"self-organization"
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Hi, everybody, The term “self-organizing” has always seemed a mis-nomer, almost an oxymoron. In that connection, I took an interest in the following quote from Mary Jane West-Eberhardt’s enormous, DEVELOPMENTAL PLASTICITY AND EVOLUTION. (p. 59, bottom of column one) Extreme modular flexibility is found in the mechanisms sometimes called self-organizing (refs to Kauffman, Gerhart and Kirschner) In seolf organization, the phenotype does not really organize itself. Rather, organization is highly flexible and locally responsive because a large number of modular subunits respond individually to local conditions according to simple, shared decision rules. I wonder what you complexity folks think about this as a general and comprehensive characterization of the phenomena you have called “self-organizing”? Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
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Hi Nick,
I will speak only for myself: This is another of those unfortunate terms, like Emergence, which is used by a variety of people in a variety of contexts to — they intend — refer to any ones among a variety of ideas that certainly are not operationally all the same, even if some of them are operationally defined. I find it hopeless to start with the terms themselves and try to have a conversation that gets to anyplace definite. Your quote below is from a particular context in evolutionary/developmental biology, as handled by a certain set of people, and quoting from a certain other set of people. Whether there is even something I would recognize as an operationally defined concept in this context is not clear to me, though I think Gerhart’s and Kirschner’s descriptions of development with its consequences for evolution are insightful and important (whether or not they ever really formalize to any significant degree). Maybe one could make model versions that reproduce important parts of the phenomenology, and claim that the models acting as abstractions formalize some sense of the term. There are other uses that would make no reference to most of what is central in the developmental thinking, such as areas where “self-organization” refers to phenomena related to dynamical versions of phase transitions. Maybe that usage and the developmental usage share some kind of family resemblance; that may also be in the eye of the beholder. Why a certain collection of people think that organizing motifs in a diverse collection of phenomena bear enough of a resemblance to be grouped under a common umbrella term has large impacts on who choses to work together, and maybe what they look for and notice empirically. Sometimes they can also borrow models back and forth. Whether that perceived similarity reflects a real common dynamic in the world is a question that often lives on the far side of a lot of careful abstraction and modeling hard work within domains, and in many of these communities only a part of that work has been done in a sketchy way, if any at all has been done beyond loose description. I don’t mind working at this loose and vague level of language, and spend a lot of time at that level. But if I want to nail something down, I need to start to get a lot more explicit about what I want to describe and what question I have about it. Often the set of interested readers lowers to a number somewhere between 0 and 1 at that stage. All best, Eric > On Jan 13, 2018, at 3:50 PM, Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote: > > Hi, everybody, > > The term “self-organizing” has always seemed a mis-nomer, almost an oxymoron. In that connection, I took an interest in the following quote from Mary Jane West-Eberhardt’s enormous, DEVELOPMENTAL PLASTICITY AND EVOLUTION. (p. 59, bottom of column one) > > Extreme modular flexibility is found in the mechanisms sometimes called self-organizing (refs to Kauffman, Gerhart and Kirschner) In seolf organization, the phenotype does not really organize itself. Rather, organization is highly flexible and locally responsive because a large number of modular subunits respond individually to local conditions according to simple, shared decision rules. > > I wonder what you complexity folks think about this as a general and comprehensive characterization of the phenomena you have called “self-organizing”? > > Nick > Nicholas S. Thompson > Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology > Clark University > http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
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In reply to this post by Nick Thompson
Hi Nick,
My opinion -
We, observing human beings, perceive "organization"- some sort of order, structure, pattern, etc. Some of us might ask, "from whence that organization?" At least three possibilities occur to us: 1) it is an illusion, like seeing a horsey or a ducky in the clouds; 2) "God" did it; and 3) "it simply happened." Number three has two forms: a) "pure chance" or b) "necessary consequence from resolution of active forces in context."
