In this course you will become familiar with the ideas of the water-energy-food nexus and transdisciplinary thinking. You will learn to see your community or country as a complex social-ecological system and to describe its water, energy and food metabolism in the form of a pattern, as well as to map the categories of social actors. We will provide you with the tools to measure the nexus elements and to analyze them in a coherent way across scales and dimensions of analysis. In this way, your quantitative analysis will become useful for informed decision-making. You will be able to detect and quantify dependence on non-renewable resources and externalization of environmental problems to other societies and ecosystems (a popular ‘solution’ in the western world). Practical case studies, from both developed and developing countries, will help you evaluate the state-of-play of a given community or country and to evaluate possible solutions. Last but not least, you will learn to see pressing social-ecological issues, such as energy poverty, water scarcity and inequity, from a radically different perspective, and to question everything you’ve been told so far. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Part of the results and case studies presented have been developed within two projects: MAGIC and PARTICIPIA. However, the course does not reflect the views of the funding institutions or of the project partners as a whole, and the case studies were presented purely with an educational and illustrative purpose.
The Concept of Holon
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MODULE 2. Acknowledging the poor quality of existing quantitative analyses
This week is all about narratives, framing and complexity. You will see how different narratives affect quantitative assessments, and why numbers aren’t always right. We will delve deeper into the theoretical basis of complex systems, and propose alternative ways of doing sustainability analysis, through the use of grammars.
Преподаватели
Mario Giampietro
ICREA Research Professor
Andrea Saltelli
Guest researcher
Tarik Serrano
Post-Doc Researcher
Hi. Welcome back to the last session on the lesson that get into the complexity and
the epistemological problems face when trying to
quantify our perception of complex system.
This is really the key point.
The concept that is the key of all of
the modern world day epistemological problems and it's the concept of a Holon.
The holon is something that we use as sort of epistemic device in our brain to
perceive and then to represent what we see as agent in the world.
And the holon in general is a way that we are describing system.
They are either made or self-produced.
So, for holon, we mean something or someone which is expressing a given function.
So, the problem is that when we are using this "unit of meaning" we're putting
together a lot of information that cannot be quantified in the same way.
So, this is very confusing.
I will illustrate this point with real, practical, simple example.
In historic term, this concept of holon was proposed by Arthur Koestler,
and then it was using the metaphor of The Ghost in the Machine.
When you have a machine, the machine is done by all material pieces,
but it is a ghost.
The information on the machine,
the blueprint and the fact that you can repeat
the same machine using different material component.
So, that is something which is not material that he was calling the ghost.
So, first of all,
the concept of holon points at
the existence of two aspects of living systems that have to be put together.
So, if you have a part of a living system or a complex system that's been made by humans,
this part must have a "why."
If you have this part,
it's because it's useful for something.
At the same time, this part must have a structural organization the make
possible for the part to express the function which is required.
So, there are two things at the same time.
An element of a complex system which is replicated because it's useful.
At the same time, is replicated because it's capable
of expressing the function that has been defined as useful.
The term holon is a combination of two Greek words.
This was the idea that Koestler had.
The "holos" means the macroscopic view,
the top-down information that is why that function is useful.
And then the suffix "on" suggested that the idea of a part, like proton, electron.
And this the microscopic view,
the bottom-up, how the function is expressed.
So, a holon must be at the same time,
a whole made up of smaller parts.
For instance, an individual is made of organs and then the organs are made of tissues,
tissues are made of cells.
Each of the lower part as a function in expressing the higher part.
At the same time,
the holon is a part to fulfill a "how"
to express a function that is needed to stabilize a zone context.
So, a human being is a part of a household,
the household is a part of a community, and so on.
So, it should be noticed that Koestler did invent this duality.
One of the father of complexity, Herbert Simon,
proposed essenduay in terms of functional relation in an organized structure.
Salthe, in honor of the father of
hierarchy theory proposed the distinction between times and individuals.
Bailey tried to apply the Hierarchy Theory to social analysis,
defined social roles and incumbents.
Back in time, you have Socrates proposed the essence and realization.
You always have on the left,
the concept of ghost,
and on the right that the ghost of the parts of the machine.
So, let's go down with practical example because I
understand that all this discussion is very,
very confusing and exotic, with practical examples.
So, I will give example of three main epistemological problems.
One, when we want to describe the part of the holon which is an organized structure,
what/how, we have to use a scale which is different from the scale.
They would be used to characterize the functional relation, the what/why.
Just to give you an example,
let's imagine as a holon,
the president of the United States and you will have a different type of presidents.
These are the incumbents in the role of the president.
And then, we will have Obama and then we will have a president Trump just arrived.
And then, on the other side,
on the left we will have the holon in terms of function.
So, if you want to quantify,
to represent what the president of United States is about, what are the function.
We will have to have a definition of the role which has a much larger scale,
a time scale than the definition of the incumbent.
As a matter of fact, all the incumbents that we saw before being rotated into
the same definition of holon given the American Constitution.
If you want to look at this in terms of levels of analysis and scale of analysis,
we can have the example of the clock.
So a clock, how does it work?
If you look at inside, it has a why.
How is it used?
So, if you go down,
you can see how it works.
It's made of parts and then parts in terms are made of materials.
So, we can go down and try to study more and more how the clock works.
But you can also go up and see for reasons the tables
of flight at the airport and the fact that you need to look at times.
