Dear Pedro:
1. You are changing the subject from "social and cultural complexity" to
"the nature of complexity".
Thus, our previous communications seem to be discardable as "irrelevant."
Initially, I do not find Stan, Guy and Loet's responses convincing enough.
Properly speaking about the social realm, the impervious dominance of the
"formal" organizations or "systems" separated form the intrinsic complexity
of individual's life, hasn't it been the capital sin of the past century?
Among other miscarriages, let us remind dialectical and historical
materialism, that pretended science of social change... a form of social
mechanics in its purest acception (social masses, social forces, social
revolutions, etc.), creating a new standard for human beings, writing in
the pretended "blank slate" of human minds. One of the lessons to learn is
that the HUMAN FACTOR (or human nature if one prefers) will
"systematically" defeat to any systemic planner --be it economic, urban,
technological, political, etc.-- who does not care about it. All those
"systems" superimposed upon individuals will plunder if they do not let
open avenues for the advancement of the human life-cycle.
I don't expect anybody to plea for imposing a system on human beings a la
marxism or fascism.
It is not obvious that the human factor is the correct unit of analysis if
one is interested in social and cultural complexity. It is undoubtedly the
right unit of analysis if one is interested in human complexity. However,
many phenomena which emerge on the basis of human (non-linear) interactions
cannot be reduced to the carriers.
For example, a scientific paradigm (a la Kuhn) can be considered as a
development of the pre-paradigmatic discourse into a more codified one. The
discourse becomes locked-in and then sets the delineations of the relevant
contributions to the discourse. Thus, human beings who were previously
important to this social/cultural system, are now no longer. As Planck seems
to have said, one has to wait till the old boys have died. This is not to
deny that human beings are crucial as carriers of a socio-cultural system,
but as the dynamics of the neural network are not determined at the level of
the cells, but in terms of the wiring, analogously the dynamics of the
networks of communications are not necessarily determined by the dynamics of
the human carriers. Analytically, the human carriers are structurally
coupled as the relevant environment of the social system.
Of course, it sounds nice to proclaim a humanistic a priori. However, as a
system of communications the social can be studied as providing a dynamics
different and additional to human intentions. It is a different
(sub)dynamic. For example, when one follows neo-evolutionary economics
(Schumpeter) in stating that innovations can upset the equilibrium seeking
tendencies in markets, we are discussing more abstract dynamics than can be
explained in terms of carriers (e.g., individual entrepreneurs). In this
sense, Marx was right: one creates society, but what happens is beyond
control because it is part of another dynamics. (His answers of the
possibility of a final reconciliation of these different dynamics was
perhaps a bit naive.)
I hope that this is helpful. Most likely, it is not "convincing enough".
:-)
With best wishes,
Loet
_____
Loet Leydesdorff
Amsterdam School of Communications Research (ASCoR)
Kloveniersburgwal 48, 1012 CX Amsterdam
Tel.: +31-20- 525 6598; fax: +31-20- 525 3681
<mailto:loet@leydesdorff.net> loet@leydesdorff.net ;
<http://www.leydesdorff.net/> http://www.leydesdorff.net/
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The Challenge of Scientometrics
I remember that early computers contained a sort of "refresh" or "reset"
tension affecting every transistor so that their functional state, after
any work cycle, was effectively set as planned by the designer --probably
contemporary microchips are above that limitation... what I mean is that
there is no effective, generalized way to isolate the emergent or complex
behavior in any realm from all the vagaries of upper and lower realms
--except laboratories themselves and techno installations. Nature does not
care about crossing our well established disciplinary borders: out-there,
herein.
The extrinsic versus the intrinsic--this motto transpires quite often (now,
for instance) our discussions: the exo vs. the endo, the external vs. the
internal, the mechanical vs. the organicist, reductionism vs. holism
... rather than confronting both sides, they should be coupled. My
emphasis on the cellular model to adumbrate a cogent integrative
informational perspective (connecting with some of Ted's points), is that
we can appreciate therein how that integration intrinsic/extrinsic happens
in terms of molecular agents inside, and of the signaling clouds from the
rest of the organism outside. Apparently, far easier (though not done by
the "systems biology" guys yet) than in neuronal or human social realms.
In any case, putting together the extrinsic AND the intrinsic, has really
caught me while thinking on the recent messages. .. Please, add customary
spoonful of salt to those rough statements.
best
Pedro
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Received on Tue Dec 19 20:50:27 2006
