Fields and networks
- Handout accompanying a workshops given at the IMA summer
residency 2008
OUTLINE:
- 1. intro: paradigm shift:
holism, self organization, complexity
- 2. systems studies
- a. dynamics
- b. complex or simple
- c. isolated, coupled
- d. open or closed
- e. nested, embedded
- f. adaptive
- g. nonlinear or linear
- h. self organizing
- i. emergent properties
- 3. physics
- a. fields
- b. quantum system as fields
- c. networks
- d. a connectionist model
of neural function
- 4. biology
- a. biological embeddedness:
organism-environment systems
- b. biological 'parts'
- c. embryonic induction:
the egg as a field
- d. immune system as network
- e. wide networks in the
brain
- f. volume dynamics in
the brain
- 5. psychology - self organization
of archetypes
- 6. aesthetics and organizational
depth
- 7. social applications
- a. pedagogy and therapy
- b. anarchist visions
- 8. personal wholeness: envisaging dissociation and
integration
-
- Fields and networks bibliography
- Appendix: Imagining the brain
Fields and networks: an emerging archetype
... a fairly simple point about causation: that it is
multiple, interdependent and complex. Oyama 1993,25
1. Intro paradigm shift wholeness
Paradigm:
a constellation of concepts, values, perceptions, and
practices shared by a community, which forms a particular vision of reality
that is the basis of the way the community organizes itself. Varela
The paradigm shift I will be talking about is a crucial
change in the way 'bodies' or the 'physical' are understood. At the same
time it is a difference in the way other kinds of part-whole relation are
thought.
It's a shift happening incrementally as people gradually
reorganize themselves to think differently and understand differently.
I want to introduce some of the core concepts and then
show briefly how the paradigm change works itself out in different areas
of study.
-
The most general way to describe the shift is that it is
a shift into understanding things as complex wholes. In science this shift
can be called scientific holism, and it expresses itself in talk
about systems, fields and networks.
But the shift also expresses itself socially and personally
in the ways we want to live, for instance in individualized interdisciplinary
studies, holistic psychologies and a longing to understand ourselves as
part of the physical universe.
scientific discoveries may be seen as corroboration
of religious insights into the unus mundus,
the essential oneness of all experience, which links human nature
with the nature of the cosmos.
In the last two decades, physicists and other scientists
and philosophers of science have begun to discover that a wholeness-based
view of the world is, essential to proper understanding of the purely physical
universe. A view of wholeness as an existing, guiding structure is essential
in quantum physics; essential in biology; essential in ecology; in one form
or another, essential in almost every branch of modern science. Chris Alexander
the potential to show us, and make us know, feel, and
experience, a vision of the world in which we are connected continuously,
to the fabric of the living structure, and its capacity to yield living
structure from careful adaptation
a view of the universe which is no longer based on the
idea of abstract, impersonal whirling atoms, but on a connection with the
substance of the world, that gives birth, and can be seen to give birth,
to whirling living centers in which we find ourselves, and to which
in the last analysis we are connected.
2. systems 'theory' = systems studies
philosophical system · physical system
· social system · ecosystem · operating
system · political system · solar system
·
An interdisciplinary effort to think in terms of whole
systems to think of wholeness in a more complex way.
Greek etymology systema organized whole,
from syn together and histanai to stand, to set up
Bertalanffy, one of the fathers of system theory, defined
system as "elements in standing relationship."
There had been earlier philosophical arguments for such
an interest but systems theory began to be spoken of in the context of needing
to talk about organisms in ecosystems. Bateson and Margaret Mead.
Generalized to a study of systems as such how to
talk about them, how to model them.
Important system concepts:
a. dynamic system
- Means it changes.
b. isolated/coupled, open/closed
Coupled system: "the
state of one system at any given time determines the way in which the state
of the other system changes, also depending on what state the latter is
in."
Example: a small almost-enclosed bay of the larger ocean,
where incoming tides and waves drive local tides and waves that are also
influenced by the shape of the bay etc.
An open system interacts dynamically with its environment.
A closed system does not interact with its environment.
c. nested, embedded
Nested interrelations: suprasystems and subsystems.
Animals are embedded in their ecosystems.
d. nonlinear or linear
Linear system systems
with few and stable variables - variable to be solved for using linear
equations. Example: Newton [1642-1727] on planetary motion.
