I like this way of putting it...
>This example makes a lot of sense to me.
Warren McCulloch was particularly gifted at making sense out of new and
complex things -- and if he couldn't put it into equations he wrote it as
poetry (as Humberto Maturana also does).
>+This kind of situation is characteristic of clusters of small social units
>+(which may be formally organised within some hierarchical scheme) when=
faced
>Well, the Midway example does give us a situation where the cooperating
>ships all have a common background. They all came from the same training,
>they use compatible equipment, they speak the same language, they share the
>same basic interest (defeat the Japanese) and so on. It seems like
>heterarchy almost requires one dimension to be identical for all members -
>though there can be many other dimensions that vary.
Probably there are many common dimensions as between the modular units
operating at any level of a control hierarchy, which is why Herbert Simon
calls them "semi decomposable"; following on from the vertical
semi-decomposability that operates between the levels themselves he talks of
the loose horizontal coupling of the units (horizontal semi-decomposability)
within the levels giving a necessary autonomy to these units, -- in our
terms, to behave heterarchically. Simon, Pattee, Beer, Rappaport, Bateson,
etc. don't explicitly employ the notion of heterarchy which makes their
arguments more "wordy" than they need be. The number of common dimensions
between units is surely correlated with the strength of their coupling. In
the case of enzymes hauling proteins around and coupling them up in
different combinations the dimensions could be enumerated from their
geometries, but the folding processes involved in enzyme formation have to
bescribed topologically. I think dimensionality --> coupling strength -->
degree of cohesion within and between the levels and modules of a
sociosymbolic hierarchy could be formalised topologically; I think it is
important that at the highest (closure) level in native Andean cosmology the
levels are *described* (i.e. in the semantics of Quechua language) as where
their "outside" extremities become concentrated at the centre of the
"inside" from which they disperse again but *on the other side* -- implying
a non-orientable topology as in Mobeus strips, Klein Bottles, etc., though
I'm not enough of a mathematician to formally describe it, since the act of
description of the whole by an external observer brings a new level of
hierarchy into play. The symbolic hierarchy, with its topological closure,
is replicated recursivley at each successively lower level, though the
socio-political coupling at the higher levels is virtually non-existant (the
last autonomous Inka was murdered in 1532).=20
>So heterarchy can also "fill in the gaps" in a hierarchy...a class of
>"things" sharing the same label under a certain regime may (essentially)
>self-organize based on relative advantages, and perhaps over time this
>differentiation may become formalized on the meta- level.
At these higher levels only relatively transient heterarchical coupling
occurs "filling in the gaps". At lower levels (community, "ethnic groups"
the hierarchical social structures are generally preserved, though the
continual high variety generated through their heterarchical coupling to the
current world system gives rise to plentiful heterarchical interaction
within the modules comprising the different levels. This is a "language" or
coding type problem, as you say with the ships, and must be embedded in the
heterarchical structure -- ecologists now are finding the strangest and
cutist things in bacterial organisations, much more communication than was
ever thought. In the sense that the constraints induced in lower level units
by the higher ones they are unquestionable and unfalsifiable they could also
said to be "sanctified".=20
>Sure, differentiation is not inevitable, or it may progress only slightly
>and not be "worth" formalizing, or it may be fluid with much too much
>shifting to draw any conclusions about a better way to organize aside from
>leaving it alone.
This is the case. It is perhaps best understood by Stafford Beer's notion
"manipulation of recursivity". There are those bacteria which in certain
cases act as individual undifferentiated creatures (with limited
heterarchical interactions), when conditions change coalesce into complex
multicellular organisms hierarchically organised and with phenotipical
specialisation and all the rest, are a good case. Somehow the individuals
maintain the "know how" to recreate the hierarchy system. We humans are
biologically "all the same", but we can't exist as humans unless we coalesce
in socio-cultutal systems. Within these systems we differentiate and
hierarchies tend to emerge. When relatively stable hierarchies consolidate
the levels tend to get glued in terms of the sanctity attributed to the
superior levels. But when a system is decapitated, like the Inka, the know
how required to recreate it is maintained through these heterarchical
communications. But in the process it seems that some of the previously
unquestionable propositions do get talked about and modified -- just "how
come the system failed?" gets talked about. So when the system recoalesces
it will never be the same as before. It will take into account the
"decapitators" and may even coalesce with them in time -- but this seems to
be a long way off in Peru yet.
