Comprehension

Groupware Configurations of Challenge and Harmony: an alternative approach to alternative organization (Part #5)

It is strange that the problem of comprehension is seldom raised in connection with alternative organization. One reason that hierarchical organizations are so widespread is that they are the simplest to comprehend, and that any challenges to comprehension are effectively disguised as the responsibility of the 'boss'. An individual in the depths of some such hierarchy is in fact encouraged not to worry about the why and wherefor of what goes on elsewhere.

The result is that when confronted with the presence of (or the need to express) a complete range of functions, an individual will tend automatically to separate out as irrelevant all those which are not immediately comprehensible from the position he is currently expressing. For this reason the functional richness and maturity, which may be assumed to be desirable characteristics of alternative organizations, render them a major challenge to comprehension. Despite their supposed complexity, the challenge of comprehending organizational networks is almost always avoided - to the point that there is even pride in their perceived amorphousness (which markedly distinguishes them from their conventional mathematical representation).

Not only is there the problem of comprehending the distinct functions which are expressed in an organization of a given level of complexity (i.e. richness), but there is also the problem of comprehending the pattern of challenge and harmony relationships characteristic of the structure. In a hierarchy the pyramidal structure also serves as an encoding or classifying structure, effectively pigeonholing more specialised functions which can then be handled conceptually at a more general level. Functional distinctions are seldom explicit in organizational or grassroots networks. On may even question whether functional differentiation is acceptable therein. Characteristically, horizontal relationships between hierarchical sub-divisions are ignored if not forbidden, except via the 'boss'.

In order to comprehend the challenge of envisaging real alternatives, attention must be given to the conventional process by which we are 'locked into' the existing patterns of organization. Curiously both philosophers and physicists share this concern. For example A.T. de Nicolas, a philospher concerned with the patterning freedom implicit in the chanted Rg Veda and how it is to be comprehended, notes:

'The approach of Classical Physics corresponds very closely to the commonsense approach in the following sense: It operate on the assumption that we should primarily search for individual, unique, atomic entities like things, and events, and only secondarily that we should see how these atomic units combine into classes of units and classes of classes of units and so forth'.

The approach of Modern Physics corresponds to the Eastern view of reality in the following sense: It operates on the assumption, that whenever we are in search of anything, we are primarily in contact with a totality, the most 'real' aspect of any entity being the total pattern. Our perception of it defies any atomicity or real identification. It is only secondarily that classification of individual entities is made possible, and for this we revert to ordinary symbol manipulation. In other words, to perceive anything apart from the total field is to perceive it as a subsystem, an artificially created aspect of a field of stresses, i.e. a pattern. In fact, according to the law of complementarily, what can truly be said in one context-language, the same cannot be truly said in the other context-language'. (31 p. 32-3).

The final statement can be made of the different functional perspectives into which a complex organization can be differentiated, since each gives rise to its own context-language. There is a relationship of complementarily between them but not of classical logic. De Nicolas is concerned to show that it is the activity whereby man generates these languages and patterns which is the clue to patterning freedom. A similar point could be made with regard to the (collective) entrepreneurial initiative whereby an organization comes into being - the initiating attitude is usually neglected in favour of uncreative attention to a narrow range of well-know organizational forms. De Nicolas argues that the conventional 'view of language fails to take into account the human activity by which language itself is formed, made flesh' (31 p. 55).

'When Language is grounded on a tone system, as in the Rg Veda, then the immediate result is a plurality of systems; that is a Language which we can speak only through sub-linguistic systems' (31 p. 58). 'Language, in the above sense, is only to be reached as a viewpoint gained through the activity of contrasting perspectives' (31 p. 182). De Nicolas describes Language as 'a heuristic anticipation of a reachable goal, which establishes structures of systematic inquiry guided by sets of canons and embodied in a pattern of human exploratory behavior. When Language is formulated, we no longer have Language, but rather a complete and closed set of semantically linked descriptive predicates internally related and forming one or several sub-linguistic systems or languages' (31 p. 183).

The immediate consequence is an infinite patterning possibility, and a rich multiplicity of alternative perspectives. In Western music number is used to constrict all possibility to an economically convenient limit by arbitrary adoption of an international pitch standard and an equal temperament tone system. This was not the case in the past: the infinite possibilities of the number field were considered isomorphic with the infinite possibilities of tone and there was no theoretical limit to the divisions of the octave.

