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Hello Folks,
Since returning from the ISSS conference (for which my gratitude
goes to John Kineman, who invited, persuaded, arranged for me to attend),
several aspects of my father's work seem to be coming into sharper focus for me.
In some cases, it's a better grasp (on my part) of what people are having the
most trouble with, in terms of navigating the idiosyncrasies of my father's
modes of _expression_. But there were some discoveries that I made from within the
work itself, which are surprising to me-- particularly at this late date. Many
of them have to do with integrating so many different perspectives, to which I
was exposed in the space of five days... (being an empath is a blessing and a
curse!)
For example, analyzing the "Relonics" technology created by Dr.
Vadim Kvitash, called "Balascopy", which takes 12 common blood chemistry
readings and analyzes not the readings themselves, but the readings'
relationships. By doing so, he has been able to isolate consistent patterns
created by subclinical (!!!) disease processes-- something I find
astonishing, and he gives my father and Rashevsky the credit for influencing his
thinking into relational aspects of human physiology and how they impact on
health. Other people I met have been using my father's work in studying or
developing applications for economics, or ecology, or social systems sciences,
or educational systems analysis, or artificial intelligence research... It was
instructive to listen to what the problems these people are trying to solve are,
and mine my understanding of my father's work to suggest avenues of entry for
them, where they are most likely to find information and applications that are
of highest value in terms of what they need.
Many of the problems these thinkers are trying to solve fall into
categories of modeling, prediction, or better control. As my father's
work suggests, complex systems require the use of complex controls, and it was
Anticipatory Systems Theory that I most often had to reference. The discussions
on modeling complex systems, in the book on Anticipatory Systems,
constitute a revolution in scientific perspective-- one that nearly everyone I
spoke to in was actively seeking-- and yet it remains so little known what my
father was talking about in that book!
One of the areas I rediscovered on this subject were my father's
cautions abou knowing your modeling mode's limitations and behaviors and
making that knowledge part of the decision process when choosing a mode (or
using a mode) for modeling any given system. He spoke of the fact that
certain modes, by their very nature, add "artifacts" to the information one
collects using them. If we don't realize this from the outset and compensate for
it in our analysis, these artifacts are mistaken for part of the causal
structure we're trying to study. I see this happen all the time, from the latest
"opinion polls" on the presidential campaigns to the way blood chemistry
readings are currently handled. For example, I researched what the "anion gap"
is. This is a question the nurse at my Doctor's office couldn't answer. The
short version of the story is that the anion gap is an artifact of the
mathematical measurement process. There is no actual gap (between positive and
negative ions in the blood) unless the anion gap reading goes outside the
ranges set for it. However, there are at least two modes of calculating this
anion gap and the ranges are different for each mode; a fact which is not always
specified on labwork results. You can see the problem.
This issue of perspective comes back again and again. The way we
are looking at something determines a great deal. My father's abilities to look
at things differently are responsible for much of what he accomplished and are
often the thing most praised in his work by people who are benefiting from that
peculiar kind of vision. I bought a video for my littlest daughter called "The
Invisible World", a National Geographic special that was first aired in 1979.
I'm pretty sure I saw it when it first aired or in one of its rerun cycles. But
there were aspects to it that have an entirely new impact on my thinking now.
This video examines the limitations of human sensory abilities and the ways that
technology is allowing us to "see" things we otherwise could never see. There
are examples of how ultraviolet light reveals aspects of flower petal design
that bees can see but that we never knew were there; the equivalent of a landing
strip for the bees on flowers that most offerred what bees need and in turn most
benefit from the service bees perform. This is an aspect of co-evolution that I
don't recall hearing about before and it's proof of something that I've always
known intuitively. In this video there are technological modes that slow time
down or speed time up, such that we see common events in entirely new ways.
There were technologies that showed the constant activity inside a living cell
and the constant activity of the atmosphere. There were technologies which made
the intergalactic universe smaller and other technologies which made the
super microscopic universe enormous...
I've seen most of these technologies before, but it's the
perspective angle that is blowing my mind here. Somewhere in my father's work,
he says that Rene DesCartes was looking at some newfangled "machine" and
marveled at how life-like it was. Rene turned it around and said that life
was machine-like. What ended up happening, between him and Newton, et al, is
that science was defined by the limitations of the perspectives of certain
individuals and of the era in which those individuals did their work. The models
chosen, namely machines, were wrong for the job. They are too
limited, having been created by humans, to ever be a model for
science, particularly when science needs to learn about the reality of systems
far broader in "entailment" as my father would say. It's the anion
gap.
Judith
Website address: http://www.rosen-enterprises.com/
My favorite discussion list (Independent-- Not part of Rosen Enterprises): *** JOHN KERRY FOR PRESIDENT!!!!!
Environmental responsibility. Fiscal responsibility. Personal responsibility. (... The planet can't withstand another four years of Bush Junior...) |