"A real architect, a real town planner must not get away from the chaos. He must dive into it” I am interested in modern architecture, but the name of "A real architect, a real town planner must not get away from the chaos. He must dive into it” I am interested in modern architecture, but the name of the Italian Massimiliano Fuksas (° 1944) did not really ring a bell to me; that was until I picked up this booklet in the shop of the Cartier Foundation in Paris. From page 1, Fuksas makes a plea for acknowledging chaos and complexity in reality, a message which immediately appealed to me. The book itself is a chaotic collection of thoughts, ideas and conversation fragments, which of course mainly revolve around architecture and urbanism. It also contains autobiographical elements, so to a certain extent it is a bit apologetic. Not everything is interesting, of course, but Fuksas's constant emphasis on the necessity to respect the complexity of cities and environments is very inspiring; no wonder he clearly distances himself from drastic urbanist interventions: “Sublime chaos is an integral part of the urban process. We must accept the chaos against any authoritarian form of urban or architectural intervention and get used to seeing in the ‘context’ a source of obstacles and difficulties. Or, borrowing medical terminology, one must live with a consolidated metastasis. The alleged order can only generate disorder.” As a striking example, he refers to the transformation of the city of Brasilia, where the functions of squares and buildings within the straitjacket of Oscar Niemeyer were changed by the residents in no time. I'm not sure whether all designs and realizations by Fuksas himself were equally successful, but his motto is inspiring: "Whoever imposes his own vision of the world, destroys it. Anyone who wants to give the world an identity uses and respects what he finds."...more
BATESON 3.0 It has been a while, but I really had a wow!-experience with this book. Hence this extensive review, with my apologies for the length.
Nora BATESON 3.0 It has been a while, but I really had a wow!-experience with this book. Hence this extensive review, with my apologies for the length.
Nora Bateson is the daughter of the British anthropologist-psychologist-philosopher-systems thinker (etc.) Gregory Bateson (1904-1980), a rather elusive figure who combined many disciplines and focussed very fundamentally on the essence of reality. He is best known for his Mind and Nature, 1979, in which he suggests that there is a global spirit that permeates and connects both living and non-living things (I know that with that description I undervalue Bateson, because his thinking is much more complex than that). Essential concepts for him are 'uncertainty' and 'complexity', which means that he connects directly with systems thinking and complexity theories. I read a biography of him, some loose texts, followed a seminar about him (thanks Philippe!), and even read a novel based on his views (Tim Parks. Dreams Of Rivers And Seas). But nevertheless his thinking remained fairly hermetic to me.
His daughter Nora (° 1968) initially took a completely different path in life and became a film maker. But she has struggled all her life with the intellectual legacy of her father. In recent years in particular, she has made re-evaluating and re-interpreting Gregory's views into her main activity, for example through a film about her father ("An Ecology of Mind", 2010) and her chairmanship of the International Bateson Institute in Stockholm (° 2014) .
This book bundles various articles she has written in recent years, readings, essays, but also poetry, drawings and loose musings. The great thing about this book is that it builds directly on the thinking of Gregory Bateson (which has now become much clearer to me) and also of her grandfather William Bateson (1861-1926, a famous biologist). Of course, she offers her own, albeit privileged, interpretation of their views, and alignes them with the problems we are confronted with at the beginning of the 21st century, hence my title "Bateson 3.0". For obvious reasons her emphasis is more on ecological thinking: looking at reality as a complex ecological system, which is interconnected in various dimensions and scales, and itself consists of a jumble of ecological systems that relate to each other in a particularly complex way. Nora Bateson's own contribution is to add contextual thinking: not only the interrelationships, but especially the different contexts of those relationships are important to her. She herself speaks of trans-contextuality. “Transcontextual description as a starting place opens the possibilities of better understanding the interdependency that characterizes living (and arguably many non-living) systems. With a transcontextual lens I find interfaces of mutual learning. This lens opens up entirely new dimensions of information where the data has otherwise been flattened into a single plane or a single context. I also find that the multiplicity of the descriptive process demands that I never lose sight of the many perspectives that are integrating.”
She immediately adds that the key to reading trans-contextuality is above all the process of "mutual learning": various contexts are constantly learning from each other, so that an even more complex dynamic whole is created, which is constantly adapting and constantly interacting. I particularly like that dynamic aspect; as Nora Bateson herself indicates, it takes into account the time factor, a factor that is overlooked by most other analyses, making reality rather static, as represented in a model, a chart or a map. Of course, as a historian, I like her take on this.
