Michael's idea that complexity is the collection of states a system can
evolve into, lets me think of Stafford Beer's definition of complexity. (I
want to thank Keith Sandrock of Johannesburg for pointing Beer to me.)
Beer proposed 'variety' as a measure of a systems complexity.
I find Beer's proposition very enticing. However, I fear that if I accept
Beer's proposition as the definition, I will be shooting myself in the
foot. Should the definition of complexity not be a little bit complex
itself? In other words, is it possible to express complexity in a simple
(noncomplex) manner?
I consider creating to be more encompassing than learning. In other words,
to learn is to create. Thus a Learning Organisation (LO) has to be
Creative System (CS), but CSs need not to be LOs. Furthermore, I prefer to
think of variety as an essentiality of creativity and thus learning. This
means that if an organisation (system) is deficient in its 'variety', its
creativity and thus its learning becomes impaired.
If we apply Beer's connection between variety and complexity, then it
appears that an essentiality of creativity (variety) is a measure of
complexity. Now let us think of other essentialities of creativity. Do
they also measure a system's complexity? Let us study one example.
David Bohm believes that 'wholeness' is essential to creativity. Let us
assume that 'wholeness' is indeed an essentiality of creativity. Is there
any sense in proposing 'wholeness' as a measure of a system's complexity?
This proposition opens up an exciting complementary view to Beer's as well
as Michael's propositions. I myself can draw on many experiences in which
the degree of a system's wholeness expressed the system's complexity.
Let us assume for some mysterious reason that there are seven
essentialities of creativity of which 'wholeness' and 'variety' are two of
them. If the other five essentialities act the same way in measuring any
system's complexity, then we can think of system's complexity as a
manifold with seven folds in the dimension of essentiality. How many
dimensions are there in creativty? I believe that there are only two
diemnsions. If this is the case, does the other dimension also have a
manifold?
I feel that the above about the defintion of complexity is more than
enough for now. It is probably becoming too complex at this stage.
However, in conclusion I want to ponder over one other essentiality of
creativity.
Arthur Koestler considered 'bisociativity' to be essential to creativity.
In other words, let us assume that the ability to make a 'connection'
between dissimilar things is another essentiality of creativity. Can we
comprehend 'connection' as another measure of complexity? Again I see
wonderful opportunities.
Too summarise: 'variety', 'wholeness' and 'connection' are three (of
seven) properties with which we can define the complexity of an LO. The
degrees of 'variety', 'wholeness' and 'connections' may be used to measure
or express the complexity of an LO.
At de Lange
Gold Fields Computer Centre for Education
University of Pretoria
Pretoria, South Africa
email: amdelange@gold.up.ac.za
--"Mnr AM de Lange" <AMDELANGE@gold.up.ac.za>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>