Reading the signals of environmental systems
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Reading the signals of environmental systems
 
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Reading the signals of environmental systems The Reasoner, www.thereasoner.org
I’ve been working with an effective method for reading
the signals of change within and for developing complex systems, for many
years. It seems to have produced a list of apparently high quality new
findings but a rather short list of people able to understand them, or the
simplicity of the technique. I did a better job describing it than usual
with a mixed philosophy/methodology paper for Cosmos & History, linked
below. It describes the turning points of developmental learning curves as
resources for learning about the individual systems producing them. When the
curves change direction, the directions of learning for the systems producing
them are changing direction. What could be simpler? What seems complicated to people is; how do you square that
with determinism? It’s done as a study of the freedoms that exist
within the laws, particularly the special freedoms of accumulatively divergent
processes, following the lines of reasoning of Elsaser and Rosen. This
approach is a way of “turning the corner” to acknowledging that
physical processes typically combine both deterministic and creative behavior
and design. It offers that individual system creativity within the laws is a
better and more consistent explanation for finding such diversity of well
organized things than a principle of general disorganization in systems as a
rule. Determinism applies, but outside the range of freedom within the rules
for individual accumulative organizational processes. The variation on the scientific method is based on physics,
but is used unlike other physics methods. It’s primarily diagnostic
physics, for raising better questions, not representational physics. It lets
one systematically explore the relationships between the different cells of
self-organization that constitute individual complex systems and their learning
processes. It’s a window into the animating hearts of our world, opened
by a disciplined way of watching their paths of development and helping reveal
both what makes life exciting and dangerous. Learning to read the signals
of how your environment is changing directions helps a lot with avoiding the
error of not responding to them… Failing to respond with curiosity to signals of change in
your whole environment is to display a deep denial and a most backward kind of
response to new realities. Today the world is surrounding us with new
realities of all kinds that are confusing, and dangerous, but most people have
not seen them as world changing for us. Having a better way to read the
signals can help. But we still need to cross the “big divide”
to acknowledging the presence of individual complex systems in our world. We
need to learn to read the individuality of their learning processes and that
for us, each is different and “out of control”. The big
“expert error” of determinism taken as a universal principle seems
to be its implication that the universe constitutes only one system. It’s also big jump, conceptually, to move from an idea
that the symbolic relationships we sketch on our notepads and in our computers
are not actually what the systems of nature use to operate. If they have
been quite effective in giving us control over lots of things, they have also
been less useful for helping us see what we can’t control. They
won’t ever give us control over the ranges of freedom that individual
systems have within the laws to develop their own independent designs and
behaviors. It’s a jump that many others have seen but not quite
seen how to make. Stuart Kauffman’s new image of the universe as being
indelibly creative in its natural processes and requiring a “Reinvention
of the Sacred” paints the problem brilliantly. We find ourselves with
a deep conflict, representing the new world we now find ourselves in
can’t be done using the tools we developed to find it. My approach
to crossing that divide is based on a way to indentify independent behaviors
without loosing the connection between science and evidence, giving away only
the small detail of descriptive certainty by allowing descriptive uncertainty.
That’s what a diagnostic physics for reading the learning curves of
individual systems has some potential to make efficient and effective, while
also helping to open up the fascinating intricacy of our living world to
view. Pfh Life’s Hidden Resources for Learning - http://www.cosmosandhistory.org/index.php/journal/article/view/200/259
Features of Continuity in data shapes - http://www.synapse9.com/fdcs-ph99-1.pdf
Physics of Change - http://www.synapse9.com/physicsofchange.htm
Learning curves & Learning limits - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_curve
Other Papers - http://www.synapse9.com/phpub.htm
Physics of Happening –http://www.synapse9.com/drwork.htm
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