A system is nonlinear if even one system component
changes its characteristics as a function of what's happening, the way
viscosity changes as a function of pressure, or friction as a function
of velocity.
Nonlinear systems, in which variables are mutually
dependent, require the use of nonlinear differential equations. These
equations are difficult to solve.
Most physical systems are inherently nonlinear in nature. Physical examples of linear systems are not very common. The
weather is famously nonlinear, where simple changes in one part of the
system produce complex effects throughout.
e. self organizing
Self-organization means that order rises spontaneously
as a result of the nature of the materials involved. Nothing exterior organizes
the pattern.
The central metaphor for understanding systems used to
be hierarchical, based on the politics of monarchy. In this metaphor systems
are created by a ruler and 'governed'' by natural laws. In the past couple
of centuries scientific and political changes have helped us to imagine
systems creating themselves and sustaining themselves.
Self-organization refers to the spontaneous development
(organization) of a system and its evolution to different and more complex
states. Self-organization is best understood theoretically from within
physics, specifically thermodynamics, the science of energy and energy
transformations.
Thermodynamics: imagine
a big metal bucket of cold water set onto a table in a stream of sunlight.
Warmed water rises, cooler and denser water sinks, and there begin to be
regions of rising and sinking flow organized into a pattern.
f. complex systems
Complexity - often called nonequilibrium thermodynamics
- deals with open systems that are far from equilibrium (FFE) because of
their constant matter/energy flux. Self-organization occurs spontaneously
in such open systems.
g. adaptive systems
Have the capacity to change and learn from experience.
Example: neural networks.
h. complex adaptive systems
Complex adaptive systems are special cases of complex
systems. They are adaptive in that they have the capacity to change
and learn from experience. The term complex adaptive systems was
coined at the interdisciplinary Santa Fe Institute that developed models
of chaotic dynamics.
i. emergent properties
Self-organizing systems demonstrate the emergence of
properties that are not demonstrated by their parts, but "emerge"
as a result of the interactions between their parts. Examples of emergent
properties include the color of a lump of sulfur; the shape of a drop of
water; the shape & behavior of rivers & vortices; patterns in chemical
clocks; temperature & chemical composition of Earth's atmosphere, oceans
& rocks; and life and consciousness.
Emergent properties are not predictable a priori from
knowledge of parts and, thus, cannot be fully explained by reduction &
analysis but are consistent with properties of the parts. That is, explanations
of emergent properties are fully consistent with the laws of physics and
chemistry; there is nothing mystical about them. Because of emergence,
explanation of systems requires reductionism (analysis of the parts) AND
the holism of complexity (a systems view).
3. physics fields, networks and complexity
a. fields
The natural soul of man is not larger in size than
a single point, and on this point the form and character of the whole sky
is potentially engraved. Kepler on astrology
The law of inertia is not a property of empty space
but an effect of the total system of stars.
Newton filled the entire space of the universe with
interlocking forces of attraction, issuing from all particles of matter
and acting on all, across the abysses of darkness.
A mathematical field is a way of thinking about
the spatial layout of quantities of some variable examples are temperature
fields or air pressure fields, as diagrammed for instance on weather reports
on TV.
A physical field is a region throughout which 'a
force' may be exerted; examples are the gravitational, electric, and magnetic
fields that surround, respectively, masses, electric charges, and magnets.
In a field description, rather than body A directly
exerting a force on body B, body A (the source) creates a field in every
direction around it and body B (the detector) experiences the field that
exists at its position. If a change occurs at the source, its effect propagates
outward through the field at a constant speed and is felt at the detector
only after a certain delay in time. ... Each type of force (electric, magnetic,
nuclear, or gravitational) has its own appropriate field. [Anonymous web author]
A field is a condition of space surrounding a body
This condition of space is the seat of energy. Energy
is thus continuously spread through space by a medium we call a field.
Action at a distance then can be understood as action
in a field. Field forces comprise the activation this energy.
Field theory usually refers
to a construction of the dynamics of a field, i.e. a specification of how
a field changes.
Human bodies are masses, are charged, and are magnets,
so there are gravitational and electromagnetic fields around them, that
extend beyond their visible edges.
It alters what is meant by a body if its field is included.
