Harrison, et al... There is a book out since 1999 called "The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size" (by Tor Norreetranders) that suggests that the next 'grand unification' is not going to simply marry gravity to the other three forces described by modern physics, but will go even further, marrying physics to everyday life, consciousness, and meaning.
I'm only a fourth of the way into this, but see much in it that seems relevant to the self-organizing, open space story. It seems that a big piece of evolution is forgetting details. When we measure temperature, for instance, we ignore the speed, position and all the variance in individual molecules. When we total up our grocery purchase, we note only the amount on the bill and leave with "a bagful" rather than individual items. When one of Darwin's successes is 'naturally selected', nature also forgets or ignores or lets go of a pile of other options. And when we write an invitation, we often ignore a lot of the details, forget them, so that we can move forward with issues and opps for... whatever. Forgetting, letting go, looking ahead, focusing in... it all helps open new space. The stuff in this book, refs to Santa Fe Institute conferences and such, might provide good fodder for this self-org story you're spinning, Harrison. It might provide other science-minded folks here with interesting reading. I suppose the biology of self-org might be closer to human systems, but I find the leap from physics to openspace more interesting. Small wonder, or a good sign, that I'm marrying a former particle physicist! Michael On 3/12/06, Ralph Copleman <[email protected]> wrote: > On 3/12/06 2:00 AM, "OSLIST automatic digest system" > <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Chaos, we are learning, is the rich seed = > > bed of emergent order. Strange new world. > > Yeah, all 13.7 billion years of recent events. > > Harrison, you're re-examining the theory of evolution. The process we call > "self-organization" may be, after all, what Darwin labeled "Natural > Selection". (He never used the phrase "survival of the fittest", by the > way.) > > If your new book emerges as a re-presentation of evolution for the world of > human systems, it will be a very, very useful contribution. If we can get > even a few such systems thinking/operating in harmony with the universe's > ancient (and highly effective) underlying dynamics, we'll have taken a big > step toward saving life on Earth. > > Lead on, my friend. > > Ralph > > * > * > ========================================================== > [email protected] > ------------------------------ > To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, > view the archives of [email protected]: > http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html > > To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: > http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist > -- Michael Herman Michael Herman Associates 300 West North Ave #1105 Chicago IL 60610 USA Phone: 312-280-7838 [email protected] skype: globalchicago http://www.michaelherman.com http://www.openspaceworld.org Executive Facilitation ...getting the most important things done in the easiest possible ways. * * ========================================================== [email protected] ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of [email protected]: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist
