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Since terrorists are organized in networks of cells, one might expect that recent progress in understanding the dynamics of complex "small world" networks might be of potential help. Valdis Krebs writes:
"Before we fight the enemy we need to 'see' and better understand the enemy... map their networks, figure out their 'patterns' for organizing."
He has identified three competing goals of a terrorist network:
1. Establish efficient communication and information flow within and between many cooperating cells by minimizing path length throughout the network.
2. Limit discovery and monitoring of the network from outsiders by minimizing the number of communication links in the network.
3.
Limit damage when a node is discovered or removed from the network
by minimizing the number of direct ties each node has. (from Complexity
Digest: Our Complexity Digest Page
)
Introduction To Experiential
Reality
Joel Henkel
Possibility of a Generalized Type of Reality
Current science does not question the objective notion of reality.
Philosophical solipsism and its variation, the bishop Berkeley's idealism,
the idea that only the individual person is real, is rejected as silly.
Psychology and the mental disciplines distinguish the subjective from
the objective. The subjective is less real than the objective, because
it private and is subject to illusion. The notion of objective reality
is so strong that to entertain alternative possible types of reality seems
to be quite fruitless and pointless. Yet, questioning objective reality
holds promise for resolving a number of philosophical and physical puzzles,
particularly the mind body problem, or the subjective objective duality
and the wave/particle puzzle of quantum observation. Einstein's relativity
has two forms. Special relativity is limited to local regions of space-time
with flat space-time, while its global version, general relativity allows
curved space-time. In the same sense, special or single existence level
ontological reality is limited to the classical observation of inanimate
systems. An extended version, including the role of the observer, uses a
generalization into a two existence level structured ontological reality,
potentiality and actuality, so that the observer can be included consistently
in the picture of ontological reality.
Special Ontological Reality
We seem incapable of denying the common sense notion that the
world around us exists outside us and independent of our observation
of it. This is the single level ontological view of reality. Philosophers
have formalized the discipline of single level ontology as the study
of that which does or does not exist. We can call this special ontology.
This form satisfies the requirement of classical or mechanistic physics.
Mechanistic systems can be analyzed into finite, discrete component parts
which interact according to equations of motion. In single-level ontology
and mechanistic physics, space-time can be factored into two separate
components, space and time. Quantum mechanics extends special ontology
and mechanistic physics to the inanimate microworld, where molecules, atoms
and particles are treated as discrete component parts.
Generalized Ontological Reality
Special ontology fails to satisfy the open system requirement
of living systems. Organisms continuously interact with their environments.
Special ontology, limited to mechanistic closed system physics with
discrete component parts, cannot handle the disturbing influence of
the external environment. However, a generalization of single existence
level ontology to a two level existential hierarchy, with a lower level
of potentiality and an upper level of actuality, can be used to describe
living systems. The corresponding physics can be called meta-mechanistic
or ecological. One property of living systems is that, in addition to
spatial correlation into structures, they contain temporal correlation
as well. Thus, unlike mechanistic systems that can be factored into spatial
structure and temporal function, meta-mechanistic systems demand that
space-time be considered as a continuum and cannot be factored into space
and time aspects.
Process in Generalized Ontological Reality
Factoring space-time into structure and function allows the application
of equations of motion to physical systems, where spatial structure,
described in terms of 'states', follows a time-evolution. In general
ontology, no such factoring is possible, so the notion of states must
be replaced by some formalism in terms of a space-time continuum outside
mechanistic dynamics. Now, we need to replace the formalism of a dynamical
evolution spatial structures, emphasizing the ontological existence values
of states. The new formalism has an underlying philosophy of experiential
process. An experiential process in space-time is not time-reversible,
but must be time irreversible, since the unknown effects of a controlling
environment prevent any dynamical reversibility. It turns out that there
is a ready-made quantum field theoretic process, invariance symmetry breaking,
that can be directly applied to describe living biological systems in quantum
formalism.
Hierarchy of Two Types of Experiential Process: Representation
and Presentation
Generalized ontological reality requires demandstwo types of
observer, a primitive non-conceptual proto-mind observer and a human
conceptual observer. Each generates its own version of reality. The reality
described by words is limited to human conceptual observers, which models
the world in terms of conceptual categories represented by word code/symbols.
The reality of non-conceptual proto-mind
present in all organisms, even single-celled ones, uses a new mode
of 'stands for'. Internal models the world consist of frequency difference
patterns associated with biological processes stand for some external environmental
frequency difference pattern. Such a process needs a new name; it is
presentation. Model patterns present environmental patterns.
Conceptual experience involves logical reasoning and abstraction,
while proto-mind experience involves psycho-somatic phenomena, affect,
emotion, and motor behavior, among other functions.
Experiential Process as Bateson Loop
As organisms experience, according to the generalized ontological
view, they continuously promote potentiality, that which might happen,
to actuality, that which does happen. The experiential process takes the
form of a closed, circular Bateson feedback loop in the space-time continuum,
where organism and environment are considered as an unbroken whole. Space-time
correlations cross any apparent boundary separating organism and environment.
Perceived difference in space-time environmental vibrational pattern
are used to continuously update an internal model of the world, by triggering
QFT invariance symmetry breakings in the organism. The internal model
of the world, even in an individual cell, consists of a quantum condensation
of water molecules into a Bose condensation. This condensation catalyzes
biochemical processes that make up the motor behavioral arc of the Bateson
loop.
go topside
Go to Joel's Organicist View compared
to Mae-Wan Ho
go topside
Roundtable Discussion Proposal: The Unmarked Complexity of Attention
Mark R. Filippi, DC
addchiro@mindspring.com
Attention, as a clinical, cultural and bionomic process often gets
discounted and pigeon-holed into what Trigant Burrow called, the “mental
penciling upon an item, whether actual object or retained image”. In
fact, attention works as an ecosomatic [organism-environment] system
that, as Burrow reminded us…“originally represented far more a coordination
of the organism with the object than a directing of its interest at the
object.” (1937) Our discussion can center on how the dynamics of attention
can be better addressed through NDS, memetics and neuroscience. How can
improved awareness of the complexity of attention help us unravel what
lies beneath the surface of our present social, political, and spiritual
dilemmas? What can we learn and why?
go topside
Key Words
analinear, functional symmetry, 80/20 principle, vertebral
acoustics, somatics
The Full Service School: Applying Non-Linear
Dynamical Systems
Theory to School Reform
Issues . An Informal Education Roundtable.
Karen VanderVen, Carlos Torre, Valerie Maholmes
( from Yale Child Study Center)-
& Others who wish to join in.
(This work is the fruition of work conceived at the first Blueberry
Brain Institute's Winter Chaos Conference in Craftsbury VT, 1993, where
Karen and Carlos met.)
Playthings, Pattern, and Non-Linear Dynamical Systems. This
would
discuss the premise that the most pressing attribute needed of
children
of the future is pattern perception (there's actually documentation
for
this). Thie presentation would show how increasing complexity and
non-linearity in playthings can promote this attribute, and give
examples from the "manipulative" line of children's playthings,
including
some "Penrose tiles" type blocks. I'd actually bring the materials
along.
go topside
| THE ROOTS OF TERRORISM: AN OVERVIEW
OF THE MAXIMALIST TRADTION OF RELIGIOUS AND IDEOLOGICAL CONCEPTS Frank Mosca This presentation/roundtable contribution will attempt to complement some of the themes already in place on the conference agenda. As always, my focus will be on what I call the dread of freedom as the primary ingredient in all such movements. The attempt to control the world by creating enforced likemindedness that rests either on the promise of a utopian tomorrow to reward the labors and agonies of the struggling masses, as was the case in the last several centuries of putatively non-religious revolutionary ideology, or the more traditional promise of heavenly bliss as a martyr or simply as a compliant citizen of the theocratic societies established to guide the masses to their heavenly reward , no matter what the cost to them [ah, the painful labors of the loving inquisitors :)] . Marx got it more or less right when he said "religion is the opium of the people"; what he just didn't see was that he was one of the biggest ideological drug dealers on the planet himself. Of course what I see as a solution will be proffered [I have my own drugs after all :)], a combination of my own home brewed freedom based dialogue method, combined with the Bohmian social dialoguing designed to demythologize and bring peacefully, but uncompromisingly into the light, the ground state assumptions that fuel these destructive perspectives and delay our readiness to move on to so much more interesting things as a species.
