A confluence of paradigm and technology [Kenneth Bausch, ISSS 1998 Paper Session, July 22/98]

These notes are a rough transcription, prepared as each individual presenter and/or commentator spoke at the ISSS 1998 conference. Gaps and errors have likely occurred. For more accurate citations, please consult the original presenters. These notes have been contributed to the ISSS by David Ing, of the IBM Advanced Business Institute (sabi@systemicbusiness.org).

Kenneth C. Bausch

• 3 to 4 years working on dissertation (this talk is about half)

1. Social realities are dissipative structure: turbulence, then high levels of organization.

• Far from equilibrium states, small changes have big results.
• When things boil up, want to be the new base.
• Example: pre-Hitler Germany had a lot of turbulence, Nazism was a new form of organization (not necessarily good, but ready).

• If you want a creative position, multiply contradictions (complexity, not complication)

• Does systems theory apply to social processes? (Professors said yes)

• Evolution
• Habermas/Luhmann debate: lifeworld processes and discourse through dialogue vs. social systems for 3 to 4 years, produced books.
• Habermas: create our own realities by interactions; lifeworld is what we decide to do by reaching agreement. (systems work automatically)
• Luhmann: the world is so complicated, we can rely on lifeworlds, need to rely on the system. (need impersonal)
• In the end, Habermas agreed that do need courts, money, etc.
• Habermas says systems are colonizing the lifeworld, and things are getting impersonal
• Soft systems: Checkland, Churchman, Ackoff
• Critical systems theory
• Luhmann (difficult)
• Complexity: Kaufman, Gell-Mann, Kampis, Goertzel
• General Evolutionary theory
• Metaphor (Lakoff, Banathy, Warfield)

• Design standards
• Structure
• Communications
• Cognition
• Epistemology

• Traditional
• Evolution through discourse
• Prescriptive/ideal
• Reproduction
• Component systems
• Self-organization
• Interpretation systems
• Modulization
• Dual network

• Discourse/lifeworld profile
• Rational (Habermas) paradigm at bottom, cognitive (I have paradigm, you have paradigm) at top
• Autopoesis profile
• Component system profile
• Goertzal: law of cognitive ...
• Reproduction profile

• There are structures and processes.
• Structures (as a thing) is a bad metaphor for a person.
• Autopoetic process gives the permanence of time, this is what we see -- reproduction.
• This, can see society as dissipative structure, which always changes.
• Dissipative structures, at times of turbulence, can have bifurcations: need to get things around the bifurcation point, to see where politics are headed.
• If social structures are autopoetic, Luhmann says that we convert our own worlds
• We structure reality on the basis of expectations.
• Try going one way, and if it doesn't work, try the other.
• Hedge our bets, and change directions with experience.
• Luhmann double-contingency:
• Meet Ian, but find can't predict his behaviour: therefore have to grant him freedom, thus I must be free, too.
• When we meet very complicated situation, it's important to have a lot of alternatives available.
• Metaphor: immune system -- toxins and anti-toxins are maintained, so that we don't get clobbered.
• Luhmann says that we need to build up our contradictions, so that we can respond to new situations.

• There's some democracy on the Internet.
• Should we maximize dialogue, and get a lot of different views?
• From a process view, this makes sense.
• From a policy perspective, bifurcations drive us towards airing convictions energetically.
• Interconnected world is the terrain.
• Zen knowledge: we make out paths as we walk them.

Questions

Maturana and Verela is a closed system (as well as Luhmann)

• All have structural coupling, coordinates with other cells
• Maturana says materially open and informationally closed
• Believe this? No, there are no closed social systems.
• Luhmann says any conversation which invites someone in makes a larger closed system.