Re: <nettime> Locating ArtScience

[John Hopkins <jhopkins@neoscenes.net>]

Thanks Brian for introducing Earth Systems ideas, they go a long way towards an 
understanding of the connectedness across the wide scale of the entire planet 
from an approach that is understandable to a literate Westerner. There is a lot 
of new, creative, and very pertinent science happening within that sphere, 
related to stories of deep-time pasts and futures, in which we are scaled more 
to the global glitch that we are, despite our propagation of globe-girdling 
effects. James G. Miller's work dove-tails with this and may be of interest to 
you. As well, for example, Franesco Gonella's piece "Systems thinking and the 
narrative of climate change" 
http://prosperouswaydown.com/gonella-systems-climate/ might be of interest. (I 
append a short selected bibliography of some other sources)
Latour suggests that 'things' be related by negotiation. I believe that his 
presumptive objectification of nature ('that-which-we-perceive') as a set of 
'things' continues the travesty of Cartesian disconnect that brought us to where 
we are in the moment.
The essence of the 'connectivity' between *everything* is not a language-based 
negotiation. It pertains more to the energized relation and an awareness (almost 
a dis-awareness!) of those flows. Definitely pre-verbal to our English 
descriptive system.
Any 'solutions' that are based in the model of 'relations of things' (species, 
environments, ecosystems, regimes) and so imagined by/through their thing-ness 
(which includes most scientific processes) are bound to fail, as we so-far 
witness. Not only that, but the solutions are too often framed even by 
eco-conscious folks as a catastrophe to *us-things*. Perhaps if science 
proceeded on the assumption that all is connected, then created hypotheses to 
disprove that assumption...
Unfortunately our language restricts the essence of the discussion to thing-ness 
-- it permeates all discourse (including the John Tresch article about Latour). 
Using terms like 'assembled body', 'assemblage', 'agent', even, 'apocalyptic', 
keeps us mired in the self-limiting and impotent thing-ness of our realities, 
our histories, and our futures. Even Latour's ANT which suggested the 
possibility of fluid connection between the actors, remained mired in the 
defined material-ness of those objects, and did not, imho, delve into the 
(energized) flow that both makes them up and permeates, *is* the interstitial 
dynamic.
Where is change? It is deeply internal. If it is not rooted there, it will not 
propagate to wider systems. I agree, Brian, *that* is the most diffucult issue.
The suggestion in the article of a return to an understanding by "granting 
epistemic weight to the natures of indigenous collectives" need be driven by 
adopting their language for circumscribing reality. Other models of reality may 
be adopted or at least studied, as they may provide mental tools and the mental 
re-wiring necessary to let go of the materiality that makes capitalism and our 
'indigenous' world-view such a (stupidly) compelling model -- one that most 
people take for reality itself. Of course this poses the crucial question of how 
people approach reality -- most, it seems, simply adopt what the dominant social 
order provides ('it's always been that way'). What is first necessary is the 
development of a creative milieu that points out explicitly that the social 
order is constructed on models, and the models are *not* the phenomena of 
reality itself. Fluid and pre/non-disciplinary creative learning situations are 
what need to undergird any art/acience/politics question. One's own awareness of 
reality may then possibly be developed in such a way that the connectedness is 
forgrounded. If your program in NL is doing that, Eric, good on ya'!
anyway.

JH


On 09/Dec/17 00:48, Brian Holmes wrote:
> This is a great discussion! CAE just wrote this:

A selected bibliography:

Abraham, Terry. “Archives and Entropy: The Closed System,” February 1999. 
http://www.uiweb.uidaho.edu/special-collections/papers/entropy.htm.
Al-Fedaghi, Sabah S. “Systems of Things That Flow.” Proceedings of the 52nd 
Annual Meeting of the ISSS, July 2008.
Alter, Steven. “A General, Yet Useful Theory of Information  Systems.” 
Communications of Association for Information Systems 1 (March 1999).
Bailey, Kenneth D. “Living Systems Theory and Social Entropy Theory.” Systems 
Research and Behavioral Science 23 (2006): 291–300. 
https://doi.org/10.1002/sres.738.
Bertalanffy, Ludwig von. Organismic Psychology and Systems Theory. Boston, MA: 
Clark University Press, 1968.
———. Perspectives on General System Theory: Scientific-Philosophical Studies. 
The International Library of Systems Theory and Philosophy. New York: G. 
Braziller, 1975.
Biggart, John, ed. Alexander Bogdanov and the Origins of Systems Thinking in 
Russia. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1998.
Farnsworth, Keith D., John Nelson, and Carlos Gershenson. “Living Is Information 
Processing; from Molecules to Global Systems.,” October 22, 2012. 
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1210.5908.pdf.
Fuchs, Christian, and Wolfgang Hofkirchner. “Autopoiesis and Critical Social 
Systems Theory.” In Autopoiesis in Organization Theory and Practice, edited by 
Rodrigo Magalhães. Bingley,: Emerald, 2009.
Gonella, Francesco. “Systems Thinking and the Narrative of Climate Change – A 
Prosperous Way Down.” Blog. A Prosperous Way Down, July 23, 2017. 
http://prosperouswaydown.com/gonella-systems-climate/.
Meadows, Donella H. Thinking In Systems: A Primer. Edited by Diana Wright. White 
River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green, 2008.
Miller, James G. “Living Systems: *17 Articles Together*.” Behavioral Science 
10, no. 4 (October 1, 1965).
———. “Living Systems: Basic Concepts.” Behavioral Science 10, no. 3 (July 1, 
1965): 193–237.
———. “Living Systems: Cross-Level Hypotheses.” Behavioral Science 10, no. 4 
(October 1, 1965): 380–411.
———. “Living Systems: Structure and Process.” Behavioral Science 10, no. 4 
(October 1, 1965): 337–79.
Mulej, Matjaz, Zdenka Zenko, Vojko Potocan, Stefan Kajzer, and Stuart Umpleby. 
“(The System Of) Seven Basic Groups Of Systems Thinking Principles And Eight 
Basic Assumptions Of A General Theory Of Systems.” Journal of Sociocybernetics 
4, no. 2 (Fall/Winter 2003): 23–37.
“Systems, Controls, and Information.” In Net Works: Case Studies in Web Art and 
Design. New York ; London: Routledge, 2012.
Viskovatoff, A. “Foundations of Niklas Luhmann’s Theory of Social Systems.” 
Philosophy of the Social Sciences 29, no. 4 (December 1, 1999): 481–516. 
https://doi.org/10.1177/004839319902900402.
Wenger, Win. “A General Theory of Systems: One Man’s View WIthin Our Universe,” 
1996.

--
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD
hanging on to the Laramide Orogeny
twitter: @neoscenes
http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/
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