That shift in Nora’s view, compared to her father’s, stems from a discontent with the path that systems thinking and complexity theories have taken: although they are fundamentally anti-reductionist and anti-deterministic, they have become, according to her, more and more mechanistic, ending up in an engineer's approach that cannot really solve the fundamental problems of our time: “the linearity and the mechanistic principles of reductionism in western culture have wormed their way into the systems vocabulary. The result is that we get strategic methodologies and defined models for fixing isolated issues within complex living interactions that have a living context.”
She is also critical about the recent tendency to connect systems thinking with holistic approaches and to constantly speak in terms of parts and wholes: “The very idea of interconnectedness has allowed lines to be drawn lazily between nodes or parts of the whole system. The world may be able to use the terms of systems thinking, but some of the thinking has lost its real value and become muddled into something more akin to ‘oneness’.”
Hence her emphasis on trans-contextuality. And also - instead of engineering methods - a more aesthetic approach (and this is in line with her father's thinking): the artistic is a way of dealing with reality that is more transparent and above all shows more respect, in contrast to the control obsession of mechanistic thinking. “In all forms, art can offer an experience of integration that calls upon our cultural language of symbols, our imagination, our history, our intellect, and our emotions. (…) As I see it, art allows us to perceive from multiple perspectives simultaneously. In order for science to really work with complexity, we need art to help give scientists a more developed capacity to perceive context, one that includes all the disciplines, emotions, cultural symbols, and personal memories. As Blake said in ‘The Grey Monk’: “A tear is an intellectual thing.””
That may all sound abstract, and Nora Bateson admits that her discourse does indeed remains fairly theoretical. But for her that other way of looking at reality is the only way out of stalled scientistic thinking, of which many well-meaning approaches (such as holism, systems thinking, etc.) still are permeated. On top of that, for Nora, this new approach is really needed if we are to tackle the enormous challenges facing humanity, - the apocalyptic perspective of climate change and the decline of biodiversity -, in a much more appropriate way. With a typical Batesonian twist, she goes one step further in that thought process: why not start from the worst case? Can we make an exercise that takes the apocalypse as given, and think back from that perspective?: “Using this kind of ‘pre-hindsight,’ different directions for our actions may become imperative, and for very different reasons than we might expect. Looking backward from the rubble of our mistakes we may see our current priorities from another angle. While this thought exercise may appear to embody a loss of hope, it is also likely that leapfrogging on the timeline of consequences may provoke a kind of thinking we do not otherwise have access to.” That sounds problematic, but it is at least a challenging proposal.
The multiformity of this booklet in itself testifies to the pluriform nature of Nora Bateson's thinking and how it is based on uncertainty and complexity, all in line with her father and grandfather. She remains modest, because she is well aware that her approach remains very abstract and theoretical, but it is at least a good, practical starting point: “In defense of a world that is characterized by mutual learning between variables in a given context—a world that does not stay the same, a world that won’t be mechanized or modeled—in defense of that world, I maintain that nothing could be more practical than to become more familiar with the patterns of movement that life requires. The goal is not to crack the code, but rather to catch the rhythm.”
In one of her essays she makes an attempt to put her approach into practice in a more systematic, theoretical framework, with the central notion of the "symmathesy" instead of the term "system". I’m not sure this approach is the way to go, because it remains very abstract. Time will tell, but it is at least worth the effort to walk the path. She herself is rather optimistic: “I maintain, at the risk of being called abstract, that the possibility of an increase in our ability to receive nuanced information about the interactions in a complex system exists. This is my optimism. This is where I place hope for the coming eras. We need that sensitivity to live better lives. This is the sensitivity that will allow us to understand our spouses better, to raise our children better, to grow food better, study life better, and organize our world better. It will also make us into artists. I maintain that nothing could be more practical”....more
This book is hyper-interesting, very rich but also super-annoying at the same time. So much has been written about it, that I am going to limit myselfThis book is hyper-interesting, very rich but also super-annoying at the same time. So much has been written about it, that I am going to limit myself to some essentials. This book is about the absolutely unexpected, the black swan you would never suspect if you only saw white swans all your life. Taleb refers to numerous historical examples of things that have come completely out of the blue: the collapse of the Soviet Union, Nine-eleven, major stock market crises and so on. And also things in our ordinary life: when you look back, it is usually a succession of unexpected events that keep stuck in your memory and have shaped your life.
