Self-organizing, et al.

owen owen at tmn.com
Fri Mar 5 09:14:22 PST 1999


>Ralph...
>
>you are a self-organizing system. you don't need to go beyond your "self"
>to find a complex adaptive system either. I won't write about CAS
>here...perhaps I can just say that the terms CAS and living systems are
>nearly synonymous, just not quite. DOC
*********************************************
It is a real pleasure to see this sort of discussion showing up on the
listserve. OST does better meetings, but it represents a lot more. From the
late '70s onwards I have been facinated with the thought of Ilya Prigogene and
more recently Stuart Kauffman. There was never any attempt on my part to design
Open Space as a dissapative structure / self-organizing system / complex
adaptive system -- if only because OST was never truly designed. It just
happened. But when you come to the truly interesting question of why OST works,
and how do we work better with it -- I find the notions of Prigogine, Kauffman
et al to be most helpful. Add a little Zen, and the stew gets truly
interesting. I am not a practitioner myself, at least in any thorough-going
way. But my Zen friends, as also my Hindi friends tell me that there must be
some connection, if only in a prior life. I'll accept that. In any event, Open
Space is all about creating a bounded moment in which life (Spirit) shows up.
Call that self-organization or manifestation -- it seems pretty much the same
thing to me. When I wrote my book, "Expanding Our Now: The Story of Open
Space," (Berrett-koehler, 1997), that was where I was headed. Who knows if I
got there
Harrison Owen
7808 River Falls Drive
Potomac, MD 20854   USA
301-469-9269 (phone)
301-983-9314 (fax)
email owen at tmn.com
Website http://www.tmn.com/~owen
Open Space Institute website
http://www.tmn.com/openspace
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