T E C T O L O G Y

The natural philosophy of organization in/into complexities

John A. Mikes - Ph.D., D.Sc., Madison NJ - USA

email: jamikes@prodigy.net

Poster # 53-1/2 -

(Prepared for ICCS - [1st International Conference on Complex Systems],

New England Complex Systems Inst. Sept.21-27,1997 - Nashua NH USA)

A B S T R A C T

Tectology (A. Bogdanov 1920) is the "missing link" of the natural sciences, the discipline in the 'self-organization', the synthesis of higher complexities: the natural philosophy behind organization (= the build-up) in(to) higher complexities, i.e. the rules of prediction in assemblages, when the components (self)organize into one unit, developing a quality, different from those characteristics which are (additively?) observable in the assembling components of the lower complexity.

• Tectological domains:
  • material sciences
  • computer science
  • physical and life sciences
  • cognitive sciences
    • economy and social sciences,
    • developing a natural science philosophy to pave the way for further development of the practical disciplines.
• Examples of pattern complexities: a marriage, the living cells, the body, the insect society, the evolution, the ecology, the mind, computer programs - Artificial Intelligence, the economy, language and writing, the military, galaxy formations, etc. etc.

For an easier readability I divert from the spelling of A. Bogdanov's cyrillic (Russian) word, "originaly transliterated" in form of 'T E K T O L O G Y' (given in Peter Dudley's first English translation of the 1922 Russian text - Hull Univ.Ed., Publ., 1996), in transcribing the Cyrillic "k" letter into a Latin "c" - sounding as "k" anyway). I borrowed this liberty ('c' vs. 'k') from the Romans: the Greek "tekein", to build, to meld components together, survived into the Latin 'tectum' (= the roof, as the completion of an abode), as the past participle of 'tegere' (to cover). The Latin origin for the word 'COMPLEXITY' comes from the verb 'plegere' (to weave) using its past participle: 'plexus'= woven, the 'complexus' meaning interwoven. As a linguistic variant: complexity is an intertwined system of usually more than one component. I want to ride this metaphor one step further: interwoven fiber turns by its 'emerged' complexity into a fabric, which then carries the emergent quality of a textile, a cloth, while consisting of the still recognizable yarn-components of the originating - lower level - fiber-complexity. Which gives a pretty good description of a "complexity": the assemblage of (recognizable) components into a unit of added complexity (ie. a higher level, - i.e. more complex entity), which, by its mere intricate interconnections, develops (turns into) new, added characteristics of the assemblage total, mostly unrelated to (and so far unpredictable from) the (summed up) known characteristics of the 'component' units, (which are complexities themselves as well), simply by the power of being built(-up) into a unit of a higher level complexity.

On A.Bogdanov and his "Tectology"

"all things are organizational, all COMPLEXES could only be

understood through their organizational character." (Bogdanov)

This is (historically) the first identification of philosophical "complexes"

in the natural sciences, to denote a combination of elements of `activity -

resistance'. Bogdanov considered that any complex should correspond to its

environment and adapt to it. (A stable and organized complex is greater than

the sum of its parts). In Tectology, the term 'stability' does not refer not to a

dynamic stability, but to the possibility of preserving the complex in the given

environment cf.: fitness). A 'complex' is not identical to a 'complicated', a

hard-to-comprehend, large unit. Furthermore Bogdanov created a new unique

conception, as the first 'modern' attempt at projecting the most general laws of

organization. Tectology was created by Bogdanov to address issues such as

holistic, emergent phenomena and systemic development. This new type of

constructive science builds the elements into a functional entity by a sistem of

the general laws which determine the organization of all nature. - According

to his "empirio-monistic" principle (1899) he does not recognize differences

between observation and perception and so creates the beginning of a general

empirical, supradisciplinary (yet not supernatural) science. In his time of mostly

physicalistic scientific world view, the main starting concept in Bogdanov's

investigation was 'organization', as an expedient unity. Indeed it meant the

cradle of Systems Science and Holism. The "whole" in Tectology, the laws of

integrity were derived from a biological rather than the physicalistic view of

the world. Regarding the three scientific cycles which comprise the basis of

Tectology (mathematical, physico-biological, and natural-philosophical), it is

the physico-biological cycle, from which the central concepts have been taken

and universalized (cf.: Peter Dudley - Simona Pustylnik, 1995). The starting

point in A. Bogdanov's "Universal Science of Organization - The Tectology"

as he published over the years 1913-1922):

nature has a general, organized character, with

ONE SET OF LAWS OF ORGANIZATION FOR ALL OBJECTS.