West-Eberhardt is conflating "self-organization" and "emergence" (both of which are not defined terms - see Eric Smith's comments) and describing the kind of perceived structures that emerge when cellular automata execute ("respond individually to local conditions according to simple, shared decision rules."). Unfortunately this usage simply pushes the question of "whence the organization" backward a step to become "whence the rules." The answer to this new question is, in our experience, a programmer; and therefore, becomes a type 2) answer to the question of from whence the organization.
Many, probably most, proponents of self-organization are stating an answer of form 3b) organization is nothing more than the necessary resolution of forces, i.e. laws of physics as expressed in chemistry, in context. Further, both organization and context are concurrently organized with each being a reflection of the other.
"Self organization" is not a 'term'. It is,simultaneously, nothing more than a shorthand reference to a process and a metaphorical argument against, primarily, the "God did it" explanation and, to a far lesser extent, to the "illusion" explanation.
dave west
On Fri, Jan 12, 2018, at 11:50 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
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In reply to this post by David Eric Smith
Hi, Eric, Thanks, a lot, for that! I won't say a lot more about self-organization, now, because I am hoping that the responses of others will display exactly the diversity you describe. I think at least someone will argue that the two kinds of self-organization are the same, or, at least, that the biological kind puts the physical kind into service. Let's see. I was fascinated by your last few sentence, which I am going to characterize as displaying an ambivalence about metaphorical thought. I am starting to fall prey to what amounts to a doctrine (You will need HTML to get the full effect) : 1. All Thought is in Metaphors 2. All Metaphors Lie 3. All Metaphors Give sight 4. Some Metaphors are Better Than Others 5. Good Scientists Locate the Good Metaphors. West Eberhard is very hard on metaphorical thought. She writes [p. 16]: Metaphors are not only potentially misleading, but they are also dull substitutes for reality, because they reduce exquisitely dynamic phenomena to the lifeless images of a computer, a blueprint, or a cake. Why not describe real mechanisms and thus use development as a metaphor for itself [emphasis nst’s]. I have always admired MJW-E as a scientist utterly and unreservedly dedicated to the work. But this passage is just wonderfully muddled. In the first place, “mechanism” is a metaphor. And the whole problem, is, of course, to discover a way to figure out which metaphors are realer than their alternatives. What she might be talking about here is “inter-level metaphors” [fractality?], in which case, of course, I highly approve. Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ -----Original Message----- Hi Nick, I will speak only for myself: This is another of those unfortunate terms, like Emergence, which is used by a variety of people in a variety of contexts to — they intend — refer to any ones among a variety of ideas that certainly are not operationally all the same, even if some of them are operationally defined. I find it hopeless to start with the terms themselves and try to have a conversation that gets to anyplace definite. Your quote below is from a particular context in evolutionary/developmental biology, as handled by a certain set of people, and quoting from a certain other set of people. Whether there is even something I would recognize as an operationally defined concept in this context is not clear to me, though I think Gerhart’s and Kirschner’s descriptions of development with its consequences for evolution are insightful and important (whether or not they ever really formalize to any significant degree). Maybe one could make model versions that reproduce important parts of the phenomenology, and claim that the models acting as abstractions formalize some sense of the term. There are other uses that would make no reference to most of what is central in the developmental thinking, such as areas where “self-organization” refers to phenomena related to dynamical versions of phase transitions. Maybe that usage and the developmental usage share some kind of family resemblance; that may also be in the eye of the beholder. Why a certain collection of people think that organizing motifs in a diverse collection of phenomena bear enough of a resemblance to be grouped under a common umbrella term has large impacts on who choses to work together, and maybe what they look for and notice empirically. Sometimes they can also borrow models back and forth. Whether that perceived similarity reflects a real common dynamic in the world is a question that often lives on the far side of a lot of careful abstraction and modeling hard work within domains, and in many of these communities only a part of that work has been done in a sketchy way, if any at all has been done beyond loose description. I don’t mind working at this loose and vague level of language, and spend a lot of time at that level. But if I want to nail something down, I need to start to get a lot more explicit about what I want to describe and what question I have about it. Often the set of interested readers lowers to a number somewhere between 0 and 1 at that stage. All best, Eric > On Jan 13, 2018, at 3:50 PM, Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote: > > Hi, everybody, > > The term “self-organizing” has always seemed a mis-nomer, almost an > oxymoron. In that connection, I took an interest in the following > quote from Mary Jane West-Eberhardt’s enormous, DEVELOPMENTAL > PLASTICITY AND EVOLUTION. (p. 59, bottom of column one) > > Extreme modular flexibility is found in the mechanisms sometimes called self-organizing (refs to Kauffman, Gerhart and Kirschner) In seolf organization, the phenotype does not really organize itself. Rather, organization is highly flexible and locally responsive because a large number of modular subunits respond individually to local conditions according to simple, shared decision rules. > > I wonder what you complexity folks think about this as a general and comprehensive characterization of the phenomena you have called “self-organizing”? > > Nick > Nicholas S. Thompson > Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University > http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe > at St. John's College to unsubscribe > http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
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This post successfully describes my thoughts ... and in a criticism of my favorite "economist" von Hayek to boot!
