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>From fheyligh@vnet3.vub.ac.be Tue Aug 20 05:37 EDT 1996
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Date: Tue, 20 Aug 1996 11:40:35 +0100
To: joslyn@kong.gsfc.nasa.gov (Cliff Joslyn)
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From: "Brown, Alex" <BROWNA@tp.ac.sg> (by way of fheyligh@vnet3.vub.ac.be
(Francis
Heylighen))
Subject: subscription to prncyb-L
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Francis,
Can you help me out here? I have twice tried to get through to Cliff Joslyn
at Binghamton NY with my request for subscription to prncyb-l. My message
has bounced on both occasions. Can you get it to him or, can you get me
subscribed to the list? I attach the personal/academic info required on the
subscription form. Sorry to bother you on this I just can't think of another
way through this.
*****************
Please subscribe me to the Principia Cybernetica mailing list.
As requested, my personal info is attached below:
Name: Alexander Brown
Email address: browna@tp.ac.sg
URL of home page: none
Postal address: Block 43, 07-06, Tampines Avenue 1, Singapore 529757
Phone: (H): 788 2076; (O): 780 5702
Affiliations: Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies, Temasek Polytechnic,
Singapore.
by training: architect/urban design
How did you hear about PCP?: from Complexity sources on the Web
Please take at least one page to describe your work
and how it might relate to PCP:
I teach Cultural Studies which involves the study of world civilizations
both East and West, Modern and Popular Culture, History of Art and Design.
In research terms, I am at present finishing a manuscript on the subject of
'Cultural Systems'. The central thesis of this and my main research interest
is the application of complex systems theory to the formation and
development of cultural forms. As far as I know this has not been done
before in any coherent way. The outline below provides a general
description of the approach:
Up till now the general tendency in the writing of cultural histories and in
analysis of their development, has been that of the narrative or more
specifically, the biographical approach to explaining or describing cultural
change where such change is treated as a conscious construction on the part
of individual human agents. This is what one might call the 'heroic' view of
history. From this point of view, the vast complexities of cultural systems
over time are regarded as simply the additive end result of individual
conscious creation.
However, the large scale continuities and transformations which occur within
cultural systems over long periods of time - the history of each system -
cannot be explained by the simple descriptive or chronological approach. The
ideas put forward here are an attempt to establish, perhaps for the first
time, a theory and a model of cultural change based on a definition of
particular cultural forms (eg architecture, music, art, literature,
scientific theories and political organization, etc) as complex systems.
Another aspect of this is that these cultural systems are the interactive
results of collective activity (large numbers of people over long periods
of time). As such they cannot be dealt with on an individualistic basis.
As described here the forms produced by cultural systems and the evolution
of those forms over time are the result of multiple interactions between
the agents of the system. That is, where each cultural system is defined as
a field of communication and exchange which allows for the generation of
complexity of form and organization within the system. In order to
conceptualize the system in this way it is necessary to redefine the
cultural forms produced into two parts: their material base and the
information which gives a particular character to that material. For
example, architecture is redefined into the concrete reality of buildings
and into the shared information which gives specific form to those
buildings. It is this latter aspect which is collectively exchanged and
manipulated within the discursive limits of the system to produce new forms.
Equally, this systemic activity - the dynamic of the system - produces
specific developmental paths (trajectories) along which the system will
travel until environmental constraints disallow further such development.
The character of cultural forms produced and the organization of those forms
into coherent and semantically significant groups are thus deemed to be the
cumulative result of the impartial and collective operations of the system
itself acting recursively on existing material produced by previous
operations and continually recreating itself in new and more differentiated
forms. The key issue here is that the character and history of cultural
forms is, in each case the result of a vast collective enterprise taking
place over long periods of time and thus not amenable to biographical or
individualistic explanations.
Cultural forms are never random in character but are always organized in to
patterns or styles (typical sets of highly probable elements from which new
forms are combined). The survival or otherwise of these styles or 'types'
and indeed the evolution of new types is the result of stochastic processes
(part random/part determined) operating within the constraints of the
prevailing socioeconomic environment. Selection from the probable elements
of the typical set (determined by previous evolution of the system) and
their combination in specific/particular circumstances leads to random
combinations. The multiple combinations of these random events produces a
constant shift in the characteristics of the type as they in turn become the
subject of selection and re-combination. Thus, cultural forms can be shown
to be the result of the normal collective processes of selection and
combination of forms constrained by socioeconomic conditions (environment)
which vary unpredictably in time from Plural - (multi-centred) to Integrated
- (single centred). The effect of the environment (postive and negative
feedback) is to create increasing or decreasing degrees of uniformity of
cultural forms varying in time (history). The combination of invariant
typological processes and variable environmental constraints can be
permutated into three different states or trajectories for the history of
the system: evolution, development or involution, each with particular
consequences for the forms produced by a cultural system. Thus although
change takes place continuously in the cultural system it is by no means
always the SAME KIND of change.
The key issue being one of number and variety of elements (organization)
which prevail within a cultural form at any time. The result of this chance
interaction between the invariant system processes and random environmental
changes is the occasional emergence of a METASYSTEM which combines and
integrates diverse characteristic forms from the previous state of the
system into a single comprehensive routine, style paradigm or template which
can be utilized in many different circumstances. There is a need to
recognize the 'chance event' in the history of the system - the unprogrammed
coincidence of factors both internal and external to the system itself.
This produces singular or plural possibilities of representing experience in
the 'language' of the system. The theory and the model also looks at how the
forms produced by the cultural system/environment can, in some conditions
and using the same collective alogarithms, cease to represent experience and
lead to the introduction of secondary or compensatory forms in order to
maintain the semantic and communicational coherence of the system. The
theory treats system activity and its products as a type of behaviour
(routine), a set of forms (style), a categorization (paradigm) depending on
context.
Of particular significance here is a description of the
selection-combination alogarithm (utilized by each individual agent) which
when applied continuously and collectively to previously-produced forms
generates the new. The specific type of change (transformation) produced by
this alogarithmic process can be shown to be one of 'articulation' or
differentiation of the elements of the typical set into their constituent
and most probable forms in a continuous grouping and re-grouping along the
most statistically probable lines. Etc. Etc. Etc.
********
Cybernetics, complex systems, complexity, psychological, communicational and
ecological categories are used among other perspectives to produce a model
of self-organizing cultural systems.
Thats it.
With regards
Alex Brown
Singapore