[OSList] Self Organizing vs. Physics & Entropy...

Thu Feb 13 09:05:39 PST 2014

And here's 2 cents from another old coot! When talking about "open systems"
- and yes Bertie did it, I believe - it is well to remember the opposite,
CLOSED SYSYEMS. If only because they are much more common and comfortable in
the organizational world we seek to address. Every manager (until very
recently) is ever hopeful that they can effectively close their systems
thereby eliminating extraneous variables, surprises and other oddments of a
living world. The hope/expectation is certainty, predictability, control.
Otherwise known as Management Nirvana. After all that is what good managers
do!

I don't know who came up with the notion of a "Closed System," but it
certainly has been around for a long, long time. So maybe somebody in the
1800's? Closing the system was an artifice of the scientific enterprise. To
do a responsible experiment, one sought to close the system against odd
variables which might skew the results. So if the experiment had something
to do with radioactivity, you needed lots of lead to guard against the stray
neutrino. Of course you knew (as a good scientist) that you couldn't really
close the system, but you tried. And at the very least you were hopeful that
the "uncontrolled variable" was of such a low order that it would not mix up
your porridge.

No problems here just as long as everybody knew and understood the rules.
"Closed Systems" were simply and only a figment of the scientific
imagination - but a useful one when doing critical experiments.

Problems arise when you begin to think that Closed Systems actually exist,
and that happened, I think, with the rise of Scientific Management - back at
the beginning of the 20th century. Think of Mr Taylor with his time and
motion studies. And then, a little later on, all those good behavioral
scientists. Management was going to be "scientific" with all the
accoutrements of SCIENCE. And a central one was the notion of a Closed
System - which would allow for Real Management Control!

Great idea, but flawed from the onset. Any good scientist knew that a closed
system was only a scientific conceit, useful in the experimental world, but
only if you remembered that it didn't really exist. Management Science
missed the boat. And thereby hangs a tale. Control, as they hoped they had
it - never existed.

Harrison

Harrison Owen

7808 River Falls Dr.

Potomac, MD 20854

USA

189 Beaucaire Ave. (summer)

Camden, Maine 04843

Phone 301-365-2093

(summer)  207-763-3261

www.openspaceworld.com 

www.ho-image.com (Personal Website)

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From: oslist-bounces at lists.openspacetech.org
[mailto:oslist-bounces at lists.openspacetech.org] On Behalf Of Chris Kloth
Sent: Thursday, February 13, 2014 10:30 AM
To: oslist at lists.openspacetech.org; johnw536 at mac.com
Subject: Re: [OSList] Self Organizing vs. Physics & Entropy...

At the risk of seeming to be an old coot, I do plead guilty to cootness, I
would like to clarify one aspect of the history of "open systems." 

John posted "The term "open systems" comes from thermodynamics, especially
from Prigogine and Stengers..."

While I love how Prigogine and Stengers and others who have explored what
contemporary physics (chaos, complexity, string and other theories) have
added to our understanding of human systems, I am looking at my copy of
Ludwig von Bertalanffy's General System Theory, published in 1950. He is
usually credited with both the earliest description of Open Systems
(importing energy, using energy, expelling energy) in nature (he was a
biologist) as well as the application of open systems to human systems in
that same publication. 

In a practical sense the theory is so fundamental that it continues to
inform much of how we understand the world today, including chaos,
complexity, etc. The reason I like to keep old Ludwig's work in front of us
is that I find that when folks I am working with begin to explore the
systems they are part of it is easier to start with the subsystems
(individual people, groups, communities) we are able and willing to make
choices about, influence and shape... together (oops, have I mentioned
interdependence lately?) :-0! They also more easily begin to grasp that
those subsystems are part of a larger environment or ecosystem that is more
complicated and chaotic... like severe weather (he said with the snow
outside his house piled as high as his car windows... oops, have I mentioned
vulnerability lately?)

Thus, (the coot substitute for the currently popular vernacular "So, ..."
and the popular alternative of my youth "Like, ...), I thank John and others
for keeping the latest thinking on how science may inform our questions and
answers about systems in our conversations, but I like to give credit where
credit is due.

Just sayin'!  ;-)

Shalom, 

Chris Kloth 
ChangeWorks of the Heartland
chris.kloth at got2change.com 
www.got2change.com 
phone - 614.239.1336 
fax - 614.237.2347 

Think Globally, Act Locally 

Please think about the environment before printing this e-mail. 

On 2/11/2014 11:19 PM, Lucas Cioffi wrote:

Hi All, 

I read that "Open Space works because self-organization works."  But I
remember from physics class that disorder (entropy) in the Universe is
always increasing, so when the order of something increases (such as during
OS), the order of something else must decrease.

Paraphrased from Wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy> : 

"The second law of thermodynamics states that in general the total entropy
of any system (the disorder, randomness, or our lack of information about
it) will not decrease other than by increasing the entropy of some other
system."

So when participants organize themselves during Open Space does something
else become disorganized?  Or is it that all the disorder created (by
consuming the muffins, coffee, fuel, paper, electricity, etc) always
outweighed by the order created by the self-organization?

For what it's worth, below is an interesting thread I found from the list
archives from a few years ago that mentions entropy...

Lucas Cioffi

Charlottesville, VA

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: John Watkins <johnw536 at mac.com>
Date: Mon, Sep 19, 2011 at 12:25 AM
Subject: Re: [OSList] Designing an OS way
To: Artur Silva <arturfsilva at yahoo.com>, World wide Open Space Technology
email list <oslist at lists.openspacetech.org>
Cc: "76066.515 at compuserve.com" <76066.515 at compuserve.com>

Artur, 

The term "open systems" comes from thermodynamics, especially from Prigogine
and Stengers, who also refer to them as "dissipative" systems.  It does not
mean open to change; it means open in the sense of importing "energy" from
outside itself and excreting "energy" back into the surrounding system.
Such systems are most often self-organizing and self-recreating
(autopoiesis).  They "sort" energy into that which will help them recreate
themselves and that which will not, and they dissipate the rest, creating,
paradoxically, internally order and externally more entropy.  Bureaucracies
are actually great examples of open systems in this regard.

John

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