initially, it was used as an analysis of cellular life. Cells are one of the basic building blocks of life on earth, and the simplest cells can be incredibly complex. On the outside of the cell lies the membrane, which is semi-permeable. “The notion of boundary is, in fact, one central concept in the theory of autopoiesis. Inside the boundary of a cell, many reactions and correspondingly many chemical transformations occur. However, despite all these chemical processes, the cell always maintains its own identity during its homeostasis period. This is because the cell…regenerates within its own boundary all those chemicals that are being destroyed or transformed…” (158). “The chain of processes occurring inside the boundary essentially serves the purpose of self-sustenance, or auto-maintenance. Of course, this takes pace at the expense of nutrients and energy coming from the medium. …the cell is a dissipative, open system” (158).
“An autopoietic unit is a system that is capable of sustaining itself due to an inner network of reaction that regenerate the system’s components” (158). A definition by Maturana: “When you regard a living system you always find a network of processes or molecules that interact in such a way as to produce the very network that produced them and that determine its boundary. Such a network I call autopoietic. Whenever you encounter a network whose operations eventually produce itself as a result, you are facing an autopoietic system. It produces itself. The system is open to the input of matter but closed with regard to the dynamics of the relations that generate it” (158).
Varela identifies three criterion for autopoietic systems: it must have a semi-permeable boundary, the boundary must have been produced by the system and that this boundary must encompass reactions, “that regenerate the components of the system” (159). This excludes viruses, for example, as being able to be defined as autopoietic, nor is a crystal.
There is then a discussion of autopoiesis and cognition/consciousness.
Social autopoiesis is then explored. “Consider, for example, a political party, or a family, whereby the rules that define a party o a family can be seen as a kind of boundary given by the social structure itself. The whole system enjoys a dynamic equilibrium, as certain members leave the structure, and new people come in, and are transformed into steady members by the binding rules of the party or of the family. There is a regeneration from within, there is the defense of the self-identity; the metaphor of the living cell applies. Also, in all these systems, certain characteristic features of biology can be recognized, such as the notion of emergence—the family being an emergent property arising from the organization of single individuals, etc” (175-6).
Chapter 8: Autopoiesis: The Logic of Cellular Life
Autopoiesis was coined by Varela and Maturana in the early 1970’s . It did not initially receive much attention, but slowly began to creep into scientific discourse. Probably most notably, it would used by Luhmann (1984) to describe social systems.
Initially, it was used as an analysis of cellular life. Cells are one of the basic building blocks of life on earth, and the simplest cells can be incredibly complex. On the outside of the cell lies the membrane, which is semi-permeable. “The notion of boundary is, in fact, one central concept in the theory of autopoiesis. Inside the boundary of a cell, many reactions and correspondingly many chemical transformations occur. However, despite all these chemical processes, the cell always maintains its own identity during its homeostasis period. This is because the cell…regenerates within its own boundary all those chemicals that are being destroyed or transformed…” (158). “The chain of processes occurring inside the boundary essentially serves the purpose of self-sustenance, or auto-maintenance. Of course, this takes pace at the expense of nutrients and energy coming from the medium. …the cell is a dissipative, open system” (158).
“An autopoietic unit is a system that is capable of sustaining itself due to an inner network of reaction that regenerate the system’s components” (158). A definition by Maturana: “When you regard a living system you always find a network of processes or molecules that interact in such a way as to produce the very network that produced them and that determine its boundary. Such a network I call autopoietic. Whenever you encounter a network whose operations eventually produce itself as a result, you are facing an autopoietic system. It produces itself. The system is open to the input of matter but closed with regard to the dynamics of the relations that generate it” (158).
Varela identifies three criterion for autopoietic systems: it must have a semi-permeable boundary, the boundary must have been produced by the system and that this boundary must encompass reactions, “that regenerate the components of the system” (159). This excludes viruses, for example, as being able to be defined as autopoietic, nor is a crystal.
There is then a discussion of autopoiesis and cognition/consciousness.
Social autopoiesis is then explored. “Consider, for example, a political party, or a family, whereby the rules that define a party o a family can be seen as a kind of boundary given by the social structure itself. The whole system enjoys a dynamic equilibrium, as certain members leave the structure, and new people come in, and are transformed into steady members by the binding rules of the party or of the family. There is a regeneration from within, there is the defense of the self-identity; the metaphor of the living cell applies. Also, in all these systems, certain characteristic features of biology can be recognized, such as the notion of emergence—the family being an emergent property arising from the organization of single individuals, etc” (175-6).