http://evonomics.com/cognitive-economics-intelligence-mulgan/ > It’s an appealing view. But self-organization is not an altogether-coherent concept and has often turned out to be misleading as a guide to collective intelligence. It obscures the work involved in organization and in particular the hard work involved in high-dimensional choices. If you look in detail at any real example—from the family camping trip to the operation of the Internet, open-source software to everyday markets, these are only self-organizing if you look from far away. Look more closely and different patterns emerge. You quickly find some key shapers—like the designers of underlying protocols, or the people setting the rules for trading. There are certainly some patterns of emergence. Many ideas may be tried and tested before only a few successful ones survive and spread. To put it in the terms of network science, the most useful links survive and are reinforced; the less useful ones wither. The community decides collectively which ones are useful. Yet on closer inspection, there turn out to be concentrations of power and influence even in the most decentralized communities, and when there’s a crisis, networks tend to create temporary hierarchies—or at least the successful ones do—to speed up decision making. As I will show, almost all lasting examples of social coordination combine some elements of hierarchy, solidarity, and individual. On January 13, 2018 8:46:24 AM PST, Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote: > I am hoping that the responses of >others will display exactly the diversity you describe. -- glen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen
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I agree, Glen.
It relates to another problem that interests me. Natural selection cannot work unless there is additive genetic variance, i.e., a gene has to have an effect on a selectable trait, free and clear of the effects of other traits. But given all the vast entanglements of the genetic and developmental system, how is it that any gene, let along most genes, have much additive genetic variance at all. That selection can operate at all would seem to suggest that something is policing the genetic system to guarantee a modicum of additive genetic variance. What could possibly be that policing agency and how, and at what level, is it selected for? Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ -----Original Message----- From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of glen Sent: Friday, January 19, 2018 2:04 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] "self-organization" This post successfully describes my thoughts ... and in a criticism of my favorite "economist" von Hayek to boot! http://evonomics.com/cognitive-economics-intelligence-mulgan/ > It’s an appealing view. But self-organization is not an altogether-coherent concept and has often turned out to be misleading as a guide to collective intelligence. It obscures the work involved in organization and in particular the hard work involved in high-dimensional choices. If you look in detail at any real example—from the family camping trip to the operation of the Internet, open-source software to everyday markets, these are only self-organizing if you look from far away. Look more closely and different patterns emerge. You quickly find some key shapers—like the designers of underlying protocols, or the people setting the rules for trading. There are certainly some patterns of emergence. Many ideas may be tried and tested before only a few successful ones survive and spread. To put it in the terms of network science, the most useful links survive and are reinforced; the less useful ones wither. The community decides collectively which ones are useful. Yet on closer inspection, there turn out to be concentrations of power and influence even in the most decentralized communities, and when there’s a crisis, networks tend to create temporary hierarchies—or at least the successful ones do—to speed up decision making. As I will show, almost all lasting examples of social coordination combine some elements of hierarchy, solidarity, and individual. On January 13, 2018 8:46:24 AM PST, Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote: > I am hoping that the responses of >others will display exactly the diversity you describe. -- glen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
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