So, flight because there are infrastructure.
And the people are going around much more now than before.
So, what happened is that you have two different explanations that science can use,
the "why" and the "how".
And then, if you are looking at the how,
the why, you are looking at the function, they are expresses.
If you're looking on the how,
you're looking at the realization of a type of organization.
So, what is the point is that with science unfortunately,
we have either people that look at the "why" or people that look at the "how."
It is impossible to look at the "how" and the "why" at the same time,
so the two things are different.
So, in general, even worse than that,
hard science, they tend to focus only on the "how."
So, we've done a very good integration
of quantitative analysis that look at the "how" and the "why" at the same time,
as what is called Holism now to try to look at the big picture.
So, the second big problem with the holons is that there is
not a one to one mapping between organized structure and functional relation.
This is the main point of the matter that we are proposing in
this multi-massive open-online course that we have to be capable of
handling impredicativity and the fact that
complex system requires a symmetrically open system of using quantification.
And I will still use the example of the clock to give you examples.
So, we could have a clock that we need to coordinate to
social activities and to keep record of time and then,
we could have a clock that is spring-powered, or water clock,
or pendulum clock, or sand-clock,
or an electronic clock, or sun clock.
All these different types of clocks,
these are all structural elements.
They are mapping in the same functional element.
And so, when we are making a model,
we are making the characteristics,
the weight of the clock,
the consumption of energy of the clock and so on.
We cannot express these characteristics in relation to the function.
We can express only this characteristic in relation to the function.
I'm thinking about a life-cycle assessment.
When you say we are transporting oil.
What is the input and output of transporting oil.
You can transport oil with the pipeline.
You can transport oil with a tanker.
We can transport oil with the truck, with a barge.
So, at times, it's very difficult to
express in quantivity terms the input and output of the function.
The same problem is that,
if we have a structural type,
this is the way it used to be.
To make a phone call,
you need a phone machine lying,
an operator on other line,
and the person answering your call.
Of course, then we took out the operator.
And then now, we managed to take out the line as well.
So, you could have the same functional type and the structural type evolving in it.
In this case, we are dealing with better design,
same function with a better structure.
But then, we have the third problem that we have when dealing with complex system and
evolving system is that the possible universe of holons,
used for coupling between structural and functional type is over and expanding.
Again, we can again use the example of the clock.
So, we have this very nice old clock.
And how can we use this clock?
We can use it for getting cash if you are short of cash,
or you can use it as a pendulum.
You can use it to replace a missing letter in the sign stop.
You could use it as a piece for a museum,
as a weight for a scale.
And depending on the circumstances,
you can keep inventing a new way of using this clock.
You can put it in the screen,
in front of a keyhole.
You can be launching it with a sling.
You can prepare drugs with it,
if you are desperate.
You can put it under the unstable printer.
What is the point that as soon as you have the need of expressing a function,
you could adapt to it,
any structural types they're more or less can do it.
So, this implying that the system in
self-organizing system adaptive and learning is always changing the definition of itself.
So, this is something to be very
careful when making the prediction about a future based on numbers.
They are reflecting the actual coupling of structural and functional types.
There is an additional problem to me and then,
the structural type that you are using came up in different functional types and then,
this is for life-cycle assessment for the input and output became
a problem is called the technical jargon junk with actual dilemma,
the same input is in reality used to generate different outputs.
And the more we are getting into high-tech society,
the more the functions expressed by the same structural type,
so it became more and more difficult to tracking quantivity terms of what is going on.
This is what we call emergence that we can re-associates
function in a different way in order to have a new object,
so this object is no longer a telephone for instance.
So, this is something to be a knowledge.
When you are doing forecasting the future at a certain point,
if you are doing a model about what the telephone will look in the future,
is this the telephone,
probably making a phone call is
a minor aspect of having this type of device at the moment.
So, there is an additional complication,
just if the things were not complex enough is that,
when we are talking about structural type or functional type,
we are talking about things that are in our brain or in our mind.
But what we are observing these and what we are observing
special instance of holons and then,
this is the problem that we saw before with a different timescale.
Let's go back to the president of the United States.
The U.S. president is something we define out of time but in 1817,
the U.S. presidency was pretty different from the U.S. presidency in the year 2017.
At this time, they have slaves.
Now, it will be unthinkable.
And the same happens with the instance of an incumbent,
so Trump versus Obama are pretty different.
But, the different year are going on,
on a time scale of four years to eight years,
for this year to have a difference,
you have to wait centuries.
So, you have an additional problem
of how the instance can make a difference on the structural type,
and now, the instance can make a difference of the functional type.
Concluding this complex and dense session.
We can name, there are three may be
the epistemological problems that if you are looking at the function,
you will see the structure,
you should see the structure.
You have to assume that the function was given.
It is impossible to have one to one mapping
between structural types and functional types.
So, you have to acknowledge that you have two accounting,
one for functional type and one for the structural type and then,
that your system will be getting something out.
The holons continuously are expanding.
Then, there is an additional problem that when we are perceiving holons,
this is happening in our mind.
And then, what we are saying that the word ease is
reflecting our choice of perceiving something as functional or structural type.
Let's imagine, if you are defining
a terrorist and another person will define a freedom fighter,
you are getting in the situation which is very difficult to make
a model if that two people
are looking at the same entity instance and they are identifying two different holons.
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