Luisi: The Emergence of Life: Chapter 6: The Notion of Emergence
Luisi, P. L. (2006). The emergence of life : from chemical origins to synthetic biology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Chapter 6: The Notion of Emergence
This book attempts to make a bridge from chemistry to biology, and deploys the concept of emergence and self-organizing systems in that process.
“The term ‘emergence’ describes the onset of novel properties that arise when a higher level of complexity is formed from components of lower complexity, where those properties are not present. This is often summarized in the popular assertion that the ‘whole is more than the sum of the parts’, and/or with the vague term ‘holism’” (112).
Luisi then distinguishes between two forms of discussions relating to emergence: the ontic and the epistemological (113). He claims that his argument will deal with the epistemological argument, as it is more practical and applicable.
Luisi also approaches the concept of complexity theory. He also claims that he will not pursue this in much depth but does provide a simple definition: “…a complex system is seen as a hierarchic system, i.e., a system composed of subsystems, which in turn have their own subsystems, and so on” (113).
He then looks at the relationship between emergence and reductionism. Typically, “reductionism and emergence are presented as two opposite fronts: whereas emergence deals with the onset of novel properties, which are not present in the basic components, and as such has an upwards direction, reductionism generally looks down from a certain level of complexity claiming to explain each level on the basis of the lower ones” (116). “…the main point of opposition between emergence and reductionism concerns the problem of properties. There is nothing wrong, in principle, with reductionism when it stops at the level of structure: we can all agree that water consists of hydrogen and oxygen. The problem with reductionism is with the claim that the properties of water can be reduced to the properties of hydrogen and oxygen, and those to the properties of more elementary particles” (117).
Luisi then moves onto prediction: is it possible to foresee the emergence of water from hydrogen and oxygen either a priori or a posteriori? Some see the relationship between emergent properties and original properties as being unexplainable. This, Luisi calls either strong emergence or radical emergence (118). Weak emergence, on the other hand, “…the relationship between the whole and the parts may not be established because of technical difficulties, such as the lack of computational power or insufficient progress of our skills” (118). Some are critical of strong emergence because it seems to associate “magical” powers in the realm of causation between lower and upper levels of organization. Luisi chimes in: “Personally, I believe that the discrimination between a matter of principle (strong emergence), and a matter of practical difficulty (weak emergence), is not always possible—and perhaps it does not always make sense” (118). “…weak emergence si not distinguishable from strong emergence” (118-9). We can accept the premise of strong emergence and avoid the necessary reference to mysterious causality, if we address it in terms of our limited capabilities.
The discussion then moves to downward causation, which is seen as being the counterpart of emergence. “It is generally accepted that the development of emergent properties, which is an upward (or bottom-up) causality, is attended by a downward—or top-down—causality stream” (119). Some associate this with cyclical causality.
Non-linear systems of development are explored. Prigogine is said to present a system of development referred to as dissipative structures. These structures are understood as, “…an open system that is in itself far from equilibrium, maintaining, however, a form of stability…In more complex systems, depending on the initial conditions and fluctuations of the energy flow, the system in its dynamic behavior may encounter a point of instability—the bifurcation point—at which it can branch off with the emergence of new forms of structure and properties” (120).
In conclusion: “The reason why this [non-predictability] is important lies win the fact that novel, unpredicted properties can arise from the constitution of complexity. In other words, the fact that we cannot foresee novel emergent properties also means…that there might be a vast arsenal of unforeseeable properties that may arise from the intelligent or serendipitous assemblage of components” (125).
“We have looked previously at a rose, and claimed that one would learn nothing about a rose by saying that it is composed solely of atoms and molecules. A better approach to the essence of the rose, would be to describe at least the various levels of hierarchic structural complexity and the corresponding emergent properties—up to the various cells and cell organelles, up to the different tissues; and then add possibility the history of biological evolution. This is certainly a more complete view of a rose. It is a departure from the simplistic reductionistic approach to see all in terms of atoms—but is it enough to catch the essence of a rose? (126).
“Most of the cognitive scientists mentioned above would add that what is still missing is the ‘ovswerver0—the one who really gives meaning to the rose in terms of history, literature, poetry, …Obviously the notion of a rose is different depending on whether the observer is a Western educated in romantic literature or a Eskimo who has never seen a rose. Here is where the notion of emergence may become co-emergence between the object and the observer throughout his/her consciousness” (127).
