Publications by Marta Lenartowicz
HumanEnergy.io, 2023
These notes, compiled for the Human Energy Project (www.humanenergy.io), offer an overview of the... more These notes, compiled for the Human Energy Project (www.humanenergy.io), offer an overview of the origins and reception of the term 'noopshere'. The term was originally coined in 1922-25 in Paris in the discussions between Teilhard de Chardin, Edouard Le Roy, and Vladimir Vernadsky, inspired by two seminal sources. On the one hand, all three collaborators were influenced by the work of the geoscientist Eduard Suess 'The Face of the Earth' (1883-1909), who introduced the notions of the biosphere and anthroposphere. On the other hand, Le Roy and Teilhard were in these years deeply involved in the metaphysics of Henri Bergson, who introduced a theory of evolution which emphasizes the internal, creative force that drives both the biological evolution and the development of human consciousness, arts, and spirituality.
Might the grand collective cognitive operation of humanity, termed the noosphere, be oriented by ... more Might the grand collective cognitive operation of humanity, termed the noosphere, be oriented by a methodological direction? Rewording the original ideas of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin in contemporary academic terms, I conceptualise the noosphere as an ongoing interrelating of cognitive processes: an interrelating which progresses through a particular kind of events. I define these noospheric events as instances of cognitive interiorisation that is conducted in a consciously contingent way. I propose that such rewording allows us to address the methodological question of this essay quite precisely.
In a world that challenges us with ever more complex problems, it is the quality of our thinking ... more In a world that challenges us with ever more complex problems, it is the quality of our thinking that is a critical game-changer in the quest of creating a sane and abundant future. As individuals, organisations, societies, and cultures, we need to foster thinking that proves to be more insightful and farsighted than anything one would ordinarily expect - making it our new norm. We must learn how to mobilise and apply intelligence that is extraordinary - one that continuously exceeds its own limits.
The new VUB School of Thinking is an experimental program with the mission of challenging us all to achieve just that. Deploying an innovative combination of mobilization methods, the program sets out to cultivate the cognitive strategies, practices, and habits that are the marks of exceptional thinkers.
This book invites the public to join the School of Thinking students in their endeavour. The reader will find here a variety of interdisciplinary research articles and discussions that took place in the school. It's a rare peek into a lively academic project committed to taking seriously the 'Sapiens' in 'Homo Sapiens'.
The ambition of our initiative is to mobilise a cognitive power which we are referring to as 'ext... more The ambition of our initiative is to mobilise a cognitive power which we are referring to as 'extraordinary intelligence'. As many of you — participants of the project — have been pointing out, this ambition tends to evoke considerable attraction and equally considerable resentment, or at least reservation. The objections are partly ethical and political, partly cultural and psychological. When critiqued conceptually, the phrasing also calls for a serious re-visiting of the notion of intelligence. The 'extraordinary' we are after turns out to be less problematic: the way we put it, it is a progressive, dynamic term. 'Extraordinary' does not come to mean 'greater than', along a pre-established scale of measurement or relative to a baseline in a population, but rather 'greater again, and yet again', displaying qualities that outgrow themselves. The extraordinary intelligence would then be a capability that continuously exceeds its own limits, proving to be more insightful, more farsighted, and more potent, than one might normally project. But what is 'intelligence'? Clearly, we cannot be referring here to what is captured by IQ tests. The Intelligence Quotient is an iconic psychometric construct and the primary feature of such measurement methods is their reliable reference to traits that are persistent — ideally throughout the lifetime of the individuals assessed. If our interest is in an ever-changing, ever-growing intelligence, we cannot be applying a measure that by its very definition seeks to trace an invariant. The whole idea would become an oxymoron. But, if it is not that invariant predictable aspect of intelligence, what is it, then, that are we speaking about?