Fields extending to various distances both 'belong to'
and 'are part of' the visible bodies and are shared by other bodies, in
the sense that the fields interact with each other.
On the finest level we could consider the whole universe
to be one field.
an ocean of light, ephemeral fabric of the real
a view of matter as being active, composed of patterns
of energy and excitation
b. quantum systems as fields
We have been trying to think about the quantum scale using
concepts of wholes and parts, objects and causes that
we have developed at our own scale. Those concepts do not work at quantum
scales.
Bohr's insistence that the key to quantum mechanics
lies in the dependence of electrons on the configuration and behavior of
the whole.
For quite a long time many physicists thought that
the world consisted of both fields and particles In its mature form, the
idea of quantum field theory is that quantum
fields are the basic ingredients of the universe, and particles are just
bundles of energy and momentum of the fields.
Quantum systems can be analyzed rigorously only by
treating the entire system as a whole. The
term "photon" is neither clear nor rigorously defined with respect
to an entangled system.
Entities that belong to the atomic and subatomic domains
cannot be described by a single model what the models describe are
not the entities themselves
('Entanglement' refers to results in experimental physics
that show unexpected correlations in the behavior of particles at spatially
distant locations.)
When people talk about "entangled photons",
there really aren't two clearly defined separate or independent photons,
there's only the (more complex) quantum state of a (more complex) combined quantum system. Applying ideas or concepts derived
from simple rigorously defined photon systems to this more complex system
can get you in trouble.
Substance-attribute description has to be given up.
Attributes belong to the measuring set-up too. Steven
Weinstein
c. networks
Fields are a holistic way of thinking of systems continuous
in space; networks are a holistic way of thinking of systems of connected
parts that propagate causal influence from one part to another.
We can think of influence as feeding forward into
a net, feeding backward into a net, and passing through a net. What
happens at any point in a net is a result both of what is propagating into
that point, and of what is there already.
Quantum particle interactions; chemical reactions;
metabolism in prokaryotes & eukaryotes; multicellular organisms; nervous
systems; immune systems; ecosystems, including planetary-scale ecosystems
(e.g., Gaia); human cultures; corporations; economies of any scale; galaxies...all
are networks.
To understand virtually any complex, dynamic system,
think in terms of networks or systems.
Understand one as a network and you'll understand the
basic dynamics of all regardless of their parts. The key: understand the
interaction (rules) for the parts.
d. a connectionist model of neural function
[Description below is taken from the MIT coursework named
in the bib.]
Connectionism is a way of
computer modeling system behaviors. Connectionist models that try
to replicate the way activity propagates in nerve networks are called artificial
neural networks.
In connectionist models neural cells are diagramed as
unit points connected by lines, the lines representing synapses that selectively
propagate electrochemical activity between neurons. Synapses are gaps between
neurons - the fluid-filled space through which neurotransmitter molecules
leave one neuron and enter another.
In most connectionist models, units are organized in 3
layers. (The cerebral cortex, the convoluted outer part of the brain,
is actually organized into 6 layers.) [See diagram of connectionist net
in the appendix.]
The interesting point about connectionist networks is
that they can model how learning happens in the nervous system.
Activity propagating through existing connections propagates by means of
synaptic change. These functional changes may reconstruct the
synapse, so that what happens at a synapse at some very particular
later time will be different because of a constellation of conditions existing
at this moment. Reconstruction of this sort is one of the physical bases
of memory and skill.
Terminology:
- input/output pattern
- input/output units
- hidden units
- connections
- connection weights are how
strongly any unit propagates activation
- training up the net
the process by which individual units adjust their connection weights as
a result of feedback
4. biology organisms not mechanisms
How do we distinguish life from non-life? An answer
lies in the pattern characteristic of all living systems : autopoiesis,
a network pattern in which each node is a production process that produces
or transforms other nodes. The entire network continually produces itself.
Autopoietic systems are self-generating, self-perpetuating and self-bounded
(they produce their own boundaries that are themselves nodes). Metabolism
is the chemical manifestation of autopoiesis.
(Autopoiesis is Varela's name for self-making and
self-maintaining.)
