Posted by
Steve Smith on
Jan 03, 2009; 5:44pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Re-What-to-do-with-knowledge-tp2101042p2106431.html
Phil -
This is a very timely reference. I often find that "Survey" papers,
especially from outside of the field I am working in, but on a subject
overlapping said field can be very illuminating. They help to provide
a common-sense perspective on the problem... help to remove me from the
"trees" enough to see the "forest", as it were.
Your comment about the discontinuities are
often observably in the mode of explanation used
and not the physical process
might be a corollary of Kierkegard's
Life must be understood backwards; but... it must be lived forward.
It is my (anecdotal) experience that many people live through, or even
participate in revolutions without realizing it until (long?) after
they are over. Often the turmoil that is attendant to the "Revolution"
is not a new experience for them, a series of tumultuous periods lead
up to it, and it is only the actual "breaking through" that ultimately
marks it as a "Revolution". To the extent that that "breaking
through" is an emergent phenomena, it is often not visible at the scale
of the individual observer, especially an observer who is steeped in
the old way of experiencing things.
- Steve
www.synapse9.com/ref/GersickCJG1991RevolutionaryChangeTheories.pdf (500k)
Have any of you heard of the "Academy of Management Review" or Connie JG
Gersick?
She might have called it 'emergence' I think, but seems to have done a great
job of threading together six different theories of change between complex
system equilibriums, punctuated by disequilibrium, which she calls
"revolutionary change". The familiar ones are the models offered by TS
Kuhn, SJ Gould, and I Prigogine. She seems to come to the conclusion, yes,
there are discontinuities. My view has developed as being that, yes, there
are discontinuities, but often observably in the mode of explanation used
and not the physical process.
Does anyone else also see the need to have gaps between modes of explanation
for complex system features as a important reason for using the word
'complex' to describe them?
Phil Henshaw
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============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at
http://www.friam.org