>Yet there must be reason why we break things down into parts -
>easier to understand? easier to coordinate or manage? or do we
>feel that working across the whole is so difficult we will only
>ever end up with the 'lowest common denominator' rather than the
>possibility of whole system synergystic alignment?????
the 'easier to...' reasons are why we got bureaucracy, cybernetic
mechanistic system theory and all the rest of socalled 'modern' or
'scientific' management, 50 or more years ago, of course... simplification
is a basic human urge...it can be described as 'complexity reduction' v
'complexity absorbtion' as max boisot and john child call it [boisot has a
book out called 'information space' which describes these 2 ideas: I
precis them in my 'learning from complexity ' pack out in nov...] murray
gell-mann's 'the quark and the jaguar' is also good on this topic [also
precissed(?) in my pack]
the trick now , knowing what we know about complexity, whole systems
etcetera, must be to think inside those concept spaces without going
reductionist, as people like wheatley, senge, etcetera tell us...
good question julie
Best wishes
Arthur Battram
--from Arthur Battram, organiser of the LGMB project 'Tools for Learning': helping local authorities to apply complexity concepts to personal and organisational learning. 'Learning from Complexity' pack available November '96, for details email me: apb@cityplex.demon.co.uk "complexity is in here... and simplicity is out there...if we want it to be..."
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>