The interesting thing about this book is that Taleb explains in a solid way why we are always surprised by such things. And that is in the first place psychological: we are mentally set up so that we always expect things to go their way as they are now, we assume stability while reality is very complex and almost unpredictable. Our misjudgment is also caused because we expect everything to be very logical and linear, that cause and effect are always very clear, even in advance. Not so. What's more: we usually strongly oppose warnings about what could go wrong, while - if you look at history - uncertainty is the rule and regularity the exception. So the problem mainly is situated between our ears.
But what is worse: scientists, historians and journalists reinforce that tunnel vision by presenting - in retrospect - plausible explanations, which gives us the impression that if we had sufficient knowledge, we would have been able to estimate everything better and therefore in the future will be able to make the correct estimation, because we know so much more. Or they make it clear that the circumstances were very exceptional, and that a repetition is as good as impossible (and of course they're right: there's almost never a real repetition, every Black Swan is different).
I’m just giving a very superficial summary of what Taleb offers, because his book is actually very rich in examples and arguments. But .... as I said, it is also very annoying at the same time. For three, maybe four reasons. The first is that Taleb almost exclusively focuses on the economy, especially the stock market; that makes sense, since he was a stock market trader and therefore gained a lot of experience in that environment, but it narrows the focus substantially. Two: as the book progresses, Taleb dabs his pen more and more in the purest vitriol against all kinds of scientists, stock market gurus, statisticians and the like, whom he names by name (especially Nobel laureates). According to him they have completely missed the point of reality, by using the wrong methods. It may well be that Taleb is right, that is not what matters to me, it is mainly about the way he presents his criticism: with an arrogance that borders on the unlikely and that only increases as the book progresses.
Moreover, he - and this is my third objection to this book - has resorted to a very technical, statistical explanation to reinforce his bold claims: whole chapters are devoted to mathematical models that – according to Taleb – don’t relate to reality. He may also be right there, but as a reader he completely lost me. And then there is a fourth objection against this book, which in retrospect is perhaps more important than seems plausible at first glance: all experts, both the reliable and the untrustworthy to which Taleb refers are .... men; there is only one female character in this book and that is completely fictional; it might be an interesting study to determine the correlation between the Black Swan syndrome and gender issues (not the least those of Taleb himself, I refer to his mysoginist "Twitter-war" with Mary Beard).
In short, if I can give a concise reading warning: read only the first half of this book and make the best of it, but forget the second half (unless you’re a professional economist or statistician). And remember especially: Black Swans do exist, but you can arm yourself against them to a very limited extent, just by using common sense, and knowing that - at any moment in your life or in history in general - shit can happen....more
I must admit that I have begun this book with some hesitation, even outright skepticism. From references, right and left, I had already concluded thatI must admit that I have begun this book with some hesitation, even outright skepticism. From references, right and left, I had already concluded that the thinking of Gregory Bateson was very difficult to grasp, that it tended to the ethereal and psychedelic that we associate so easily with the 1960s and 1970. But the assurance that Bateson was very close to the current of cybernetics, system thinking and complexity theory convinced me to give it a try. That current, after the Second World War, tried to offer an alternative, scientific approach to reality, besides the generally accepted, classic, reductionist-dualistic-Cartesian approach that has led to so many successes in the positive sciences and technology, but which also has led to seemingly unbridgeable boundaries and problems.
Bateson's thinking is characterized by a continual groping, incessant shift between different domains of knowledge (from anthropology to biology, to psychiatry, philosophy, religion, etc.), a constant search for alternative ways of looking and acting. And for me personally that is quite difficult for someone who is formed by a rationalistic cartesian upbringing and in professional practice is also constantly focused on making distinctions, (preferably as black and white as possible), focusing on sharp (reductionist) essences.
