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Phil - This is a very timely reference. I often find that "Survey" papers, especially from outside of the field I am working in, but on a subject overlapping said field can be very illuminating. They help to provide a common-sense perspective on the problem... help to remove me from the "trees" enough to see the "forest", as it were. Your comment about the discontinuities are might be a corollary of Kierkegard'soften observably in the mode of explanation used and not the physical process It is my (anecdotal) experience that many people live through, or even participate in revolutions without realizing it until (long?) after they are over. Often the turmoil that is attendant to the "Revolution" is not a new experience for them, a series of tumultuous periods lead up to it, and it is only the actual "breaking through" that ultimately marks it as a "Revolution". To the extent that that "breaking through" is an emergent phenomena, it is often not visible at the scale of the individual observer, especially an observer who is steeped in the old way of experiencing things.Life must be understood backwards; but... it must be lived forward. - Steve www.synapse9.com/ref/GersickCJG1991RevolutionaryChangeTheories.pdf (500k) Have any of you heard of the "Academy of Management Review" or Connie JG Gersick? She might have called it 'emergence' I think, but seems to have done a great job of threading together six different theories of change between complex system equilibriums, punctuated by disequilibrium, which she calls "revolutionary change". The familiar ones are the models offered by TS Kuhn, SJ Gould, and I Prigogine. She seems to come to the conclusion, yes, there are discontinuities. My view has developed as being that, yes, there are discontinuities, but often observably in the mode of explanation used and not the physical process. Does anyone else also see the need to have gaps between modes of explanation for complex system features as a important reason for using the word 'complex' to describe them? Phil Henshaw ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
