|
Dear Judith,
In reference to your following quotation and the further
clarifications and information provided these days by you and Tim I have a few
reflections to make:
"He used a high-tech camera as an
example of a machine with anticipation built in. He recommended that our modes
of government and city planning, social system analysis, etc, all be examined
for ways to build in a "feed-forward" control system rather than purely
feed-back. It's important to note that while all living systems are anticipatory
they also have the capability for purely reactive behavior as well. That's
something all systems possess. But anticipatory controls are superior under most
circumstances because they prevent the system from entering an "error state". An
ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure!"
You know that I am not a biologist but am
very much interested in understanding well what is still to be
uncovered from those still hidden within the Rosen treasure.
To make the new entry more digestable for me, I am each
time interpreting every piece of concept and knowledge
continuously flowing from your end (you and Tim) into my own
built-in professional and personal bagage and gradually unfolding.
I usually find them compatible and reflecting my own life-time difficulty
in making people around me to understand certain subtle differences in
approaches which look the same on the surface. My thinking process and my
practical actions, almost all my life-long activities concerning river
basin planning and implementation, have been shaped by my education,
training and practising in an area which required an
interdisciplinarity, building the whole as the parts relate
and fit in, (as against multidisciplinarity- adding parts to make a
sum) which requires attention to relationships and growing together by
influencing each other in the process towards a target, never fully
reached. Interdiciplinarity deals with complex systems requiring a process
approach with all the characteristics of anticipatory systems where feed-back
and feed-forward are continuously operating. It is very similar
to living system, with only difference it starts with a man-made starting
point with a man-made endind point, but always to be revised on the way. At
times initial conditions are also affected. This is also basic difference
between project versus process approach, which is in a way
self-organizing, nonlinear and dynamic as well as synergistic. It is certainly
never as self-organized and emergent as the nature is where the biology forms an
integral part.This is certainly ideal but many times politics determines
both the initial conditions and the fixed targets. This is what we are trying to
replace. To go with that my personal aim is to apply my own understanding and
Rosennean approach as an amplifying, correcting and maturing tool to
social-ecological systems to make a dent within the
process of replacing the ongoing (declining) social paradigm with a
nature/human friendly one from within.
This is similar to healing a failing health by improving
the body's immune system or reforestation on the side of living systems and
restoring an ailing historical structure growing from its own original
credentials (purpose/function, shape/content.. as causations in
nature).
This is just for you and Tim to reflect on. Please let me
know if I am out of the track. Even if I am I must say how much I appreciate the
work progressing in this list.
My best,
Ayten
|