An example: just try to deal with that basic insight of Bateson, which is to view the living world as an ultra-complex whole of mental processes, linked together at all possible levels: "The central concept of Gregory Bateson is his understanding of all the systems. of the living world as being mental in kind. Each system, claims Bateson, is a mind. Such systems vary from bacterial, genetic, or cellular, to the very large: a coral reef and its inhabitants, a forest ecosystem, the mind of a nation, or the whole process of biological evolution. All these systems are interrelated and connected to larger mental systems so that there is an ultimate interconnected connected whole, which is "the sacred." “
Of course, intuitively, I feel that this is not complete nonsense, and that this approach clarifies a lot of things that seem paradoxical in the classic, reductionist-dualistic way of thinking. But it is and remains quite a fundamentally, other way of looking at things, it demands a real ‘leap’ in your imagination of the world. And with that word ‘leap’ we jump (pun intended) straight into the delicate domain of the religious, as Bateson himself also indicated. For the sake of clarity: Bateson has never argued for a belief in a supernatural, transcendent God or divinity. But his thinking is permeated with the sacred nature of all that lives. And Bateson adds that this sacred nature is attainable through certain forms of aesthetics and spirituality, and especially by non-linguistic actions (rituals and dances, for example).
Biographer Charlton extensively discusses this thinking and in particular the step-by-step evolution on which this thinking came about. But he also goes a step further, and that is logical because Bateson died in 1980, and in the meantime many others have continued his thinking and thought it through and through, especially in function of the developments that our world has experienced in the meantime. To mention the most striking of these problems: consumerism, global warming, the shrinking of biodiversity, overpopulation, etc. For all these thinkers (Fritjof Capra and James Lovelock are - not entirely coincidentally - the most prominent among them) those problems are caused just because of our one-sided dualistic-reductionistic thinking, and so to them Bateson is a real inspiration.
In a final chapter, Charlton extensively elaborates on the need for an action program to tackle those crucial problems, a program that links up with Bateson's basic ideas as much as possible. And in this part, my scepticism really was tested. Of course, Charlton connects with ecologism (Bateson did that himself), and that makes sense (I like to see myself also as an ecologist). And contrary to some others, the author advocates a very gentle, very spiritual form of ecologism (not a really anti-humanist fundamentalism, which I despise). Charlton focuses extensively on the Greenspirit movement, of which he himself is partaking and which is a form of ecological basic movement. This part of the book refers regularly to Bateson, but it essentially has the form of a propagandistic pamphlet. And that is of course the right of Charlton, certainly because he expresses it all so kind and mildly.
Personally, I remain stuck in my skepticism. The ideas and views of Bateson are absolutely valuable and enticing, particularly because, as I have already pointed out, they give an answer to current global issues. And the ‘leap’ that Bateson asks, and in his trace author Charlton a lot more, can be very inspiring for many people and practically applicable, and I want to show all respect for that, but for me, in my mind, it remains a bridge too far. Perhaps that's my bad?
I could have known: this booklet went way above my head. And that is mainly because the author almost exclusively focuses on the phenomenon of chaos iI could have known: this booklet went way above my head. And that is mainly because the author almost exclusively focuses on the phenomenon of chaos in physical systems (weather, climate, warming water etc.). By consequence there’s a lot of mathematics and statistics involved. For my purpose (the chaos factor in the study of the history) there wasn’t anything useful in here....more
This short booklet mainly provides some tools to look at complex systems. Perhaps it is a good state of affairs (I can not judge that), but it remainsThis short booklet mainly provides some tools to look at complex systems. Perhaps it is a good state of affairs (I can not judge that), but it remains very theoretical. What is also striking is that most of the tools can only be used in the form of mathematical or schematic models, and consequently are only applicable to a limited number of complex systems. Holland suggests that in the future a global theory of complex systems is possible, but at the same time he indicates that many questions remain open. For my purpose, - the use of complexity thinking in the study of history -, this book did not offer many relevant things....more
I’ve read this book together with the English edition On Complexity. I strongly recommend reading the English version, because it contains an excellenI’ve read this book together with the English edition On Complexity. I strongly recommend reading the English version, because it contains an excellent introduction into the life and work of Edgar Morin, and 4 extra, even more interesting essays, but without mention where they were published before. As to the content of this book, I refer to my review of the English edition. I just want to give one citation, as to illustrate what this book has to offer: "La pensée simple résout les problèmes simples sans problèmes de pensée. La pensée complexe ne résout pas d'elle même les problèmes, mais elle constitue une aide à la stratégie qui peut les résoudre. Elle nous dit : « Aide-toi, la pensée complexe t'aidera. » Ce que la pensée complexe peut faire, c'est donner à chacun un mémento, un pense-bête, qui rappelle : «n'oublie pas que la réalité est changeante, n'oublie pas que du nouveau peut surgir et de toute façon, va surgir». (p 111)...more
This book partly offers a translation of Morin's Introduction à la pensée complexe. It contains 5 essays that were collected in the original, French bThis book partly offers a translation of Morin's Introduction à la pensée complexe. It contains 5 essays that were collected in the original, French book (that I also read). Nevertheless, I definitely recommend this English edition, because there’s also a foreword with an excellent introduction into the life and work of this giant of modern French philosophy and sociology (unfortunately less known than Sartre, Derrida or Foucault). And there are 4 extra, even more interesting essays, but without mentioning where they were published before.
