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From: Bill Hall
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] I have been a lurker on FIS for nearly a
year, and have found the
discussions to be quite interesting. However, I have been focused
primarily on
writing for formal publication, rather than in discussion forums
(although I do
contribute rarely to other forums where I have been a long-time member
and once
active, e.g., in the areas of epistemology, autopoiesis and knowledge
management practice). However, Bob Logan’s contribution today leads me
to
break my silence here, and to seek feedback on one of my writing
projects that
I think is central to the foundations of information systems. Bob has pointed us to some of his recent
manuscripts and other work on
the emergence of organization, neo-dualism and the ‘symbolosphere’.
I reach similar conclusions, but from very different source materials.
(Except
for citations to Kauffman and trivial ones to Kuhn and Popper, there is
no
overlap in our reference material). Although I am an evolutionary
biologist by
training (PhD Harvard, 1973), with two years postdoctoral study of
epistemology
and the history and philosophy of science as applied to my research
into
evolution and speciation, I spent the last 25 years until my retirement
in July
last year in a variety of documentation and knowledge management roles
in
industry. (My 1983 paper on the epistemology of the comparative
approach as
used in biology, http://tinyurl.com/pmaln,
describes my postdoctoral findings). However, since 2000 I have
returned
(initially part time) to the academic world to understand the nature of
organizations and organizational knowledge, where organization covers
everything from the first living things to emerging ‘social’
organizations including firms, industry clusters and even nation
states. My intellectual journey has led me to combine
Maturana and
Varela’s concept of autopoiesis with Karl Popper’s evolutionary
epistemology in three ‘worlds’, biosemiotics (Howard Pattee, Peter
Corning, Jesper Hoffmeyer and Claus Emmeche) and aspects of hierarchy
theory
(Herbert Simon, Stan Salthe). My most recent MS is “Autopoiesis and
Knowledge in the Emergence of Self-Sustaining Organizations” coauthored
with a couple of my previous students has been submitted for inclusion
in a
book on Autopoiesis in Organizations and Information Systems being
edited by
Rodrigo Magalhaes (It can be accessed via http://tinyurl.com/6lvfkv
Note, so as not to cause problems with the publisher, this paper will
be
removed from my web site in two weeks, but you are welcome to download
it now).
A more biologically oriented working paper “Emergence and growth of
knowledge and diversity in hierarchically complex living systems”.
Workshop on Selection, Self-Organization and Diversity CSIRO Centre for
Complex
Systems Science and ARC Complex Open Systems Network, Katoomba, NSW,
Australia
17-18 May 2006 (http://tinyurl.com/p2fl7)
gives more background on the similarities between genetic information
and printed
information. Other, earlier papers can also be found via my
publications list (http://www.orgs-evolution-knowledge.net/Index/PapersandPresentations.htm). To very briefly summarise some of my
arguments. Popper (1972 and later)
defines knowledge as solutions to problems and argues that all
knowledge is
constructed in living entities (world 2), but can be articulated into
persistent artifacts (world 3) where its existence and content can be
demonstrated intersubjectively by taking it back into the living entity
for
application to the real world (world 1). Popper explains how the
iterated
process of generating tentative solutions and selectively eliminating
those that
fail (i.e., errors) leads over time to the growth of knowledge.
Maturana and
Varela’s concept of autopoiesis defines the nature of living things as
autonomously self-producing entities which continuously produce their
own
organization, and explains how survival knowledge is embodied in the
structural
organization of the autopoietic entity. I argue that in time,
mechanisms will
eventually evolve where knowledge can be stored and replicated in inert
forms,
such as DNA and writing. This corresponds to the two ‘codes’
described in Hoffmeyer and Emmeche’s code duality papers. I also argue
that autopoietic entities can emerge at any level of organization where
a
sufficient variety of interacting components exist to build
organizationally
closed systems: e.g., single cells, multicellular organisms, insect
colonies
and other colonial organisms, human social organizations such as firms,
etc. At
each level of organization where autopoietic systems emerge there is
the
potential to evolve the two worlds of knowledge. In this picture, the primary commodity is
knowledge to solve problems
of life. The mathematics of information theory have little
applicability until
means are evolved to transmit knowledge in codified form between
entities and
decode it. Note, knowledge expressed in the form of nucleotide
sequences in DNA
has not been codified in any sense – although it is now expressed in
the
form of a code it is the product of variation combined with the
selective
elimination of sequences through the elimination of failed entities.
Information theory really becomes applicable only with the development
of human
language and the means to codify and transmit it via world 3. Hopefully the above will whet your interests enough to read
the draft book chapter and/or
the workshop paper and give me some feedback. I think the arguments I
present
are strong, but as a Popperian, I am sure that they can be improved
before
formal publication with the help of some stringent criticism. Many thanks, and regards, Bill William P. (Bill) Hall, PhD From:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of bob logan Cher
Colleagues - let me
begin by apologizing for not participating in the discussion to date. I
am in
the midst of renovating a condominium I purchased on the lakefront of
downtown
Toronto which seems to totally occupy my spare time. As a consequence I
have
been unable to keep up with the discussion. But things have eased off
and I
have now read all the entire thread up to mid June with much pleasure
and
skimmed the rest. I have the following contribution to make in the form
of a
paper I wrote some time ago and which I just revised which I believe
addresses
some of the issues raised in this round of conversation re order and
logic. I
was stimulated by the comment of Pedro on May 28: "logic is not well
suited to the studyof open systems" I believe that logic has nothing to
do
with the scientific study of nature except as a tool to show the
equivalence of
two sets of statements, one the initial axioms of a scientific theory
and the
other the predictions of the theory that are arrived at from the axioms
making
use of logical reasoning and are falsifiable in the Popperian sense.
Science
and mathematics/logic are two orthogonal systems. Rather than compose a
new
argument I am attaching my paper to this post where I have set out my
arguments
in an orderly and logical fashion. I hope that I am not in violation of
any FIS
protocols by attaching the paper to this post. With
regard to the comments
re Stu Kauffman's work referred to by Bob Ulanowicz FISers might wish
to read
the paper that Stu, I and 4 others wrote on the relationship of
information and
constraints entitled Propagating Organization: An Enquiry (POE) which
is also
available on my Web sitewww.physics.utoronto.ca/~logan in Section 6)
Biocomplexityand has been published in Biology and Philosphy23: 27-45.
The
reader will find in this paper an argument that Shannon info does not
work for
biological systems precisely because as has been pointed out in the
discussion
evolution cannot be predicted. This reinforces Bob U's remarkIn my judgement there
are far too many folks who want to
use the Shannon entropy itself as the measure of information, and I
believe
that doing so erects major impediments to grasping what information
truly is.Bob U remark
is right on the money according to POE. I will
stop here and post
my comments on the material that appeared after June 13th at a later
date. I hope
some of you will
read my two papers and comment. Sorry to comment with past papers but
they
really do address the issues raised. My fond
regards to all my
FIS colleagues. I hope to be more up to date now that the renovations
are
winding down Bob Logan |
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