+>How are general hierarchies *more* interesting? Because roles get=
confused
+>and intermediaries come into the picture? Does the sanctification process
+>move the system away from a mostly functional structure, and if so, to=
what
+>end? Is this the way that more "words" are written into the system's
+>"vocabulary"?
Thinking of all this now I'm not so sure that the general hierarchies are
more interesting, it is the emergent process that is always continually at
work. One peculiar thing is that here in the Andes the community hierarchies
restructure themselves in quite different forms at certain times thoughout
the year. Parts of the modules at any one level break apart and coalesce
with others to form quite different modules often at different levels, but
the new arrangements are always duely sanctified. Boss type relations exist
but the bosses are rotated throughout the system so that everyone passes a
term as boss at one level after another and no one group can consolidate
their boss function as permanent. I think this works to talk through
"heresies" thououghly.
+ In the Battle of Midway probably at most the Captain and crew
+of the current boss ship may have said a brief prayer or saluted the flag,
+who knows? But what ever they did wouldn't have been known to the rest of
+the fleet.
>Are you sure? Wouldn't it be more a case of the lead ship having the
>command code label, ie Ship X is now called "Blue Leader" or something like
>that - a common referent for the rest of the ships? Wouldn't that be
>essential to coordinating action, especially if the leadership role was
>shifting quickly because of the demands of the situation? In other words,
>isn't the very *process* of transferring leadership the sanctification
>itself?
You are right here. If we treat the boss structure as a rotating heterarchy
then it is most definately sanctified.
>Which presumably is a sort of holistic good, accomplished by many
>differentiated paths for attempts to reduce uncertaintly and a tolerance
>for some degree of ambiguity. The "heresy" strategy is short-term
>thinking, and may not be advantageous in the long run because it is
>eliminating a source of feedback. On the other hand, the heresy strategy
>MAY be adaptive to avoid *overdifferentiation*, ie a certain phenomenon
>occurs so rarely or at such a low level that it is not cost-effective to
>implement a way to resolve it. Only when it crosses a threshold does it
>become worthwhile to readjust.
>But then this starts raising heterarchy again. I guess a good example of
>both would be "black markets" - officially condemned, structurally informal
>and fluid. And here's another: the "numbers game" was illegal gambling
>fifty years ago, and now all US states have "lotteries".
>Or, the uncertainty rises to the level where the heresy strategy discredits
>the system rather than the uncooperative elements. Which makes sense
>because each now are significant threats to survival, and the FAILURE of
>the heresy strategy (to reduce uncertainty) is EVIDENCE that it is the
>system that is a bigger threat to survival.
+The levels get jumbled so
+that logical hierarchy of the distinctions between "superiors" and
+"colleagues" get lost, and these get replaced by boss type relations which
+attempt to substitute for those distinctions, and that is where coercion
+takes hold and cohesion lost.
+This process has about reached its limit today
+and that is why we are looking to a new and adaptive emergent metasystem.
>Are you talking about social unrest, or the field of cybernetics here? Or
>something else?
I suppose that the line between social unrest, politics and cybernetics is
pretty thin today, as Beer bitterly reflects about his experience in the
"cybernetisation" of Chile during Allende's presidency. But at least
cybernetics is an excellent metalanguage in which we can talk about and
evaluate these factors, and try to do something about it all. I guess that
is what PCP is all about.
John
John Earls
jearls@pucp.edu.pe
Pontificia Universidad Cat=F3lica del Per=FA