1.
Systems
Theory & Complexity [aas]
a.
Spatio-temporal
patterns generated by interaction of many factors
b.
Bifurcations:
Sudden emergence or change in patterns of system behavior
c.
Chaos
theory: complex patterns in the behavior of systems
d.
Self-organization
and emergence
2.
Medium
Theory—The Toronto School
a.
Innes—“History
is perceived as a series of epochs separated by discontinuity. Each is
distinguished by dominant forms of media that absorb, record, and transform
information into systems of knowledge consonant with the institutional power
structure appropriate to the society in question. The interaction between media
form and social reality creates biases, which strongly affect the society’s
cultural orientation and values.” [hp on I]
b.
McLuhan— “Every media extension of
man is an amputation.” “The medium is the message.” “Electronically imploded,
the globe is no more than a village. . . [which extends] our central
nervous system in a global embrace.” (McLuhan, 1967, 1973.) Nevertheless,
McLuhan envisions the bright side, and the potential to avoid these hazards.
His vision is that we are in a major historical transformation that needs
guidance and nurturing. Smart (1992) states that, “McLuhan sets out to reveal
the ways in which prominent technological innovations have been associated with
significant forms of social and personal transformation. . . . Indeed the
stated aim of the work is to contribute to an understanding of the effects of
media technologies on human sensibilities and social life, and thereby to help
bring about a ‘genuine increase of human autonomy’. As McLuhan (1967) comments,
‘the influence of unexamined assumptions derived from technology leads quite
unnecessarily to maximal determinism in human life. Emancipation from that trap
is the goal of all education.’” Smart further comments that, unfortunately, we
seem to be headed more in the direction of vocational training than toward the
liberal education McLuhan was advocating. [amh]
c.
Deibert—“The
central proposition of medium theory is that changing modes of communication
have effects on the trajectory of social evolution and the values and beliefs
of societies. Medium theory traces these effects to the unique properties of
different modes of communication—to the way information is stored, transmitted,
and distributed through different media at different times in history. It
focuses on the material properties of communication environments rather than on
the content of the message being conveyed, hence McLuhan’s well-worn quip: ‘the
medium is the message.’”
“In the pages that follow, I reformulate medium
theory, embedding it in what I call an ‘ecological holist’ framework . . . At
the heart of these modifications are the drawing out of the ‘media as environments’
metaphor alluded to above, and the use of an evolutionaryh analogy to describe
the processes by which social foerces and ideas a the margins of society are
brought into the center by the unintended consequences of technological
change.” [d pp. ix-x]
3.
Mode
of Communication—Mark Poster holds that many social theorists (Marx, Weber,
Durkheim) make action primary over language as a mode of social change. Poster
considers language more primary, but he maintains that: observed that many
social analysts saw electronic communications as creating “enormous social
transformations. . . A right-wing contingent envisions a benign automated world
of material plenty, . . A left-wing contingent, equally sanguine, foresees
radical democracy as the outcome of the new technologies.” Also, according to
Poster, many people see daily lives as improved, but many others dispute that
claim and point out that there is increasing isolation with the increasing
dependency on global communications. [amh
on p]
4.
Social
Systems Theory
a.
Parsons—“[I
attempt] to represent the best attainable in the present state of knowledge
with respect to the theoretical analysis of a carefully defined class of
empirical [social] systems. . .The concept of system as a guiding conceptual
scheme is of the first importance as an organizing principle and a guide to
research. [pt p. 537]
b.
The
Luhmann-Habermas Debates—“Jurgen Habermas and Niklas Luhmann debated the worth
of systems theory thirty years ago. The issues that they durfaced are still not
resolved. Habermas, the philosopher, advocated a lifeworld conception of
society, in which democratic decision-making is the necessary basis of a
legitimate society. Luhmann argued that automatic systemic processes have
supplanted discourse processes in modern society.”
“Two questions in the debate stand out. The theoretical questions: Can all
social processes be explained in primarily systemic terms? Or alternatively,
can social processes be completely explained withouot resort to systems
thinking? In this debate, Habermas contends that social action requires
consensual decision-making. Luhmann, on the other hand, contends that social
activities are too complex for consensual bartering; they require impersonal
systemic regulation.”
“The ethical question concerns the issue: How does reliance upon systems theory
normatively affects an advanced industrial society? Habermas claims that
applications of systems theory tend to repress free personal agency because
they operate mechanically without recourse to common sense, democratic
discourse, and social justice. Luhmann counters tht the complexity of
pluralistic societies precludes normative consensus in the particulars of
contested situations. Moreover, impersonal, positive laws are the safeguards of
individual and community rights. Finally, insistence on personal norms in
social contexts is a remnant of dysfunctional metaphysical narrow-mindedness.”
[b chap. 4]
c.
Recall
the subject-individual distinction of the Cartesian rational ‘individual’ vs
the ‘subject’. [see title of hj]
d.