... causation is endlessly interlocked, and the biological
'meaning' of changes depends on the level of analysis and the state of the
whole. This perspective may make it more difficult to say with confidence
what constitutes a 'whole' or a 'system' in any given case, but since the
material of life is neither structureless nor inert, there is no need for
animistic forces; form and control are defined in life processes, not the
other way around. Oyama
Biological causation in general
requires new sorts of systems thinking, because biological entities are
both self-referring - constructing and maintaining themselves - and massively
interactive with a larger, embedding system. What happens in biological
self-ordering fields generally varies simultaneously with both internal
and external facts, and in ways that may be hard to separate conceptually.
(For more on biological systems see Rosen 1985, 1991; Wilden
1980; Oyama 1985, 1993.)
a. biological embeddedness:
organism-environment systems
a matter of the continuous co-evolution of temporally
interlocked systems
Embedded systems, nested systems.
The whole organism is structurally about its environment;
it is about many aspects of that environment at the same time; and that
structural aboutness is causally complex, its structural means having been
created at many times, both in the life of the individual and in evolutionary
time.
It is helpful to be able to imagine the development
of neocortex in the individual for this reason: if it is traced from its
beginning, and if it is understood without dualist metaphor, it is apparent
that the development of neocortex proceeds in contact with the rest of
the nervous system, that the development of the nervous system proceeds
in contact with the rest of the organism, and that the development of the
organism proceeds in contact with local parts of the larger world (Oyama
1993). To understand neocortical development is to understand it as many-ways
embedded -- a central, but not an isolated, participant in organism aboutness.
EE
Organic forms evolve within the conditions of the given
world.
"80% of the eagle is air."
But evolution also always builds on the forms already
accomplished. When the newest association areas of neocortex evolved they
were knitted in between structures that were already there language
areas between secondary sensory and motor areas that had evolved earlier,
themselves knitted in between primary sensory and motor areas.
Oyama points out that there is nongenetic inheritance
in the forms of many other substances and structures built up from previous
life cycles. She extends this to extracellular, extraorganismic ecological
relationships.
b. biological parts
cells change states or not, depending on their competence,
which may change, and their surroundings, which may also change. Oyama 1985
The fact that an organism is constructing itself from
the beginning has strong implications for the meaning and nature of biological
parts.
Both evolution and development mean that parts are mutually
determining each other even as they are being built.
Example: developmental differentiation of cortical
regions is, for instance, largely the result of differences of position
relative to sensory and motor in- and out-connections. To become a functioning
optical area optical cortex needs incoming activation from the eyes.
Quite early in development activity is being propagated
from sensor sheets as they are being formed, and from somatosensory structures
in viscera and in muscles and joints under construction. The whole of
the nervous system is, after all, forming at the same time.
In humans, when connective differences become apparent after about 110
days gestation (Zeki 1993, 180), the cortex has also begun to form extrinsic
connections toward and from developing muscles.
c. embryonic induction:
the egg as a field
Crisscrossed with axes, banded with zones, localized
with areas and fields, measured off by gradients, traversed by potentials,
marked by thresholds, its surface is a field of distributed intensities
rising, falling, migrating, displacing.
d. immune system as network
a sophisticated psychosomatic view of nervous system
and the immune system as two interacting cognitive systems
the immune system is increasingly being recognized
as a network that is as complex and interconnected as the nervous system
and serves equally important co-ordinating functions.
Varela and his colleagues argue that the immune system
needs to be understood as an autonomous cognitive network which is responsible
for the body's "molecular identity". By interacting with one
another and with the other body cells, the lymphocytes continually regulate
the number of cells and their molecular profiles regulating the organism's
cellular and molecular repertoire.
the immune system is dispersed in the lymph fluid,
permeating every single tissue.
under normal conditions the antibodies circulating
in the body bind to many (if not all) types of cell, including themselves.
The entire system looks much more like a network
response will vary and will depend upon the entire
context of the network.
e. wide networks in the
brain
The model ... helps to explain how anatomical localization
is compatible with the fact that lesions in different parts of the brain
can yield perturbations of the same overall behavior, why single lesions
lead to only partial deficits of a given behavior or to multiple behavioral
deficits, and why brain mapping studies ... are likely to detect multiple
areas of activation in association with individual complex behaviors. Mesulam 1990, 602
Nodal points that are critical for a given behavior
may thus constitute a subset of an anatomical network. Mesulam 1990, 601
It used to be thought that different cognitive functions
like perceiving or speaking happened from specific modular areas, but neuro-imaging
technologies have shown that even fairly simple behaviors activate wide
networks of neural connections.
