Tuesday, February 21, 2006
Generative Methodology Glass Bead Games
On the limits of the OWL standard à [184]
Reading material [1]
Reading material [2]
Reading material [3]
Summary of the discussion up to this point à [186]
On Edelman’s notion of degeneracy, and n-articulate ontology
Related discussion on ontologyMapping thread à [17]
Judith made the comment, (on the Rosen list)
Hi Jerry,
Can you expand on why you
view social systems as the most advanced form of evolution, and why you would
differentiate social systems from biological systems?
Specifically, what makes
social systems possible?
Thanks,
Judith
Hi Judith,
Indeed, lots of insights could be learned from biology to sociology.
One school of thought is to start from the research on sociology to guide the
research on biology where Robert Rosen has a different view of social systems learning
from bio systems. My view is consistent with Robert Rosen's in this regard. The
deeper question is how.
In my view, there are three ways: analogy, metaphor, and homology.
Analogy is widely used between mechanical systems and electrical
systems and I think it is very limited to use that between bio and social
systems - learn literally from bio systems to social systems at operational
level. Metaphor is widely used but as Morgan pointed out that Metaphor creates
distortions and uses evocative images to create what maybe described as
constructive falsehoods. The metaphors social systems truly need may not exist.
I see analogy as at the level of structure (physical realization) and metaphor
at the level of organization (form, identity). Each alone will lead to fragmentation
and distortion if taken literally to extreme will become absurd.
What is left is homology. Homology is only and best way (in my view)
to connect different forms (physical, bio, and social) in different phases of
evolution. There is whole lot to learn from biology especially from the organization
of cell. I also see that tremendous insights can be taught from lower level
organisms such as centipedes, squad etc. that have decentralized nervous
systems.
If we view social systems as the most advanced forms of evolution,
then evolution goes beyond biology to connect both physical systems and social
systems.
This view is quite different from Darwin who is purely based on biological
ground.
As such, social systems as the most recent form of evolution
inherit selectively all traits, operational characteristics from all previous forms
that include second law of thermodynamics, dissipative structures, bacteria,
organisms. Accordingly research on
economics, societies, politics, as well as management is the matter learning from
these lower forms of evolution plus new concepts at the level of study.
New concepts are only effective when they are in line with
insights from previous evolutionary forms. This is where homology comes into
play. This line of evolutionary thinking could lead to many Nobel level research
areas such as cancer research, political theory, reformulating Marx's
capitalism in the post industrial revolution we are in the early stage of etc.
One most immediate and relevant application is in business and government
reform that could lead to revolution in performance and cost reduction leap. My
current research is in the field of software industry where software failure and
avoidable rework on maintenance costs way over tens of billions of dollars in
US alone.
I see immediate benefits in one field in one industry that is the
paper I currently devote my time on "Unified Content Methodology - A
living systems approach for better, faster, and cheaper software" invited
by IEE software engineering journal.
Jerry