Website shutting down

Dear readers, if any are left, This website will soon be shutting down. I seem to have run out of stuff to write.

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Disciplinary specialization

In another post, I said that as a system becomes increasingly complex, it may split itself into subsystems. This happens in academic departments and research specializations. Consider the branches of chemistry. There are five main branches of chemistry–organic, inorganic, analytical, biochemistry, and physical. Each of these, of course, is broken down into several subdisciplines. Each specialty…

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The the complexity-sustainability trade-off and Dunbar's Number

The the complexity-sustainability trade-off and Dunbar’s Number

Further reflection on Vladislav Valentinov’s (2014) “The Complexity- Sustainability Trade-Off in Niklas Luhmann’s Social Systems Theory.” As social systems grow in complexity, they risk their own sustainability. Brain evolution, specifically neocortical volume, sets limits on functional social group size. Robin Dunbar (1992): It is suggested that the number of neocortical neurons limits the…

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The Irreducibility of Meaning

The Irreducibility of Meaning

In social systems theory, meaning is irreducible; it cannot be reduced to meaningful/meaningless or meaning/no-meaning because these distinctions must also be treated as meaningful. In other words, if I say “Your statement is meaningless” or “This story has no meaning,” my own statement is treated as meaningful. Otherwise, communication cannot happen. Thus, in social systems as well as psychic…

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More on systems theory and postmodernism

More on systems theory and postmodernism

Luhmann said he was surprised that his work had been associated with postmodern theory because his work is quite different. In his 1995 lecture on “Systems Theory and Postmodernism,” Luhmann speaks of various “symbolizations of of unity.” He traces a history of modernity beginning in the 17th century with the loss of the faith in the unity of nature and society, or the old belief that social…

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More on science and religion

More on science and religion

Those advocating a complementarian view of science and religion may claim that science is amoral or cares nothing for ethics, which lead to the claim that religion provided what science lacks. This is from a book titled Science and Religion: A New Introduction: Most scientists would affirm that their discipline is fundamentally amoral – that is, that the scientific method does not extend to…

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Systems, Not People, Make Society Happen, free book by Michael King

Systems, Not People, Make Society Happen, free book by Michael King

Michael King has made his 2009 book titled Systems, Not People, Make Society Happen available for free download on the Holcomb Publishing site. Here is the book description: Systems, not People, Make Society Happen reveals how new ideas about society can change our understanding of everything that happens in the world, from political decisions, such as the invasion of Iraq to the impact of…

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Hannah Arendt on nationalism and colonialism

Hannah Arendt on nationalism and colonialism

Hannah Arendt, in The Origins of Totalitarianism (1948/1968) describes how in the late 19th century nationalism was declining under the influence of capitalism and class consciousness but colonialism and imperialism offered a resurgence of nationalism.   At the close of the century the owning classes had become so dominant that it was almost ridiculous for a state employee to keep up the…

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Complete system change?

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (Natalie Louise Bennett), a UK Green Party Peer, recently discussed a report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. She wrote, in part, A lot of the immediate reaction to the IPCC report has focused on technology. On ending the use of fossil fuels, fast, and replacing their energy with solar panels and wind turbines, the petrol and diesel cars with…

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Lumping and Splitting

People working in various scholarly disciplines have been divided into two camps: the lumpers and the splitters. Lumpers create relatively broad categories and splitters create more narrow categories. Both create categories, classifications, or taxonomies, however, because that is what scholars or scientists do. For instance, scholars of religion might speak of Christianity as a single religion,…

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The Flat-EArth Myth

Most of us have been told that people in the Middle Ages believed the earth was flat and Columbus was warned that he would sail off the edge of the world. This is nonsense. People have known that the earth is spherical since at least the 5th century BC. The idea that medieval people believed in a flat earth was fabricated to discredit religious people in the context of late-19th-century Darwinian…

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Complexity Reduction

Here is something from Jean Klein that made me think of complexity reduction, which is something that all autopoietic systems do: You may have faced certain situations in your life and you saw certain elements. Actually there were far more elements to the situation than you saw, and these elements which you did not see, saw you.I’m not certain what you mean.A situation is composed of many…

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The self as an object

The self as an object

In a counseling or therapy setting, we are encouraged objectify the self, or to create a self and then talk about it. Even in casual conversation, if someone asks you are you’re doing, you are asked to objectify yourself–to fabricate a self to talk about. When you say “I’m fine” or “I’m not fine,” who is the I? We project an I and then assess its wellbeing. How is this I feeling today? A person…

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Dostoevksy's Notes from the Underground and personal autonomy

Dostoevksy’s Notes from the Underground and personal autonomy

At the end of a previous post, I started to explore something about Dostoevsky’s novella Notes from the Underground (1864), and I will continue these thoughts here. Dostoevsky’s Underground Man is a perverse, spiteful, unhappy man; however, he is considered an anti-hero because he defends human autonomy and human complexity against politics and utilitarian philosophy. Here is the first…

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Jean Klein on mindfullness

Jean Klein on mindfullness

In the condition often called mindfulness, one lives now rather than in memory. We see what we see rather than what we expect to see or want to see or have seen before. Notes from Jean Klein’s The Transmission of the Flame, a book in the form of an interview. Look at your fear; become very familiar with it. You don’t really know your fear; you know only your idea of it, your memory. You must…

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Deleuze on Bergson: Why is there something rather than nothing?

In Bergsonism, Deleuze writes, When we ask “Why is there something rather than nothing?” or “Why is there disorder rather than order?” or “Why is there this rather than that (when that was equally possible)?” we fall into the same error: We mistake the more for the less, we behave as though nonbeing existed before being, disorder before order and the possible before existence. As though being…

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Observing oneself

Every personal experience is an observation, and all observation is based on distinctions. There is no pure, unfiltered reality that we directly experience. If I feel that I am in despair or that I am happy, these feelings are observations that I have constructed out of my own distinctions. If I look at the cold gray winter sky and feel sad, that’s because of my distinctions. I expect or desire…

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