Replying to LO20217 (AM de Lange - problem solving and systems thinking)
LO20211 (Jon Krispin - Entropy production, bifurcation, etc)
LO20232 (AM de Lange - Entropy production, bifurcation, etc)
LO20221 (AM de Lange - What is an emergence?)
Dear Lo'ers,
My mind became a whirlpool. The arrow of time passed me. I am still in the
fabulous messages of last week, but it is already tuesday. My desk is
loaded with printed e-mails, high-lighters and other paper work: in short,
it is a mass. I hope that "the increase in chaos is an increase in
diversity of becoming".
I have no idea how At could keep in pace with all these messages. It seems
that the flow of information for him is a laminar flow, whereas for me it
became turbulent.
You may have noticed that my systems thinking is strongly related to flow,
its mechanisms, its causes and its outcomings. And not surprisingly, I'am
sitting on the edge of my chair when reading terms like force-flux.
As probably many others of us, I was not so familiar with thermodynamics
and entropy. Thanks to the contributions of At, I am not afraid anymore to
these concepts. But I also permanently try to 'translate' the entropy
concepts to the material and abstract world.
If At explains the iron bar with the flow of temperature, i visualise it
in a flow of water. If we talk about migration of people (see the
squatter-discussion) I see rivers flowing; if we discuss the transfer of
information, learning processes, virusses in hospitals and viral deseases,
trafic jams, food chains, evolution of life,
I compare it with rivers, polders, dams, pumping and windmills.
And if we discuss the flow of thoughts, creativity, emergencies and
immergencies, I think of water searching for its path of lowest
resistence, which is not necessarily the shortest path, the meanders, the
quiet waters and the rapids.
What causes all these flows? One needs something to flow, and a difference
in level (high-low), in other words a force (in the case of water, it is
the gravitational force). But how does this force acts? Does it push, or
does it pull? Or can't we speak in these terms? There are some great
differences between these two, although in strict vector calculations
there is no difference. However, the ultimate example of 'pushing' is the
big bang in the beginning of our universe. This explosion spreads outward
from a centre. At mentioned in LO20217:
"What about thoughts? Are their dissipation (spreading) also the result of
something? Are they the result of "entropy production"?
If this is so, is entropy production pushing?
If we think of pulling or attracting, instead of pushing or spreading, we
think of concentration. Pulling concentrates. Again, the example from
cosmology is the black hole.
Where is our water-analogy? Think of a bathtub. If we could fill the bath
with water by a tap which is mounted in the bottom of the bath, we will
see something in the water which resembles the mushroom cloud of a nuclear
bomb: the water spreads towards all sides from the centre in over-rolling
'clouds'. After a while the bath is filled and we close the tap. Now we
take the plug off. We introduced a 'puller' or attractor. We soon will see
a maelstrom, a singular vortex spiralling towards a centre. After a while,
the water level in the bath diminishes, the speed of flow decreases, and
the last water runs in a laminar way towards the hole.
So there is really a difference between pushing and pulling, both create
flow. But we have also seen the difference caused by the difference in
speed: low speed -laminar, high speed - turbulence. And attracting is
concentration, pushing is spreading.
In meteorology we see the same: an atmospheric high spreads and usually
takes a large part of the isobaric map, whereas a depression (atmospheric
low) is circular, usually small and concentrated and it causes spiralling
(tornadoes, hurricanes).
What about the phenomena in daily life of communication and social
behaviour between humans?
We may compare the pushing with conflicts and phobia. To be in love is a
nice example of pulling. Often we oscillate between these two. The
stronger the pushing force, or the attracting force, the stronger
the flow and turbulences may develop.
But violence and turbulences start even more easier
if both forces are active at the same time. This is the mechanism which
causes the strongest flow and we may pass the 'Reynolds number'.
In de primers on entropy of At (particularly LO19979 - part III) the
effects were explained of increasing the temperature differrence
(flattening the bell-curve). It was explained that the velocities of
individual particals shows a greater spreading, thus the number of
particals with very high speeds and those with very low speeds increase in
respect of those with the average speed.
Probably, this phenomenon occurs in water flows as well. Of the flow speed
increases, the variation of internal speeds increases as well. And
probably this variation causes turbulences.
Senge created a nice language for sytems thinking. As in the discussion
between Jon and At (and others), Senge too has delt with cause and effect,
object-subject. And all of them speak of feed-back loops. In an earlier
contribution I have mentioned these loops (LO19747). Are these loops the
starting vortices and turbulences? In these whirls it is extremely
difficult - if not impossible - to decipher the causes and effects. There
is even no orientational relationship of direction of flow and the
orientation of the forces.
And now I come to my burning question of emergencies and immergencies. Let
me strengthen that this question is also of great importance for learning
organizations. The question is:
Are start of turbulences the sign of passing a bifurcation point?
Is the vortex caused by an attractor the emergency (a higher order of
organization), and the turbulences caused by pushing the immergency
(higher order of desorganization)?
If these questions are of some valid, we have some clues for the
behavioural sciences.
1. We could increase the flow speed, by creating a difference. Either by
pushing, or pulling. Should we make (in reality or in the mind)
'something' attractive, or rejective? Should we fire employees, or should
we offer them an attractive alternative? Should we make a
mission/vision/idea attractive, or do we stress the rejective elements?
2. We could increase the flow speed too, by combining push and pull. How
could we keep the effects under control? Does immergencies, or emergencies
occur?
3. We could also create oscillations by creating two attractors, or two
rejectors (firing employees in an overloaded marketplace). What will be
the behaviour of humans in such environment? Real life looks often like
this.
And finally I like to come back to the bifurcation points. Does a vortex
starts spontaneous at a well defined point? No. Osborne Reynolds
did at the end of the former century a lot of experiments of flow
behaviour within a tube. He finally could formulate a dimensionless
parameter where velocity, density, viscosity and radius and resistence of
the tube are the variables. The Reynolds number is important in all sorts
of industrial processes. Above a certain value of this number, turbulence
will start.
However, it appears that the strat of turbulence is NOT a fixed point. It
follows a trajectory with several stages. And turbulence occurr not only
in tubes , but also in a resistentless environment. This is why I asked At
if there are bifurcation POINTS or Trajectories.
For me, turbulences are a great attractor. I am studying wildly in this
special branch of science. It is a subject which was until recently
completely new for me. It is extremely complicated. But the books and
pictures of coloured fluids, smokes, dyes, clouds of exploding volcanoes
and other materials are fascinating. If one have seen the pictures of a
starting turbulence (the co-called Karmann vortex), will be filled with
great enthousiasm. This is absolutely ART with a capital A.
I hope again that theory (entropy) and practice of the learning
organization have been connected.
I wish you all very fine days and a new year with a lot of emerging
turbulences.
dr. Leo D. Minnigh
minnigh@library.tudelft.nl
Library Technical University Delft
PO BOX 98, 2600 MG Delft, The Netherlands
Tel.: 31 15 2782226
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Let your thoughts meander towards a sea of ideas.
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--Leo Minnigh <L.D.Minnigh@library.tudelft.nl>
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