Chapter 6: The Notion of Emergence
This book attempts to make a bridge from chemistry to biology, and deploys the concept of emergence and self-organizing systems in that process.
“The term ‘emergence’ describes the onset of novel properties that arise when a higher level of complexity is formed from components of lower complexity, where those properties are not present. This is often summarized in the popular assertion that the ‘whole is more than the sum of the parts’, and/or with the vague term ‘holism’” (112).
Luisi then distinguishes between two forms of discussions relating to emergence: the ontic and the epistemological (113). He claims that his argument will deal with the epistemological argument, as it is more practical and applicable.
Luisi also approaches the concept of complexity theory. He also claims that he will not pursue this in much depth but does provide a simple definition: “…a complex system is seen as a hierarchic system, i.e., a system composed of subsystems, which in turn have their own subsystems, and so on” (113).
He then looks at the relationship between emergence and reductionism. Typically, “reductionism and emergence are presented as two opposite fronts: whereas emergence deals with the onset of novel properties, which are not present in the basic components, and as such has an upwards direction, reductionism generally looks down from a certain level of complexity claiming to explain each level on the basis of the lower ones” (116). “…the main point of opposition between emergence and reductionism concerns the problem of properties. There is nothing wrong, in principle, with reductionism when it stops at the level of structure: we can all agree that water consists of hydrogen and oxygen. The problem with reductionism is with the claim that the properties of water can be reduced to the properties of hydrogen and oxygen, and those to the properties of more elementary particles” (117).
Luisi then moves onto prediction: is it possible to foresee the emergence of water from hydrogen and oxygen either a priori or a posteriori? Some see the relationship between emergent properties and original properties as being unexplainable. This, Luisi calls either strong emergence or radical emergence (118). Weak emergence, on the other hand, “…the relationship between the whole and the parts may not be established because of technical difficulties, such as the lack of computational power or insufficient progress of our skills” (118). Some are critical of strong emergence because it seems to associate “magical” powers in the realm of causation between lower and upper levels of organization. Luisi chimes in: “Personally, I believe that the discrimination between a matter of principle (strong emergence), and a matter of practical difficulty (weak emergence), is not always possible—and perhaps it does not always make sense” (118). “…weak emergence si not distinguishable from strong emergence” (118-9). We can accept the premise of strong emergence and avoid the necessary reference to mysterious causality, if we address it in terms of our limited capabilities.
The discussion then moves to downward causation, which is seen as being the counterpart of emergence. “It is generally accepted that the development of emergent properties, which is an upward (or bottom-up) causality, is attended by a downward—or top-down—causality stream” (119). Some associate this with cyclical causality.
Non-linear systems of development are explored. Prigogine is said to present a system of development referred to as dissipative structures. These structures are understood as, “…an open system that is in itself far from equilibrium, maintaining, however, a form of stability…In more complex systems, depending on the initial conditions and fluctuations of the energy flow, the system in its dynamic behavior may encounter a point of instability—the bifurcation point—at which it can branch off with the emergence of new forms of structure and properties” (120).
In conclusion: “The reason why this [non-predictability] is important lies win the fact that novel, unpredicted properties can arise from the constitution of complexity. In other words, the fact that we cannot foresee novel emergent properties also means…that there might be a vast arsenal of unforeseeable properties that may arise from the intelligent or serendipitous assemblage of components” (125).
“We have looked previously at a rose, and claimed that one would learn nothing about a rose by saying that it is composed solely of atoms and molecules. A better approach to the essence of the rose, would be to describe at least the various levels of hierarchic structural complexity and the corresponding emergent properties—up to the various cells and cell organelles, up to the different tissues; and then add possibility the history of biological evolution. This is certainly a more complete view of a rose. It is a departure from the simplistic reductionistic approach to see all in terms of atoms—but is it enough to catch the essence of a rose? (126).
“Most of the cognitive scientists mentioned above would add that what is still missing is the ‘ovswerver0—the one who really gives meaning to the rose in terms of history, literature, poetry, …Obviously the notion of a rose is different depending on whether the observer is a Western educated in romantic literature or a Eskimo who has never seen a rose. Here is where the notion of emergence may become co-emergence between the object and the observer throughout his/her consciousness” (127).
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