Mike
Thank you for taking the time and care to say what I could not or
did not say. With few exceptions, I agree with your analysis. I'm
afraid I just reached a point of agitation over all this chaos/fractal/
etc. and blurted out without fully thinking everything through. Are
these lists great or what?
A few comments/questions/differences of opinion:
- your point about levels of complexity is right on the mark, and is a
main point of Kampus' book (which I *really* suggest to those interested
in "complexity") However, I would have to give some more thought to
your last two levels:
>- a more recent one and, I think most relevent for organisational
learning
>purposes, has been created from what SFI and others have developed
>beginning from living systems - systems whose defining way of
functioning
>is adaptation, learning and innovation. These include evolution,
immune
>systems, cognitive research, species, societies and human learning.
>
>- the fourth is one which I'm developing that is intelligent systems
>(complex becomes redundant and unwieldy at this stage). These systems
are
>those which emerge from the interaction of language based entities and
>co-evolve with those entities. My particular interest is a new theory
of
>organisation that will enable our aspirations and possibilities by
taking
>into account the intelligent possibility of a language based system.
I'm not sure I can subscribe to these last two levels being as distinct as
the first two. To my current way of thinking, languaging is still a
material-based act (i.e., acoustic waves as sounds, etc.) just as a
chemical might function as a transmitter in the nervous or immune system
of even the simplest animal. There *are* different types of such sign
usage (e.g., signs that represent something by convention or habit vs.
signs that represent something through similarity), which in turn lead to
different types of emergent phenomena, but I am not willing (yet) to make
this difference the basis for a new level of complexity.
- you are correct in observing that predictability is not the right *core*
idea here. In fact, the stabilizing effect of habit-taking is probably
more of a *core* idea in explaining emergent phenomena in intelligent
systems.
- I think we agree on the "control" issue: as you said, it is at
different levels:
>We do not lose control when we begin to introduce the thinking of
complex
>adpative systems or of intelligent systems. We gain control. The fact
>that this control is a different order of things and at a different
level
>should not give us concern. What concerns organisations is that they
can
>produce desired results better with one kind of control than another.
Perhaps we should find a better word than control. The example I like to
use in describing control (I have no idea where I heard it) deals with
gardening. Does a gardener say "I am going to get control of this tomato
plant to get a large crop"? (like, say, some managers would say about
their divisions) I don't think so. What most gardeners do is plant
several varieties, perhaps in different spots in the garden, then provide
water, sunlight, etc. as best as possible. The sensible gardners I know
then sit back and enjoy whatever bounties the unique individual plants
produce under those conditions: perfectly aware that the outcome is so
much more determined by the life processes of each unique tomato plant
than by their own interventions.
I guess a point I am trying to make is that humans and their
organizations are more like tomato plants than anything that our
deterministic traditions of science and management lead us to believe.
Does this mean that gardners and managers should give up trying to
achieve desirable results, just because they can't control things like
one might control a chemical reaction? Clearly not, and on this point I
think we agree. The question is, what *do* we call it?
Fred Reed
From: "Fred Reed" <freed@cc.atinc.com>