At the risk of seeming to be an old coot, I do plead guilty to cootness,
I would like to clarify one aspect of the history of "open systems."
John posted "The term "open systems" comes from thermodynamics,
especially from Prigogine and Stengers..."
While I love how Prigogine and Stengers and others who have explored
what contemporary physics (chaos, complexity, string and other theories)
have added to our understanding of human systems, I am looking at my
copy of Ludwig von Bertalanffy's General System Theory, published in
1950. He is usually credited with both the earliest description of Open
Systems (importing energy, using energy, expelling energy) in nature (he
was a biologist) as well as the application of open systems to human
systems in that same publication.
In a practical sense the theory is so fundamental that it continues to
inform much of how we understand the world today, including chaos,
complexity, etc. The reason I like to keep old Ludwig's work in front of
us is that I find that when folks I am working with begin to explore the
systems they are part of it is easier to start with the subsystems
(individual people, groups, communities) we are able and willing to make
choices about, influence and shape... together (oops, have I mentioned
interdependence lately?) :-0! They also more easily begin to grasp that
those subsystems are part of a larger environment or ecosystem that is
more complicated and chaotic... like severe weather (he said with the
snow outside his house piled as high as his car windows... oops, have I
mentioned vulnerability lately?)
Thus, (the coot substitute for the currently popular vernacular "So,
..." and the popular alternative of my youth "Like, ...), I thank John
and others for keeping the latest thinking on how science may inform our
questions and answers about systems in our conversations, but I like to
give credit where credit is due.
Just sayin'! ;-)
Shalom,
Chris Kloth
ChangeWorks of the Heartland
[email protected]
www.got2change.com
phone - 614.239.1336
fax - 614.237.2347
Think Globally, Act Locally
Please think about the environment before printing this e-mail.
On 2/11/2014 11:19 PM, Lucas Cioffi wrote:
Hi All,
I read that "Open Space works because self-organization works." But I
remember from physics class that disorder (entropy) in the Universe is
always increasing, so when the order of something increases (such as
during OS), the order of something else must decrease.
Paraphrased from Wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy>:
"The second law of thermodynamics states that in general the total
entropy of any system (the disorder, randomness, or our lack of
information about it) will not decrease other than by increasing the
entropy of some other system."
*So when participants organize themselves during Open Space does
something else become disorganized?* Or is it that all the disorder
created (by consuming the muffins, coffee, fuel, paper, electricity,
etc) always outweighed by the order created by the self-organization?
For what it's worth, below is an interesting thread I found from the
list archives from a few years ago that mentions entropy...
Lucas Cioffi
Charlottesville, VA
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: *John Watkins* <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>
Date: Mon, Sep 19, 2011 at 12:25 AM
Subject: Re: [OSList] Designing an OS way
To: Artur Silva <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>>, World wide Open Space Technology
email list <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>>
Cc: "[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>"
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>
Artur,
The term "open systems" comes from thermodynamics, especially from
Prigogine and Stengers, who also refer to them as "dissipative"
systems. It does not mean open to change; it means open in the sense
of importing "energy" from outside itself and excreting "energy" back
into the surrounding system. Such systems are most often
self-organizing and self-recreating (autopoiesis). They "sort" energy
into that which will help them recreate themselves and that which will
not, and they dissipate the rest, creating, paradoxically, internally
order and externally more entropy. Bureaucracies are actually great
examples of open systems in this regard.
John
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