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."
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 don't expect anybody to plea for imposing a system on human beings a la marxism or fascism. 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. 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. 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). 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.) I hope that this is helpful. Most likely, it is not "convincing enough". :-) With best wishes, Loet _____ Loet Leydesdorff Amsterdam School of Communications Research (ASCoR) Kloveniersburgwal 48, 1012 CX Amsterdam Tel.: +31-20- 525 6598; fax: +31-20- 525 3681 <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; <http://www.leydesdorff.net/> http://www.leydesdorff.net/ Now available: <http://www.universal-publishers.com/book.php?method=ISBN&book=1581129378> The Knowledge-Based Economy: Modeled, Measured, Simulated. 385 pp.; US$ 18.95 <http://www.universal-publishers.com/book.php?method=ISBN&book=1581126956> The Self-Organization of the Knowledge-Based Society; <http://www.universal-publishers.com/book.php?method=ISBN&book=1581126816> The Challenge of Scientometrics 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 _______________________________________________ fis mailing list fis@listas.unizar.es <http://webmail.unizar.es/mailman/listinfo/fis> http://webmail.unizar.es/mailman/listinfo/fis
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