As this book is a collection of essays, it isn’t a systematic introduction into the complexity-thinking of Morin: there’s a lot of repetition, some articles are rather polemical (against the classic science paradigm), and in general Morin gives rather fragmentary insight into the alternative that he proposes. Only in the last appendix he offers a short but systematic view on the complexity of the world.
Passing over the flaws in the structure of this book, the fundamental intuition of Morin, and of complexity thinking in general is very fascinating. The classic Western approach (the paradigm that has been ruling our world since Descartes) is based on simplification, disjunction and reduction. This approach has resulted (and still does) in spectacular new insights into our world, especially in natural sciences, and, based upon this, in enormous technological advances. But according to Morin this kind of thinking in the 20th Century has reached its limits. Both in natural sciences, but more so in human sciences and in our globalized world in general, a lot of issues have emerged that can’t be explained nor resolved through the classic approach.
Morin and complexity thinking in general, propose an alternative, namely a real paradigm shift. In broad outlines he pleads to acknowledge that reality is complex in different aspects, and that there’s a high level of uncertainty in our relation to this reality, because subject and object cannot really be separated. In our reality order, disorder and organization always interact in such a way that you have to take chance, coincidence, and emergence as valid, acting principles. So instead of linear thinking, reductionism and simplification Morin says we must focus on conjunction, interrelation with the eco-environment, auto-organisation and dialogue.
Morin doesn’t offer a really worked out alternative. But in his essays several times he stresses the use of strategies instead of programs: strategies are more realistic, because they are flexible and acknowledge that at all times there can be surprises that force us to change route. In that way he was a precursor of the now very popular notion of ‘disruption’. Instead, Morin opens up to freedom and emergence, but always understood as complex concepts (concurring and antagonistic with determinism and dependence).
One last remarkable feature of Morin’s thinking is his outspoken rejection of holism. Since the 1970’s holism often also is presented as an alternative for reductionist western science. According to Morin holism just is another form of reductionism, because it’s only focussing on the whole and deducting the most wild and unlikely views from it. I think he’s right. Instead Morin says we have to focus on the complex relationship between the parts and the whole, the interaction between them, even the retroaction between them, opening up to nonlinear thinking and uncertainty.
In general Morin’s view is a breath of fresh air, presenting new perspectives on reality. Perhaps this book isn’t offering all the answers (but then again, that just isn’t possible according to Morin), but it’s a nice start to begin to look differently at things. (For a review on what this book has to say to historians, see my History-alias on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...)...more
“Let's danse…” A very ingenious play, chock full of themes and references to scientific and cultural-historical phenomena. The central theme is, of cou“Let's danse…” A very ingenious play, chock full of themes and references to scientific and cultural-historical phenomena. The central theme is, of course, the apparent contradiction between chaos and order, which turns out to be none. Also past and future, Enlightenment and Romanticism, love and hate do not appear to be separate extremes, but rather very complex interrelated phenomena. By playing on 2 fields, in two different time periods (early 19th and late 20th century), Stoppard manages to create a dynamic that continues to intrigue. After 1 reading you have barely reckognized a handful of the references. Naturally, this makes this comedy primarily an intellectual experiment, the moral of which is that chaos also has an underlying order. With the final scene, in which the protagonists in the two time periods dance with each other, Stoppard seems to shake off all the heavy-handed theories, as if he is sticking his tongue out at the reader/spectator. Again, ingeniously done, but whether it is also a successful play on stage seems to me to be a completely different question....more
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