It contained an internal development of the 'complex' units, as implied by

Simona Pustylnik's "macro-paradigm", which induces synergistic consequences

into an adaptive assembling phenomenon (1995). Bogdanov's visionary view

of nature was: an 'organization', with an interconnection into systems. It was

preceding L von Bertalanffy's General Systems Science and other modern

schools of self-organizing complex systems. Lenin (and later Stalin) considered

Bogdanov's natural philosophy an ideological threat to their revolutionary

dialectic materialism (what it was not really) and put 'tectology' to sleep.

New-Tectology: on an un-skewing of the physical sciences.

Our Platonic heritage performed miracles in the western science and

technology, based on the discontinuous series of numbers and quantities.

Furthermore, in the heritage of Democritus, western science reached a

miraculous level in representing the material universe by dissecting the

complexities into their components/ingredients, down to the atoms and

beyond. Plato& Democritus started a "reductionist/analytical/mathematical"

nce which served so well up to the point, when, looking for, new trends,

new methods, a deeper understanding, new concepts had to emerge. The

application of the 'old' methods and formalism led to paradoxes, to endless

debate about new paradigms. One such requirement emerged in the past

(i.e. the 20th) century: to understand - and predict - the developing of the

characteristics, functions, (called: emergent qualia) when 'components'

assemble into higher level complexity-units. This kind of study was earlier

not available, not to Bogdanov, the pioneer, not even to David Bohm for

that matter, before the tools for such studies, e.g. self-organizing, recursive,

open, far-from-equilibrium, chaotic, holistic hierarchy of nested complexities,

game theory and evolutionary understanding, etc., developed into applicable

science. Now, although far from having really reaped considerable results

yet, we already can see some good beginnings. The study of the buildup-

characteristics, a synthetic development, the mechanism of tectology, is a

complement to the analytical view. We need new principles, new methods,

to arrive at a prediction of the - not so miraculous - emergent qualia. It is

not likely that our present mathematical skills will serve us well for deriving

such predictions (characteristics (functions) of the 'higher-level', the newly

assembled complexities' quality) from the knowledge of the components'

data only, derived by studying the lower-level complexities without including

the knowledge of the assemblages as a goal to reach. (It's like in Abbott's book

"Flatland": the 2-D world's scientist Mr. Square could not develop an

understanding of our 3-D world. The joke is on us: Our mind, long trained in

reductionistic thinking, understands downwards, but is not trained (yet) in the

predictions of the upwards- level qualities).

Granted: there are successful and ingenious efforts, but beware of the

premature war-cry: "Heureka, I got it!", the unskewing of the analytically

predominated mind-set requires a long, long study and adjustment.

New Tectology: on global hierarchy.

"Global" is really the wrong word. What we are talking here is not Earth-bound.

It generally stands for "overall" (in nature). Alwyn Scott described the mind's

hierarchy in his 'Staircase' (1995) : components of its complexities are

complexities themselves, and so on and so on. Nested it is, in the finest of

reductionist-analytical (down)view. Now let us raise our eyes: where do our

complexities go UPWARDS in assembling themselves? and what consequences may

arise? In a sense of tectological interconnections: they 'pair up' with

'peer'-complexities, to assemble into even higher level complexities -

and so on. There is no highest 'President-Complexity' (!) sitting at the 'top',

presiding over nature's hierarchy. Just as we did not find a 'bottom-peon'

simplicity. We just have to learn how to use the word 'unlimited'. Planck's order

of magnitude is a practical limit of human representation of our bottom-line

assembly, for both the smallest and simplest we can think of (now), just as

the 'universe' is the upper level of our representational view. In the

nested, hierarchical fractal lines we find three co-acting principles:

• MATTER (space-time limited),
  • FUNCTION (time-limited) and
    • IDEA (unlimited by either space or time).
    • The fractals do connect sideways, too, with the resulting assemblages continuing the building of nested levels of complexity-series down and up. Adjusted in all directions (meaning: in all aspects), it gets recursive, adaptive, emergent, evolutionary, chaotic (in the semantical identification of our evolving view).

New Tectology: about chaos and mind.

