A house of horizons and perspectives: A cognitive deep openspace for position, comparing, merging and morphing our metaphors, models, maps and views [James Rose, 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).

James Rose (presenting joint work with Heiner Benking): Metaphor to experience and handle reality

• Work is hyperlinked at http://www.ceptualInstitute/genre/homepageHB.htm

• From Denise Besserat's talk on Sumerians, can see how money has been seen in various viewpoints.
• Also, have chemicals in periodic table, another as double spiral, another as square spiral, all of which show relationships in different ways.
• At the core of each of them, the same information is there, but it can be viewed from different perspectives.
• In exploration of the option space, systems become enduring.
• In the Integrity paradigm ...

• Different religions, cultures, language
• Have to be sufficiently confident to morph / change.
• Need the constant communication in the system.
• Three scalings: time, scaling (enlarge/focus), and wording (for metaphor / analogy).
• No such thing as meaning, except in a future: why will we do -- behaviours based on projections.
• Everything is an accumulation and absorption: experience.
• Density of connectedness: doing Gamow 1-2-3-Infinity, and knowing we can handle infinity.

• Is this some isomorphism?
• Communication is everything: this is autopoesis (?) [He realized this last night]
• Two atoms as Gaussian bubbles, can be anywhere in the universe. When they get close, there's some communication, an increase in entropy.
• This forces a reduction of interaction space between the atoms: negative entropy.
• Is this autopoesis? The atoms don't become a molecule, they just interact.
• Interplay of two competing entities.
• Get a entropy curve as a Gaussian curve, but no maximization.
• System may not be able to handle too much information: balloon will burst.
• How do you transfer information from one level of system to the next?
• Atom, molecules, metabolic loops. [stop, go back]
• Have to have the behaviour space in our minds, so that we can make new connections.