Abstract
The culture trap is tendency to put cultural markers and habits above demands of reason or compassion. It can reduce receptivity to new ideas and trigger Phoenix Cycles of catastrophe and renaissance. System research is then complicated by historiographic problem of continuity and change, because there are no objective criteria for deciding whether the survived or was destroyed by catastrophe. This paper explores differences between uncertainty emergence and self-organizing emergence using concept of a to clarify relationship between anti-causal events and causal states, i.e., meso-history of conjuncture. Conjunctures are interpreted ex post in context of deep time. The paper distinguishes autopoiesis, i.e., a new instance of a species, from elaboration, i.e., origin of new species. It also describes a spectrum ranging from metastability, in which possibility space is time invariant, to innovation, in which possibility space is a synergetic artefact of changing habits and beliefs. Metastable systems are computably complex; we can make predictions across boundaries of successive conjunctures, subject to statistical uncertainties. Innovative systems are uncomputably complex; although we can make predictions within a conjuncture and anticipate bottlenecks, we cannot predict beyond conjuncture because conceptual taxonomies will not be conserved. The relationship between adaptive potential and constraint remains fundamental, although debates about whether system is resilient are meaningless. System boundaries are artefacts of a dynamic consensus. The analytical sciences use methods designed for metastable systems, whereas discursive sciences presume innovation. These methods predispose researchers to different space-time perspectives that, in turn, make it possible to generalize about their roles in different policy arenas. Tensions between analytical and discursive scientists become more understandable and manageable if these historiographic issues are clarified. The relationship between innovation and metastability is illustrated in an appendix on emergence of social complexity in Europe.
Highlights
In the history of the Earth, co-evolutionary catastrophes, in which one population undermines the fitness of another (Norgaard 2005, Winder et al 2005), seem to have alternated with periods of complexification and rapid social change
This paper explores the differences between uncertainty emergence and self-organizing emergence using the concept of a "possibility space" to clarify the relationship between anti-causal events and causal states, i.e., the meso-history of conjuncture
The paper distinguishes autopoiesis, i.e., a new instance of a species, from elaboration, i.e., the origin of new species. It describes a spectrum ranging from metastability, in which the possibility space is time invariant, to innovation, in which the possibility space is a synergetic artefact of changing habits and beliefs
Summary
In the history of the Earth, co-evolutionary catastrophes, in which one population undermines the fitness of another (Norgaard 2005, Winder et al 2005), seem to have alternated with periods of complexification and rapid social change. Metastable systems are computably complex; we can make predictions across the boundaries of successive conjunctures, subject to statistical uncertainties. The concept of system resilience as a balance between constraint or connectedness and adaptive potential suggested links between the Phoenix Cycle of catastrophe and renaissance, the problems exercising environmentalists and complex systems research.
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