Bill says,
> Michael, I think we are much in alignment but perhaps are viewing
> complex system's intervention from different perspectives.
We are not in alignment in the sense that there is a feature of
emergence that I consider important that is divergent from what I
understand you to be saying.
You say,
> The micro structures are a cause of the macro behavior. With several
> micro structures involved the cause and effect may be obtuse and be
> understood only after years of research. However, cause and effect
> prevail throughout science.
What I am taking issue with here is what is obscured by the statement
"cause and effect prevail throghout science". In my earlier post I
said that emergence is a new and distinct KIND of cause and effect.
It is not a mere extension of special case of the linear,
materialist, reductionist cause and effect that has been classical
science for a very long time.
Early Greeks, the early "emergent evolution" theorists, and quantum
physicists are all saying that the characteristics of what emerges
cannot be predicted from the characteristics of the originating
elements nor can they be explained "backwards" once the event has
occurred. (They also say that if the identical events were
recreated, we could not predict the same result.)
This is explicitly in contradiction to the idea that we just lack
enough information, analysis, research. It is not a matter of being
obtuse. It is a matter of creation.
What influences this, but does not remove it, is that we are dealing
with intelligent entities who can create their own "attractors" and
what brings a certain predictability are at least two things. One is
that we are not dealing with anything near chaos because the larger
systems are operating in a patterned way. Another is that we can
integrate and make new patterns.
To use a term of Stuart Kauffman of the Santa Fe Institute "adjacent
possibilities" combined with my term "structure of the future", we
can see a direction or an array of directions that keep us "far from
chaos" at the same time as being "far from equilibrium".
> The results cannot be predicted, but an analysis of possible outcomes
> should bound them between worst and best cases.
Given my interpretation of the field, an analysis of possible
outcomes will not reveal "worst and best cases". The saving element
is that we can observe our effects as they are occurring and
continually adapt, adjust and even stop if we don't like where it's
going. As long as we don't wait too long (or be too asleep) and the
positive reinforcement of what we have started takes over. (That is,
the positive reinforcement may be of something unwanted.)
> Taken to the extreme this implies that we should never fiddle with a
> system because we have no idea of what the outcome will be.
I don't think so. It tells you what you can design for. It tells
you what some of the dangers are. It gives you warning signals.
Best of all, it provides a framework for thought for approaching
things from a perspective that is different than the inherited one
and just maybe a better reflection of the way living things actually
work.
It's just a description of a possible world. Every other such
description that I've ever come across has been "taken to the
extreme" by somebody. That isn't a fault of the description.
> Making a change in a complex system in which human control is
> involved and in most cases the possible outcomes are very restricted.
I don't suggest that human control is possible in complex adaptive
systems - even the human ones like corporations. (We seem unable to
control ourselves, let alone the larger systems we create - and are
created from.) I do believe we can have important influence - and
that is enough.
> My changed organizations retains many
> of the characteristics of the generation from which it came. It has too
> for it must still survive in the same environment. Even in evolution
> if the environment does not change the emerging life forms are very
> similar to their progenitors.
Yes, emergent evolution recognises this. All theories of emergence
recognise the importance of historical connection. The historical
connection can usually be seen - in hindsight - to have some kind of
causal connection to its preceding states. That is part of the
theory. Emergence is not implying magic, mystery, miracles or
anything more than natural historical processes in an ordered world.
(It's just that the order is not the order of classical scientific
cause and effect.)
I am NOT one of the "anti-reductionist" speakers that you mention. I
am merely not very interested in that field while I recognise both
its enormous historical value and its likely large future value.
There is another field that I am exploring, that I find of particular
interest and, in particular, I find of particular pragmatic value.
The pragmatic value is manifest in technology, in freedom and in
results that client organisations produce. I don't ask for much
more.
One of the reasons people use the term "reductionist" with negative
tones is that there are those who can see only that way and are seen
to be limiting the possibility for human realisation in the corporate
and social domain.
> We humans have a limited ability to comprehensively understand
> complex systems. Our tactic has been to decompose complex systems
> into units we can study to understand their behaviors and their
> relationships with interfacing subsystems. Our study is to effect
> desired change knowing that some results will remain unknown. If
> this is reductionist, so be it, it works.
But this is the point. It is our accepted way and, along with the
enormous benefits it has produced, it is also an inappropriate and
ineffective way - in my opinion - when applied to living, human,
intelligent systems (like corporations) and we are paying a dear
price for that.
-- Michael McMaster : Michael@kbdworld.com book cafe site : http://www.vision-nest.com/BTBookCafe "I don't give a fig for simplicity this side of complexity but I'd die for the simplicity on the other side of complexity." attributed to Chief Justice BrandiesLearning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>