'Rg Vedic man, like his Greek counterparts, knew himself to be the organizer of the scale, and he cherished the multitude of possibilities open to him too much to freeze himself into one dogmatic posture. His language keeps 'alive that 'openness' to alternatives, yet it avoids entrapment in anarchy. It also resolves the fixity of theory by setting the body of man historically moving through the freedom of musical spaces, viewpoint transpositions, reciprocities, pluralism, and finally, an absolute radical sacrifice of all theory as a fixed invariant' (31 p. 57).

'Language in music is grounded thereby on context dependency; any tone can have any possible relation to other tones, and the shift from one tone to another, which alone makes melody possible, is a shift in perspective which the singer himself embodies. Any perspective (tone) must be 'sacrificed' for a new one to come into being; the song is a radical activity which requires innovation while maintaining continuity, and the 'world' is the creation of the singer, who shares its dimensions with the song' (31 p. 57).

Whilst one may share the enthusiasm of the last paragraph, the Rg Veda has been around for several thousand years and has not apparently given rise to alternative patterns of organization. By what have its interpreters been trapped ? Lest it be thought, however, that musical form has little to do with organization, one may cite socialist economist Jacques Attali:

'La musique est plus qu'objet d'etude: elle est un moyen de percevoir le monde. Un outil de connaissance. Aujourd'hui, aucune theorisation par le langage ou les mathematiques n'est plus suffisante, parce que trop lourde de signifiants prealables, incapable de rendre compte de l'essentiel du temps: le qualitatif et le flou, la menace et la violence... Il faut donc imaginer des formes theoriques radicalement neuves pour parler aux nouvelles realises. La musique, organization du bruit, est une de ces formes... Dans les codes qui structurent les bruits et leurs mutations, s'annoncent une pratique et une lecture theorique nouvelles...' (32 p. 9-11).

He demonstrates the prophetic role of music and that social and economic organization is the 'echo' of the music of the immediate past. But this still leaves indications which remain to be anchored in real possibilities for comprehending operational alternatives for organization. A 'bridge' is required from the rich possibilities of patterning freedom indicated by musical coding to that of organizational structure. It is the argument of this paper that tensegrity structures constitute such a bridge, both in the variety of possible patterns which provide structural guidelines and as sophisticated reflections of the problems of comprehending the range of such true alternatives.

There is a strong possibility that further exploration of musical patterning (of ref. 33) in relation to tensegrity patterning will establish significant linkages between them since both are governed by number (cf. ref. 16), itself a basis of the patterning of the field of archetypes in the Jungian sense (34). The key seems to lie in the patterning of a spheric surface (a finite but unbounded attention surface) by configurations of discord/challenge and harmony. It may even prove to be the case that a given tensegrity is an isomorphic representation of a particular lattice of sub-linguistic systems which could characterise a particular pattern of functionally differentiated organization. De Nicolas notes (31 p. 187) that man, in his expressions and behavior, uses a lattice of languages.

This was first pointed out by P.A. Heelan in connection with the peculiar logic of quantum mechanics (35). The logic in question turned out to be, not an ordering of sentence, but a partial ordering (lattice) of complementary descriptive languages. He found this complementarily of languages to be a pervasive phenomenon of human communication and dialogue. 'Man is at the centre of his own activity, creating and recreating himself in relation to how efficiently he climbs or descends the contextual multiplicity within which he constantly operates' (31 p. 187). It is noteworthy that taxonomies of games have been based on lattice structures which bear a tantalising resemblance to the tensegrity structures discussed here (36). Games are themselves challenge/harmony patterns.

In a tensegrity the structure is comprehensible as a gestalt, but it is very difficult to conceptualise the gestalt from its elements. There is a counter-intuitive barrier to reaching an understanding of the whole from its parts, although the structure of the whole is very clear once represented by a three-dimensional model. This barrier is even clear when constructing such a model. It becomes even greater as the number of elements increases in the more complex tensegrities.

Aside from one's own problems of comprehension, there are obviously problems of communicating the nature of alternative organization to others.

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