Chaos is characterized as unpredictable and disorderly. As an alternate term is

nonlinear. Indeed it signifies nature's order and our ignorance to discern its

'symmetries' or even information (= David Bohm's criterion for order). Science

picked a limited segment for studying 'chaology': the (space - time processes of)

bifurcative, iterative, or fractalous "chaos". They certainly belong into it. I believe

chaos is widely unknown, it is how nature works and our partially linearized world,

(Bohm's 'explicate') is the exception. Chaos is an enveloping name, it includes more

information than the segment, so far discovered by human knowledge, more than

presently studied by physical chaologists. Our mathematics has been developed on

linearity (i.e. using proportional quantities in unchanged quality) and the emerged

exceptions are handled in the 'nonlinear' chapters. We have yet to devise an adequate

formalism for chaos: it may be different from the logical system we used so far.

Forcing past knowledge onto new findings may lead to persistent paradoxical

misunderstandings and may be in the way of further progress.

An example may be the recent war around consciousness. First off: consciousness

is not defined, so it is easy to argue. Then again it seems to be an 'envelop' for the

mental/bodily functions and states, including awareness, storage, body and mental

conditions, actions etc. (I prefer the word MIND - similarly unidentified, but less

misused so far). It is the ALL-human-level complexity, with all 3 facets included

(matter, function, idea). The level is high as the components include the brain - a

10 billion-body problem, if counting only the neurons. Of course it works chaotically,

in an ever changing fractal-structure, (regroupping with the changing functions). A

colleague proposed to present a mutual paper with me at a '98 conference, about

'a model of the mind', with the tectology included. I asked for 2-300 more years to

research the mapping and the details).

New Tectology: on modeling and AI.

Modeling is simple in simple material systems: substitute a composition of mechanical functions

by a 'metaphor' taken from the electric domain (or vice versa) and useful results can be reaped.

The modeling in more complex entities is another question. First we need to understand: what's

going on? We usually know only part of it. Then we make a choice to abstract those items which

we deem as usable into a model. That leaves out the rest of it. Our model will represent our 'invention',

the extraction, how we could design part of the substrate in our own view and need. Like e.g. in AI

that chose mostly the neurological domain of the mind-functions, as the modelable abstract of the

mind, for a computable intelligence. An abstraction. The characteristics of the chosen 'intelligence'

are not including the mistakes we make, the emotional-violent mis-calculations, the changeable

memes, the impressions induced by the bodily states, bad habits or stupidity. All these are our

"treasured" human qualia.

AI abstracts an Uebermensch - as its projection - in a partial aspect.

Excellent way for a study, furthers our knowledge tremendously, but we should not shout:

"Heureka, we got it!". The complexity of the mind is still at a much higher level than we can

muster at present - by mimicking the mind by the mind itself

.

On Bogdanov - past and future.

The notions in A. Bogdanov's "Tectology" outlined the concepts and concerns of

Complexity Theory by a full 50 years in advance of the chaos and fractal mathematics.

All that we can intone is that we are still at the beginning of its understanding. An elucidation

requires multi-disciplinary efforts and we may yet see some newer results over the coming

centuries. Then e.g. we may start to predict such things as how a biological assembly will function

after some genetic change. Most likely, though, the complexity of the human mind will still remain

a mystery - ie. un-decipherable and un-predictable in scientific efforts - as we can think about our

science today.- - -

-------------------- --------------------------------

R e f e r e n c e s :

Abbott, E.A. (1884): 'Flatland' [6th rev. ed.: B. Hoffman, 1952]

Bertalanffy, L. v.: 'Perspectives on General Systems Thyeory' [G.Braziller NY, 1975]

Bogdanov, A. A.: 'Osnovnije elementy istoricheskogo vzgljada na prirodu' (in Russian) [St.Petersburg, 1899]

Bogdanov, A. A.: 'Empiriomonism' (in Russian) [Moskow, 1904-1906]

Bohm, David: 'Wholeness and the Implicate Order' [Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1988]

Dudley, Peter: 'Bogdanov's Tektology' (1st Engl transl) [Centre for Systems Studies, Univ. of Hull UK, 1996]

Dudley, P.. Pustylnik, S.N.: 'Reading the Tektology' [ibid. 1995]

Pustylnik,S.N.: 'Biological Ideas of Bogdanov's Tektology' presented at the Int'l. Conference.:

Origins of Organization Theory in Russia & the SU,: [Univ. of East Anglia (Norwich) Jan. 8-11 1995]

Scott, Alwyn: 'Stairway to the Mind' [Springer, 1995]

(Poster originally published at "http://www.ceptualinstitute.com/Genre" 1997)