Dear Loet and colleagues,
see interleavings:
At 20:49 19/12/2006, you wrote:
Dear Pedro:
1. You are changing the subject from "social and cultural complexity" to
"the nature of complexity".
Thus, our previous communications seem to be discardable as "irrelevant." ...
I don't expect anybody to plea for imposing a system on human beings a la
marxism or fascism...
What about China, Cuba, North Corea? What about hundreds of millions in
Europe until less than a couple of decades ago? I restrain from making any
further comments about that, as when citizens were given the option, they
were quite eloquent. Your bland comments on Marx at the end (below), do not
match with the repeated claims of scientific predictability (and control)
inherent in dial. mat and hist. mat. doctrines (by himself, Engels, Lenin,
Stalin, Mao,etc. --posters with these figures are around the streets of
China yet; perhaps almost as a historical curio in that great country and
civilization).
In this sense, Marx was right: one creates society, but what happens is
beyond control because it is part of another dynamics. (His answers of the
possibility of a final reconciliation of these different dynamics was
perhaps a bit naive.)...
It is not obvious that the human factor is the correct unit of analysis if
one is interested in social and cultural complexity. It is undoubtedly the
right unit of analysis if one is interested in human complexity. However,
many phenomena which emerge on the basis of human (non-linear)
interactions cannot be reduced to the carriers.
Am afraid you have got interpretations alien to my own contents --or maybe
not-- for, as you know, the "reduction" theme is far away from my
approaches. In this regard, an aspect I particularly dislike is the
overabundance of a complex of thought we could dub as "disciplinary
sufficiency". Just to add to the quarrel (I will make peace at the end!) I
quote from James' recent message: "Leyton's methodology makes the structure
and emotional content of an artwork fully definable, rich, systematic and
complete." We can travel from discipline to discipline and hear similar
statements... one of the consequences is that similar over-reliances on
"conceptualizations" / "mathematizations"/ "mechanizations" etc. can be
found under different guises in fields ranging from Artificial
Intelligence, Economics, Neuroscience, Molecular Biology, etc. I cannot
make now properly the point, but it is sort of an anxiety to present a well
complete, defendable view, the urge for a "premature closure" ... making
very difficult the multidisciplinary communication needed in almost any
realm of life.
For example, a scientific paradigm (a la Kuhn) can be considered as a
development of the pre-paradigmatic discourse into a more codified one.
The discourse becomes locked-in and then sets the delineations of the
relevant contributions to the discourse. Thus, human beings who were
previously important to this social/cultural system, are now no longer. As
Planck seems to have said, one has to wait till the old boys have died.
This is not to deny that human beings are crucial as carriers of a
socio-cultural system, but as the dynamics of the neural network are not
determined at the level of the cells, but in terms of the wiring,
analogously the dynamics of the networks of communications are not
necessarily determined by the dynamics of the human carriers.
The particular example of the neural networks is not OK. For instance,
recent comparative studies between vertebrate and invertebrate synapses
have concluded that slightly altering the proteinaceous content of each
class of synapses modifies dramatically the dynamics of the overall
networks (eg, of learning), without implying any change in the
connectivity. In a few words, if you approach the dynamics of learning in a
biological nervous system, you cannot forget real neurons, glias,
neurotrophic factors etc. (not always, of course, and that's the
problem--paying due attention to the ("probably") highly variable boundary
conditions.
Analytically, the human carriers are structurally coupled as the relevant
environment of the social system.
Of course, it sounds nice to proclaim a humanistic a priori. However, as a
system of communications the social can be studied as providing a dynamics
different and additional to human intentions. It is a different
(sub)dynamic. For example, when one follows neo-evolutionary economics
(Schumpeter) in stating that innovations can upset the equilibrium seeking
tendencies in markets, we are discussing more abstract dynamics than can
be explained in terms of carriers (e.g., individual entrepreneurs).
I can agree with part of these ideas, and would like to connect with some
of my own reflections --in next messages, as today I have no time, and am
already getting the weekly quota.
Xmas celebration is very close, so... best season greetings to all!
Pedro
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