-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Phil Henshaw wrote: > I handle the 'what' problem two ways, 1) what's useful to call emergent > for the consideration at hand (since there are way too many interlocking > emergent processes to consider them all at once anyway) and 2) what > about them act and interact as wholes is the 'process of emergence', not > the 'state of being emergent'. The process of emergence always, as far > as I can tell, is a continuous identifiable local complex developmental > cellular accumulative process, an evolving individual network. A > 'state of being emergent' is much more often a fragile definitional > construct.
- From your description (to the extent that I understand it), it strikes me that we already have a perfectly good word for "process of emergence": "evolution". Why toss in another word? > Is everything 'emergent', making the word useless and meaningless? To be clear, I was referring to Terry Bristol's talk, which implied (to me) that everything was emergent. And if that were the case, then the word would be useless. > I > don't think the fact that you can consider the process by which anything > meaningful emerges makes considering it meaningless. You need the word > to distinguish between the plastic/evolving aspect of things and the > framework/fixture aspect of things. It's one of the distinctions needed > in exploring a world that is more complicated than we'll ever quite > understand. When I need to, or prefer to, consider things as fixed, I > just remember that each coin has those two sides, all the coins. Isn't > that simpler, just sometimes checking to see if there are any coins you > don't allow to turned over and seen the other way, as evolving, or > fixed, and why, otherwise see them all as both? Absolutely! It is extremely handy to pop on and off different perspectives when considering some interesting thing. So far, I've only used the word "emergence" in situations where I think using the word will help my audience understand what I'm saying. But, I don't use it in my own internal dialog because it doesn't have any large meaning, i.e. there doesn't seem to be a solid referent for it as an English symbol (English being the semi-formalism we are continually developing). And in that sense, I actively flip in and out of the dual perspectives of: 1) novel things emerge in the course of the ever-present churning of ambient goo around us versus 2) there's nothing new under the sun. But, flip-flopping between duals does not make one a dualist. It merely makes one a rhetorical opportunist who will exploit any formalism if it might help communicate a concept. - -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-219-3846, http://tempusdictum.com Seek simplicity, and distrust it. -- Alfred North Whitehead -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFGgrP/ZeB+vOTnLkoRAophAJ4oRQOiSBfZty5PpYQyzwLg8Q2MhwCgvAoC 3YGntLMsPfV14SmRfeqC3TA= =mysW -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