Example: language networks.
The evidence is that phonemes, words and sentences are
being perceived concurrently, and that structures active in perceiving
parts are interconnected both with each other and with subnets active in
understanding wholes. It is probably true that different logical levels
of discriminations are being made at different foci, but reentrant connection
allows 'higher-level' foci to make continuous reference to what is happening
at foci earlier in the path, while also allowing the effects of convergences
later in the path to modify what is happening at these earlier foci.
f. volume dynamics in the
brain
A lot of talk about the brain imagines it only as networks
of connected nodes, but the brain can also be understood as a field.
The brain is actually a material volume active all over.
The space that can be thought of as background to activity propagated through
it, is itself minutely ordered and active. Its structure changes in response
to propagated changes, and it actively influences that propagation. There
is really no inactive space in the brain. We have to think of certain
processes as background only in the sense that we must fail to imagine
them while we imagine something else.
For instance neural cells live in a bath of extracellular
fluid that itself is electrochemically active. Electrical currents
generated in all the cells in an area cross their cell membranes into shared
extracellular space and are integrated as electrical fields. Electrical
and chemical fields in the neuropile are thought to operate over many micrometers
(Bullock 1993, 8).
When we think in terms of signal transmission we are thinking
of high levels of activity sent unchanged down chains of axons, but neural
response is actually being constructed at each point in cooperation with
existing structure at that point. We would have to imagine it as forming
the way a cloud forms, by a sort of on-the-spot condensation of brightness
around invisible points in an existing ground.
Both volume transmission and spike propagation occur by
means of local changes that are integrated results of many other local
changes. What is happening at any particular synapse, trigger zone, or
extracellular site will be determined as a function of its position in
the field, and will participate in determining what happens at other sites.
There is continuous alteration of field structure as a result of changes
which have been initiated at many points.
When patterns of activity are propagated iteratively,
through recurrent connections, the resulting changes in a brain can also
be seen as three-dimensional standing structures - transient three-dimensional
configurations sustained over time. Some of these standing structures may
include nested substructures whose cycles are longer or shorter.
5. psychology self-organization of archetypes
There is nothing that can be picked out and identified
as the archetype. There is only the system, its dynamic, and the surrounding
environment.
the archetype is essentially the dynamic itself
'Archetype' been a popular explanatory idea in Jungian
psychology, but it hasn't had much explanatory value, because no one has
had much of an idea what an archetype is.
In Jung's system, individuals have complexes, and the collective
name for these complexes is archetype. Particular kinds of complex
are universal or collective, in the sense that everybody has them,
and they are sources of feeling, understanding, excitement, maturational
direction.
I found a recent paper that hypothesized archetypes
as a subsystem in the dynamic system that is the brain/body. The main
point of the paper was that, like other physical systems, complexes/archetypes
could be self-organizing structures formed as a result of an interplay
between the evolved structure of human bodies and the ongoing presence of
evolutionary conditions.
The paper is Peter Saunders and Patricia Skar Archetypes,
Complexes and Self-Organization found at: www.mth.kcl.ac.uk/staff/pt_saunders/JAP_1sp.doc
Skar and Saunders say:
The self-organization will be of instincts and experiences
which are in some way associated, because they occur or first occur at the
same time, because they relate to similar things, or in some other way .
We would expect these to form into structures, i.e.
complexes, and that where the instincts and experiences that are involved
are common to most individuals, the complexes will also be similar. In other
words, we actually expect there will be archetypes.
They comment that this description of archetypes is consistent
with many of Jung's statements, for instance this one:
If one holds the view that a particular anatomical structure
is a product of environmental conditions working on living matter, then
the primordial image (or archetype), in its constant and universal distribution,
would be the product of equally constant and universal influences from without,
which must, therefore, act like a natural law. (Jung 1921/1971, para. 748)
6. aesthetics and organizational depth
A developing aesthetic - one of the basic criteria of evaluation
is organizational depth ie order at different scales, and integrated
across scales. Increasing complexity and adaptation as natural values.
Chris Alexander on aesthetics: perception of beauty has
something to do with perception of complex integration of parts.