Notice
also the closeness of these ideas during this period of global economic
implosion. In the US (and elsewhere) the debate between free market philosophy
(Republican Party in the US) and Keynesian emphasis on government control
during periods of severe economic collapse (Democrats in the US), a debate
which is as recurrent as the economy.
e.
“Complex
dynamical systems theory provides a new modeling strategy for social systems,
which are usually too complicated to model without a theory that allows for
chaos and bifurcation. These new models contribute to the grok [hermeneutic]
circle for evolving social structures, in which mathematical help in
understanding may be very welcome, as even the simplest social systems, whether
two persons or two nations, tax our intuitive cognitive strategies. Dynamical
models may be used as navigational aids for cooperation or conflict resolution
in situations where good will prevails yet does not suffice. Here we give a few
examples of erodynamics, the art of building social models.” [ar p. 209]
5.
Gender
a.
Scientific
(psychology) revolution
i.
“Feminist
psychology is generating a revolution in the field of psychology, not just in
its demand for an egalitarian, gender-complete program for its subject matter
but in the demand for an improved methodology and conceptual framework. With an
emphasis on a holistic, process-oriented psychology that considers the
contextual social system as well as individuals, it should find a powerful ally
in the dynamical systems approach, which provides a theoretical modeling
strategy and an experimental design and analysis strategy appropriate to the
feminist program. In short, feminist psychology and the dynamical systems
approaches share the holistic, process orientation in focusing on the patterns
of change among multiple interactive variables in psychosocial systems.” [ma p. 295]
ii.
“By
stripping behavior of its social context, psychologists rule out the
sociocultural and historical factors, and implicitly attribute cause to factors
inside the person. [cm p. 731]
iii.
Sikolohiyang
Pilipino is is largely devoted to opposing this trend. (e.g., Abragana,
Alvarez, Valbuena, and see sp, also
Silliman Journal).
iv.
“Neutrality
is a myth in the sense that the pursuit and use of scientific principles are
not merely contrived in a particular socio-scientific value matrix, but their
very technological flavor tends to support their role in social conformity
rather than in support of individual fulfillment.” [a p. 250]
v.
Importance
of using many different methods in feminist psychology if their assumptions are
made clear. These clarifications include:
(01)
“Recognizing
the interdependence of experiment and subject;
(02)
Avoiding
the decontextualizing of the subject or experimenter from their social and
historical surroundings;
(03)
Recognizing
and revealing the nature of one’s values within the research context;
(04)
Accepting
that facts do not exist independently of their producers’ linguistic codes, and
(05)
Demystifying
the role of the scientists and establishing an egalitarian relationship between
science makers and science consumers.” [r
p. 47 re g]
b.
Postmodern
i.
Kristeva—“She
has a theory of marginality, subversion and dissidence. She believes in the
potentially revolutionary force of the marginal and repressed aspects of
language. She identifies the semiotic with a repressed feminine
libidinal system, and the symbolic with a masculine libidinal system. R.
Eisler, & R. Abraham extend this dichotomy to higher dimensional chaos and
lower-order lococentricity respectively (chao-footnote 1). The semiotic
is anarchic, pre-Oedipal, and polymorphous erotgenically, maternally oreinted,
and involves primary processes. The symbolic is Oedipalized, paternally
oreinted, and involves secondary processes. It is "order superimposed on
the semiotic. The semiotic overflows its boundaries . . . in madness, holiness
and poetry.", and avant-guarde art and texts. The synthesis of these ideas
with those of chaos theory lies in the use of both chaos and bifurcation (self-organized
or autopoetic major transformations) emerging from the Lacanian/Kristevan
synthesis, and leads to discourse nurturing the emergence of change, internal
emancipation and external, social empowerment, from the
feminist/chao-theoretical synthesis.” [a3]
[see also s, esp. chap. 5]
ii.
Cixous—“I
think Wolmark inherits this usage of the terms non-hierarchical and non-binary
from French feminist, philosopher, playwright, and poet Hélène Cixous (Cixous
& Clement, 1986). For Cixous, as for Jacques Derrida, oppositions
(binaries) can be dangerous, a source of oppression. For those of us involved
(and many who are not so involved) in dynamical systems theory (see Schuldberg
in Richards, 2007), we have a great deal of admiration for the Heraclitian
model of oppositions as creating a process that produces a new dynamic of
greater complexity (an attractor—a pattern of activity created by
mutually interactive agents) that surpasses each component of the binary (Bird,
2003; Greeley, 1990; Sabelli, 1989).” [a3]
iii.
Hutcheon—“My
sense has always been that there were certain important social movements in the
1960s (and before) that made the postmodern possible: the women's movement
(though, of course, the movement existed much earlier, but this wave of it in
the 1960s was crucial) and, in North America, the civil rights movement.
