December 2011
1 post
Beyond society: the evolution of organismality
The evolution of organismality is a social process.All organisms originated from groups of simpler units that now show high cooperation among the parts and are nearly free of conflicts. We suggest that this near-unanimous cooperation be taken as the defining trait of organisms. Consistency then requires that we accept some unconventional organisms, including some social insect colonies, some...
May 2010
2 posts
The overarching function of science operating in the “web” of innovation is not just to generate knowledge, but to relate what is known and what is unknown in complex situations of change. Of course, science as an agent of change will generate new knowledge—this is what research is all about. But on the road to that knowledge it will also accumulate new uncertainties and open...
Deleuze, Guattari, and Emergence - by Jhon Protevi
In model terms, in zones of sensitivity or crisis situations, we find fractal borders between basins of attraction, so that any move, no matter how small and in no matter what any direction, might – or might not – trigger the move to another basin of attraction. Here we have an irreducible element of ‘chance’ even though the system is thoroughly deterministic.
As we have said, what keeps a system...
April 2010
2 posts
epistemological pluralism
Epistemologies drive presumptions about the “relationship between the researcher and the system/object of study and modeling of system processes” (MacMynowski 2007). They shape how researchers answer questions regarding the validity of knowledge (qualitative vs. quantitative, etc.), the legitimacy of methods to produce knowledge (experimentation, induction, hypothesis testing, etc.), and the ...
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol13/iss2/art46/
Despite progress in interdisciplinary research, many efforts are hampered by a host of problems, including a tendency to privilege a single epistemological and disciplinary perspective. Different disciplines carry with them different epistemologies, or theories of knowledge. That is, each may have a different conception of what constitutes knowledge, how it is produced, and how it should be...