go topside
|
| The relationship
between schizophrenia and family interaction: Twelve hypotheses derived from
n-bind theory Matthijs Koopmans N-bind theory proposes that the symptoms of schizophrenia are associated with dysfunctional patterns of family interaction and argues that the principles of Nonlinear Dynamical Systems theory can be used to understand the origins of such patterns. On previous occasions, the merits of n-bind have been argued using NDS to demonstrate the internal consistency of the theory. This presentation will focus on measurement issues. Specifically, twelve hypotheses derived from n-bind will briefly reviewed. These hypotheses concern the occurrence of n-bind indicators in families with schizophrenic members, the social isolation of dysfunctional families, the personality of schizophrenic patients, and the typical responses of families to distressing life events. 
go topside
|
| Changing Lenses:
Homelessness as Self-Organization Kathleen Moffett-Durrett, MSSW, CSW Doctoral Student, Kent School of Social Work Louisville, Kentucky (abstracted from a larger paper by fda) Hudson (2000) issued a call for the development of
a new paradigm for social work practice under the rubric of chaos
theory. It seems that the assumptions derived from chaos and complex
systems theory would be a productive and innovative way of looking
at homeless people and program interventions (a complex system). This
author’s current work in homelessness has stimulated an interest in clarifying
and expanding Hudson’s ideas by looking at increasing homelessness as
an emergent phenomenon in contemporary culture. Homelessness has been
approached within a macrosystems perspective—rendering individual homeless
persons featureless and, concurrently, voiceless. Funding and services
decisions for homeless persons are based on this macrodescription, one
that imposes a mental health and/or substance abuse profile on all homeless
people. Standish (2001) defines emergent phenomenon as “. . .simply
one that is described by atomic concepts available in the macrolanguage,
but [that] cannot be so described in the microlanguage” (p. 1). Mental
health needs and substance abuse are, thereby, the implicit emergent phenomena
for all homelessness.
In using this macrolevel description for the body homeless, it becomes inherently impossible to assess the unique components of individual systems and ultimately impossible to know in a relative or temporal sense stressors immediately precedent to homelessness. By assessing microlevel input, chaos theory can address this discrepancy by recording the complex and unpredictable dynamics that precede homelessness (Ditto, 1997-2000), for as Warren, Franklin, and Streeter (1998) emphasize, “. . .the nonlinearity inherent in complex systems means that a small input can bring about a large output, if the input occurs at the right time and the right place” (p. 364). Self-organization in this study will be reported in terms of feeling that one possesses the capacity and resources to cope with adversity; loss of self-organization is that point where this feeling is lost. In the vernacular self-organization is the ability to “keep on” ; absence of self-organization is that point at which the respondent has “lost it.” Return to self-organization is reentering a state of feeling the ability to “keep on.” By using an affective self-reported measure, the problem of coping levels (organization by design) being imposed on the client system is avoided and allowance is made for variations in capacity for personal system maintenance. The move back to self-organization is as complex as the chaotic state disruption. While becoming housed is the focus of this study and will be, ipso facto, an element in the reorganization towards control, it is conceivable that it will not be the reorganizing element perceived and reported by the respondent as the “attractor” for coping. For example, an abuse victim may report the courage to file a restraining order as the turning point in regaining a stable state. Because the interest in this study is the population which utilizes shelter services it will be fruitful to understand what respondents see as the attractor before or during shelter. It will not be possible to generalize to the non-shelter population though a future comparison of self-reported attractors between the shelter user and the person who does not use shelter could be very revealing. Self-(Re)organization may, as can be seen, be triggered by any intervention or treatment and an important component of the study will be asking people what was going on in their lives when they returned to a stable state. Research goals 1. A lexicon of precipitating events for onset of homelessness will be developed, this will include incidences of mental and physical health crises, including substance abuse. 2. Using mapping techniques and iteration, patterns of self-organization will be described and inspected for commonalities. 3. Additional hypothetical statements will develop from the lexicon of precipitating events and patterns of self-organization among newly homeless persons. |