My view is that aesthetics is a mode of perceiving deep
structure, a mode no less profound than the simpler forms of scientific
observation and experimentation.
a judgment not an opinion, and it is a judgment about
reality which can be tied to the presence of definable underlying structure.
- evaluate the degree to which a "certain system,
or thing, or event, or act enhances the observer's own wholeness"
- wholeness present in a material system, and "in
the judgment, feeling and experience of the observer"
- comprehension of wholeness only obtained "when we
agree to use the observer's feeling of his or her own wholeness as a measuring
instrument"
- Notion that the more coherent something is, "the
more it will be seen as a picture of the self, or of the soul"
Example: a painting with different kinds of perceivable
order at different scales.
Example: some of Moby's pieces in music.
Example: Coleridge's interest in complex integration, "the
whole soul," "more than usual state of emotion, more than usual
order."
Example: Chris Alexander on creating complex wholes in
architecture and city planning:
a new kind of insight into complexity because we most
explicitly deal with complexity and have to create it
the creation of fine-tuned well-adapted complexity value
understood to be a necessary part of the study of complex systems
a good system helps both the systems around it and those
which it contains, and that's reciprocal
Deep adaptation is the process whereby the landscape,
or a system, or a plant, or a town, proceeds by a series of spatially organized
adaptations in which each part is gradually fitted to the parts near it:
and is simultaneously fitted by the whole, to its position and performance
in the whole. This concept, greatly needing elaboration, is possibly the
most fruitful point of contact between the theory of complex systems, and
the problem of architecture.
Interestingly, neither biology, nor ecology, nor architecture,
nor city planning, so far have a profound or illuminating model of process
which creates suitably complex, beautiful, and sophisticated well-adapted
structure in this kind of adaptation: mutual adaptation among the parts
within a system.
- Christopher Alexander in The nature of order
7. social applications
There have been a couple of centuries of philosophy and
psychology that have emphasized the individual in terms of will and reason,
an individuality envisaged as separated even from what is most obviously
individual in people, their bodies.
Feminist contributions to philosophy
and psychology have been adjusting this vision to include the ways no one
can come to individuality without being nested in family and environment.
Embodiment cognitive science has been adjusting our understanding
of will and reason themselves as functions precisely of bodies, which in
turn are functions of place and community.
a. pedagogy and therapy
If postmodern pedagogy is to emerge, I predict it will
center around the concept of self-organization.
Doll, 1993: 163.
Maturana:
every change that an organism undergoes is necessarily
and unavoidably determined by its own organization
Simplistic prescriptions for behaviour change must
be abandoned.
a more genuine understanding of the individual as a
self-organizing process
counselors must "critically acknowledge the extent
to which their role contributes to practices that contradict the genuinely
preventive and emancipating values they endorse"
b. anarchist politics
(Thank you David.)
two different principles of organization the new organization
must be established freely, socially, and, above all, from below. The principle
of organization must not issue from a center created in advance to capture
the whole and impose itself upon it, but, on the contrary, it must come
from all sides to create nodes of coordination, natural centers to serve
all these points. Malatesta (I think)
Bakunin 1814-1876
Bakunin: I want to complete the elimination of the
authoritarian principle of state tutelage which has always subjected, oppressed,
exploited, and depraved men while claiming to moralize and civilize them.
I want society, and collective or social property to be organized from
the bottom up through free association and not from the top down by authority
of any kind In that sense I am a collectivist and not at all a communist.
the masses have, through the centuries, "spontaneously
developed within themselves many, if not all, of the essential elements
of the material and moral order of real human unity."
the operation of mines, fields, factories and workshops,
by the working class itself, organized in trade-union federations.
Proudhon who, "in the midst of the 1848 Revolution,
wisely thought it would have been asking too much of his artisans to go,
immediately, all the way to 'anarchy.'" "In default of this maximum
program, he sketched out a minimum libertarian program: progressive reduction
in the power of the State, parallel development of the power of the people
from below, through what he called clubs, and which the (people) of the
twentieth century would call councils."
8. personal wholeness: envisaging integration vs dissociation
- More about this tomorrow.
Dissociation and integration envisaged as network-subnetwork
relations.
Goldstein's descriptions of organic fragmentation.
Kohler and Perls on complete and incomplete gestalts in
perception and other cognition.
Creating from not about:
I don't need a system; I am a system. Michael Snow
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