Another dimension of complexity comes from the fact that human decision
making is not only bounded by technical constraints related to information
gathering and processing but is also significantly constrained by a bias
that comes from the set of basic values and beliefs about the world and a
society that a decision maker holds in his mind. In that sense certain
solutions to a problem, which are technically accessible and rational,
perhaps even optimal for an external observer, are discarded or
unrecognized as such because they clash with certain socially shared beliefs
and values (a worldview).
What one holds in mind is a model of the system under study, including a
model of oneself. In this sense, these are anticipatory systems a la Rosen
(1985). In addition to holding this model in mind, these models can also be
communicated. Thus, the social system processes meaning on top of the
information processing (Luhmann, 1984). Meaning is provided from the
perspective of hindsight and thus inverts the axis of time locally. The
probabilistic entropy generation is thus provided with a feedback by each
individual model. This feedback is further reinforced by the communication
(stabilization, and potential globalization) of meaning in social systems.
Unlike minds (psychological systems) which can provide the events with
meaning and thereby construct an expectation, social systems can be
considered as strongly anticipatory (Dubois, 1998). Strongly anticipatory
systems co-construct their own future. I tried to model these relations
using Dubois's incursive and hyperincursive equations. See:
http://www.leydesdorff.net/temp . This paper has still
to be written, but
the main arguments can be found in:
Hyperincursion and the <http://www.leydesdorff.net/casys05/index.htm>
Globalization of a Knowledge-Based Economy, In: D. M. Dubois (Ed.)
Proceedings of the 7th Intern. Conf. on Computing Anticipatory Systems
CASYS'05, Li�ge, Belgium, 8-13 August 2005. Melville, NY: American Institute
of Physics Conference Proceedings, Vol. 839, 2006, pp. 560-569; <pdf-version
<http://www.leydesdorff.net/casys05/CASYS05.pdf>
>
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/
Now available:
<http://www.universal-publishers.com/book.php?method=ISBN&book=1581129378>
The Knowledge-Based Economy: Modeled, Measured, Simulated. 385 pp.; US$
18.95
<http://www.universal-publishers.com/book.php?method=ISBN&book=1581126956>
The Self-Organization of the Knowledge-Based Society;
<http://www.universal-publishers.com/book.php?method=ISBN&book=1581126816>
The Challenge of Scientometrics
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Received on Tue Dec 12 10:41:07 2006
