Dear colleagues,
After all these excellent postings (Joe's kickoff text has been really
inspiring), one does not know what direction looks more promising than the
other.
Initially, I do not find Stan, Guy and Loet's responses convincing enough.
Properly speaking about the social realm, the impervious dominance of the
"formal" organizations or "systems" separated form the intrinsic complexity
of individual's life, hasn't it been the capital sin of the past century?
Among other miscarriages, let us remind dialectical and historical
materialism, that pretended science of social change... a form of social
mechanics in its purest acception (social masses, social forces, social
revolutions, etc.), creating a new standard for human beings, writing in
the pretended "blank slate" of human minds. One of the lessons to learn is
that the HUMAN FACTOR (or human nature if one prefers) will
"systematically" defeat to any systemic planner --be it economic, urban,
technological, political, etc.-- who does not care about it. All those
"systems" superimposed upon individuals will plunder if they do not let
open avenues for the advancement of the human life-cycle.
I remember that early computers contained a sort of "refresh" or "reset"
tension affecting every transistor so that their functional state, after
any work cycle, was effectively set as planned by the designer --probably
contemporary microchips are above that limitation... what I mean is that
there is no effective, generalized way to isolate the emergent or complex
behavior in any realm from all the vagaries of upper and lower realms
--except laboratories themselves and techno installations. Nature does not
care about crossing our well established disciplinary borders: out-there,
herein.
The extrinsic versus the intrinsic--this motto transpires quite often (now,
for instance) our discussions: the exo vs. the endo, the external vs. the
internal, the mechanical vs. the organicist, reductionism vs. holism
... rather than confronting both sides, they should be coupled. My
emphasis on the cellular model to adumbrate a cogent integrative
informational perspective (connecting with some of Ted's points), is that
we can appreciate therein how that integration intrinsic/extrinsic happens
in terms of molecular agents inside, and of the signaling clouds from the
rest of the organism outside. Apparently, far easier (though not done by
the "systems biology" guys yet) than in neuronal or human social realms.
In any case, putting together the extrinsic AND the intrinsic, has really
caught me while thinking on the recent messages. .. Please, add customary
spoonful of salt to those rough statements.
best
Pedro
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