Suddenly gender and racial differences were on the table for discussion. Once
that happened, "difference" became the focus of much thinking -- from
newer issues of sexual choice and postcolonial history to more familiar ones
such as religion and class. I think feminisms (in the plural) were important
for articulating early on the variety of political positions possible within
the umbrella term of gender -- from liberal humanist to cultural materialist. Feminist
discussions "complex-ified" questions of identity and difference
almost from the start, and raised those upsetting (but, of course, productive)
issues of social and cultural marginality.” [hl2]
iv.
Wolmark
(Cybersexualities) on Haraway (A Cyborg Manifesto) “. . . employs the
metaphor [of the cyborg] in order to argue, firstly, for a reconsideration of
Marxist and feminist analyses of the social relations of science and technology
which rely on a received model of domination and subordination and, secondly,
for the development of an innovative socialist-feminist political strategy that
is not dependent on totalizing theories and in which the formation of new and
unexpected alliances and coalitions are prioritized.” [w p. 2]
v.
The
major domination from which all others flow is the fear of chaos (complexity in
nature), which begets the desire for order (the temple). Most social upheavals
as well as the philosophical battle between the Parmedian and Heraclitian
worldviews involve this dynamic. This is the basis of the “Orphic Trinity”
identified by my brother in his book, Chaos, Gaia, Eros. These forces are
emplified in Aescheles’ Orestein Trilogy [ar,
a2, e]
vi.
Creativity
and Social Change—“This evolution of society and self influences the programs
of emancipation suggested by postmodern social theory and philosophical
hermeneutics. Cybersexuality—a philosophical, literary, and scientific genre
inspired in part by new visions from science fiction—provides some prime
examples. This evolution also brings up some fundamental human motivations,
such as the desire to optimize knowledge and stability, to know our origins and
destinies, our meaning, to satisfy our ontological-existential quests. The
quests for truth and for stability are at once two sides of the same tapestry,
sometimes in conflict with each other, and sometimes synergistic, but always
interactive, playing in the same conceptual attractors. Creativity lies in
exploring where and how to weave within these fractal imbrications, and these
involve tensions of stability and change.
Creativity, or the generation of novelty requires instability [and
challenges existing social institutions and practices]. How does the tension
between the need for stability and instability resolve itself? Or put another
way, why does stability require instability?” [a4, see also a2]
6.
Evolution
of Moral Sensibility
a.
“Important
as the struggle for existence has been and even still is, yet as far as the
highest part of our nature is concerned there are other agencies more
important. For the moral qualities are advanced either directly or indirectly
much more through the effects of habit, by our reasoning powers, by
instruction, by religion, etc., then through natural selection.” [dc p. 404 quoted in l]
b.
“The
legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to
others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods,
or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” [j p.
285]
c.
“Creativity Against
Conformity—that is, of forces supporting open and iinnovative inquiry versus
those promoting falling in line with dominant views. What now adds urgency to
the story is that the conflict of paradigms that shape science, society, and
the lives of every one of us, it is becoming evident to many of us that
conformity to the ‘old’ Darwinian paradigm of ‘survival of the fittest’ and
‘selfishness above all’ is relentlessly driving our species toward
destruction.”
”Project and prospects for an alliance of psychologists along with evolutionary
systems scientists to more effectively and swiftly shift from old to new.”
”Digging still further [into Darwin’s ideas on human nature], by applying
rigorous contents as well as hermeneutical analysis from an advanced systems
scientific perspective, I uncovered the rest of a startling picture wholly at
odds with the prevailing stereotype.” [l
p. 156]
d.
“Yet
in [Darwin’s] second book, he outlines the psychological superstructure,
prefiguring the development o cognitive, social, developmental, humanistic,
transpersonal, and positive psychology in our time. Of the most neglected
urgency, it is in this second book that he provides the basic sketch for a
moral and action-oriented second or completing half for his theory of evolution
that psychology, as well as the rest of science, has only barely begun to
build.” [l p. 157]
e.
Loye
goes on to say that the development ideas beyond natural selection about
emergent features of humanity (e.g., empathy, sympathy, moral development)
depended upon self-organization theory, and ideas of Freud, Dewey, Piaget, Kurt
Lewin, and humanistic psychology, founded by Abraham Maslow. [l]
“Transformation
is not a mere re-arrangement of surface elements, but a complete turning inside
out of every aspect of a thing, and the greatest transformation of all is the
great story of the transformation of humanity in its journey from created to
creator being. As yet, this is still an unfinished story. It could go
either way. We may well overshoot the “eye of the needle”. And that’s why good
stories are so exciting, for whilst Good should triumph over Evil, in the end
it all hangs by a thread waiting for someone to wake up at the critical moment
and make the right choice.”
Michael Hallman, 2002
http://www.threefolding.com/articles/matrix.asp
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21 January 2009