I agree with Morris Villarroel that my presentation on social information started a bit late in the game, and he is certainly right that not all efforts to produce food led to specialization. I had not meant to imply the latter but took the plunge into m
ore complex systems more-or-less purposefully. I do not know very much about precivilized bands and tribes, on the one hand, and was thinking that social information gets interesting when we get to more complex systems characterized by VEMs and specializ
ed roles. In fact, I think it is a convention in Anthropology that in archaic systems there are almost no specialized roles. Women make babies and men do not, men hunt more than women and women scavenge more than men. But otherwise members of bands and
tribes tend to be *jacks-of-all-trades* and they play roles interchangeably.
If the above is right, then there is relatively less social information communicated in archaic bands and tribes, for if people can switch activities indiscriminately than the uncertainty about what they will be doing next is relatively high. I tried to
get at the same thing Morris was after, I suspect, by concentrating on the transition to agriculture*I was looking for the threshold where a qualitative change occurred. But I did not follow through on this very far. Anyone interested shoudlsee Denise S
chmantz-Besserat. Meanwhile, I agree with Morris that statements about symmetry-breaking discontinuities, emergence, etc are unsatisfying. I understand that if we do not allow for such punctuations then the reductionists win. But it is discomforting to
simply point to something new, say it emerges, and act as if an explanation has occurred. To me, however, it is even more discomforting to reify information and give it agency. At least with emergence there is a patterned p!
rocess which can be tracked in various natural domains, while the use of such patterns implies a conscious change in what causality is.
But if I push the process back a bit to see how some barrier between a group and its world could be created and have transforming effects, a little parable comes to mind. Imagine the simplest, most rudimentary band possible*people in a state of nature.
The elements in the band would be people and as such their biological information would be no different from ours. But there would be virtually no social information*there would be no *us* to describe. That would be because the whimsical actions of the
people would depend entirely on their personal needs, etc. They would sleep when tired, eat when hungry, mate when excited, etc. The only things any would know about the others is what their biochemical processes and personal experience tell them*certai
n gestures are threatening, the best angle to cut off a fleeing prey is the golden mean, the one with the missing eye is nasty, etc. If an outside observer noted where in a forest clearing each band member was*and what they w!
ere doing--at some instant there would be no ability to predict where they would be*or what they would be doing--at another.
But suppose some male member for any personal reason*anger, frustration*suddenly ran through the band off into the woods. Others might follow from curiosity. There would be a disorganized motion. As the bunch hit the forest, however, physical boundarie
s like deer paths would constrain the motion. A line might form. A line is the first military formation, and formation may be one source of social complexity. If the line transported the runners in a more-or-less coherent structure forward and they the
n came*even accidentally*into contact with another band, they could burst into it, knock down a few males and snatch female breeding partners.
Flushed with success, they would return to their camp and *discuss it,* probably by acting out. Acting out would mean they recreated the line which led to their successful raid. They would then be storing information in their organized grouping which is
not about the individual members running through the woods but about the raid itself. Storing information by recreating relationships between people*acting out the line*begins the process by which the band becomes a society. If it is able to map these
collective relations as VEMs, then the behavior of the individuals would be constrained and there would be a propensity to form [sic!] into an unlikely distribution some distance from equilibrium (the line).
The organized band can now act upon its environment by replicating the raid and attacking again. Presumably, however, the victims have also discussed the experience and they are likely to use whatever biochemical inclinations they have to gather females
and children toward the center and younger males toward the edge. A raid now would not be as successful. But we come equipped with at least the skill of wolves, and raiders could then have attacked a third time by setting a trap. Some would have moved
around the expected victims and others would have used the line to run them toward their colleagues up ahead. We now have the basic military strategy*the surround. And responding to it gives the fundamental defense*the circle. Circles are so hard to br
eak that raiders would have developed the square to concentrate forces and overwhelm the defense.
There are only four military formations*line, column, circle and square*and we have now got a scenario for their *emergence.* But consider what happens when raiders return form an adventure after formation exists and act-out. A threshold is being passed
and a qualitative change is occurring, whether anyone is actually aware of it at the moment. When returning raiders create, e.g., a square, they are storing information about a world their own actions have transformed--their structure now stores informa
tion about themselves as well as the world. The band is developing a collective consciousness. It will take a while to represent these phenomena symbolically, and the process seems to be remarkably consistent. Of course, a symbolic representation would
make the band, by definition, a complex system, for it would have a model of itself embedded in its map of the world.
When peoples express collective information it is first about the world*they have a cosmogenic myth to begin with. Only later do they create an explanation of themselves*they develop an origins myth second. Peoples are conscious of their world before th
ey become conscious of themselves, in other words. I believe they are conscious of their societies before they are conscious of themselves, as well.
Some of you may recognize traces of Ortega in the above*but do not blame him for any errors about information it contains. I am wondering if this parable begins to approximate Marijuan*s work with the peptide bond? If so, then we can glimpse the sort of
experiences that Villaroel wants us to look at and have some sort of chance to map how creations in the realm of behavior alter the environment and force revisions in the VEM realm.
!
Received on Wed Oct 7 15:54:39 1998
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