To initiate our conversation, I propose we join rooms with another seminar series, held by the ph... more To initiate our conversation, I propose we join rooms with another seminar series, held by the physicists David Bohm in 1990 in Ojai, California. Reading their transcripts makes me wish that our School of Thinking could in some aspects be picking up from where they left off. […]
I like these exchanges because of Bohm’s radical and yet almost ungraspable staging of the practice of thinking. On the one hand, he asserts that the ‘system of thought’, as he calls the entire cognitive complex we will be inquiring into, does nothing short of ruling our existence. This might suggest that in attempting to understand and refine the human condition, comprehending our thinking should be the matter of highest importance. On the other hand, Bohm is refreshingly honest in not just admitting, but insisting that we do not and cannot comprehend how thinking is in fact situated. Thinking remains mysteriously opaque in removing itself from the spotlights it sheds and in presenting its own compositions as the states of affairs for us to act upon —as problems to be tackled, as conclusions to be made, as emotional arousals to be expressed, or as our own characteristics to be actualised. It makes us believe that it is then and only then —once the problems, clues, perceptions, stimuli, and properties are already in place, waiting— our thinking commences. But who has arranged the stage? Who has chosen the decorations and props?
The bold stance of our School of Thinking initiative is that directing a persistent attention ont... more The bold stance of our School of Thinking initiative is that directing a persistent attention onto the workings of our own cognitive processes will be a critical game-changer in humanity’s quest towards a sane and abundant future. This stance might seem too bold, perhaps, as there are great many factors contributing to the challenges we are facing around the globe. However, when you consider the major prevailing problems —war and violence, poverty, systemic injustice and exploitation, climate change— or even that newest one, the global pandemic, the workable solutions are not really so extremely difficult to imagine. The unimaginable part is usually that all stakeholders involved would sufficiently prioritize their interests in order to coordinate their actions towards any of the solutions. Starting from the identification of what does and what does not constitute the relevant challenges, through the identification of the cause-and-effect loops at play, and up to the identification of workable scenarios of going forward, the collective sensemaking of humanity does not seem to sum up to anything particularly sane. If you picture humanity as one giant distributed organ of sensemaking, you would be looking at a quite bizarre entity indeed; a mind that produces a counter-idea to every move it makes and a counter-action to every thought. At smaller scales, when localised, our thinking abilities tend to be advanced enough, oftentimes even more than enough. We are observant, adaptable, clever. We are also devoted and deeply caring about the people and ideas that we are associated with. These two ingredients together —the ceaseless agility of our minds coupled with strong emotional investments— produce sharp, tireless optimisers, rarely missing an opportunity to promote what we have devoted our lives to. Yet, all this comes at a cost of the cut-out externalities. I cannot make up my mind about which phrasing is more appropriate. One, familiar and often repeated nowadays, would be to say that all such accumulating externalities are overflowing at our current historical juncture. Another phrasing, which is perhaps still imminent, would be to say that our current historical juncture is when we are starting to collectively grasp the dynamics of humanity’s ongoing generative involvement in all that has been always coming back to haunt it. With either phrasing, I believe, it is becoming more and more apparent to increasingly more people that our consistent, sharp, adaptable thinking patterns, clever as they are, are simply inadequate. They are not comprehensive enough.
I propose that we focus today on the problem of our relatedness in thinking. You may have noticed... more I propose that we focus today on the problem of our relatedness in thinking. You may have noticed that whenever someone is speaking about the inherent sociality of humans and the inherent dialogical nature of thought, we tend to feel good about that and we find such descriptions appealing. But, then, there is another, completely different experience: people come together and try to actualise all that relatedness in here and now. In our contemporary context this oftentimes takes the form of various workshops and brainstorming sessions. People organise events to sit together with the deliberate intention to co-think and... we all know what happens more often than not. The event might soon turn into a small disaster and the fact that nobody is rolling their eyes is only a matter of cultural politeness. We all experience that, I suppose.
I wonder, then, how is it that the claims of relatedness may be so appealing and ring so true, while their cultural, social realisation be disappointing? Why is that so? What is wrong with us?
We argue the case that human social systems are distinct cognitive agents operating in their own ... more We argue the case that human social systems are distinct cognitive agents operating in their own self-constructed environments. Our point of departure is Luhmann's (1996) theory of social systems as self-organizing relationships between communications. Applying to the Luhmannian model of social systems the enactive theory of cognition (Di Paolo et al., 2010) and Simondon's (1992) theory of individuation, results in a view of social systems as complex, individuating sequences of communicative interactions that together constitute distributed yet autonomous cognitive agencies. Our argument is based on a broader understanding of cognition as sense-making, which precedes the existence of a consolidated cognitive agent to whom the activity of sense-making can be attributed. Instead, we see cognitive activity as a process by which the actual agents are formed. This brings us to conclude that though there is `nobody there' in the essentialist sense, human social systems constitute distributed yet distinct and integrated loci of autonomous cognitive activity.
Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology, 2020
Cybernetics is a science that studies the mechanisms of communication and control in systems, wit... more Cybernetics is a science that studies the mechanisms of communication and control in systems, with an emphasis on circular, feedback, or self-referential processes. It is concerned not so much with the material or components of a system, but with the abstracted relations, functions, and information flows that govern its operation. It focuses on how systems use information in regulating their actions and steering towards their goal states, while counteracting perturbations. Being inherently transdisciplinary, cybernetic modelling can be applied to systems of any kind: physical, technological, biological, ecological, psychological, social, or any combination of those. Second- order cybernetics in particular studies the role of the (human) observer in the construction of models of systems and other observers. This self-referential modelling has direct applications to the study of social systems.
Integrating Luhmann's theory of social systems with Varela's enactive theory of cognition and Sim... more Integrating Luhmann's theory of social systems with Varela's enactive theory of cognition and Simondon's theory of individuation we have argued that social systems are cognitive agents on their own — which allows the Luhmannian concept of social systems 'observing' their environment to be taken non-metaphorically albeit still in an abstract manner. While presenting this theory we were asked what would the 'physical substrate' of such cognitive agencies be. In this paper we discuss what we understand as a profound presupposition carried by the above question: to be validly addressed by science, all phenomena must first be shown to be grounded in relation to a single fundamental layer of reality. We find this paradigmatic presupposition problematic in relation to social systems, as they clearly demonstrate the case that different phenomenal domains may have different grounds which are not further reducible without losing their significance as a ground. We problematize the concept of ground, expose the difficulties it poses and discursively construct an alternative conceptual framework in relation to which the initial question asked could be answered. We propose a new understanding of the concept of ground which is relative rather than absolute and itself individuating rather than merely forming an a priori context for individuation. Specifically, we conclude that there is little point to ground social systems in a physical substrate. The notion of hierarchical construction 'from the ground up' is revised to accommodate individuating factors that operate 'top down' as well as 'across' diverse strata without a clear hierarchical distinction. The major consequence is proposing an alternative to the concept of ground as it is commonly applied, this in preparation for a more open-ended and less dogmatic scientific paradigm. The main line of argument analyses the concept of ground and asserts that understanding ground depends on the domain in which problems are described. Furthermore, the ground, far from being ab- solute is a product of individuation, that is a constructive process.
Papers on Social Representations, 2019
By focusing on the structural-enactive aspect of discursive positioning, I explore the capacity o... more By focusing on the structural-enactive aspect of discursive positioning, I explore the capacity of the positioning theory to contribute to a higher-level theoretical conciliation of the ‘agency vs. structure’ dichotomy in social sciences. Connecting the theory of Rom Harré and Luk Van Langenhove with Austin’s pragmalinguistics, Searle’s social ontology and Luhmann’s theory of social systems, I argue that the discursive positioning is precisely the social act which creates and sustains social forms.
Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 2017
Contrary to the prevailing pessimistic AI takeover scenarios, the theory of the Global Brain (GB)... more Contrary to the prevailing pessimistic AI takeover scenarios, the theory of the Global Brain (GB) argues that this foreseen collective, distributed superintelligence is bound to include humans as its key beneficiaries. This prediction follows from the contingency of evolution: we, as already present intelligent forms of life, are in a position to exert selective pressures onto the emerging new ones. As a result, it is foreseen that the cognitive architecture of the GB will include human beings and such technologies, which will best prove to advance our collective wellbeing. This paper aims to nuance and problematize this forecast by offering a novel combination of several existing theories: Kauffmann's theory of adjacent possible, Lotman's concept of the semiosphere, Luhmann's theory of social systems, and Heylighen's theory of intelligence. The resulting framework allows for a reinterpretation of the history of the human species in a way which suggests that it may not be individual humans, but our social systems, who are the most advanced intelligence currently operating on Earth. Our unique social systems, emerging from as early as the Neolithic out of mutual interrelations of the occurrences of symbolic communication of humans, are argued to be capable of individuating into autonomous, intelligent agents. The resulting distributedness of the currently dominating form of intelligence might challenge the predicted cognitive architecture of the Global Brain, as it is likely to introduce additional powerful sources of selective pressures. Since the rapid evolution of interconnecting technologies appears to open up immense emancipatory possibilities not only for humans, but also for the intelligently evolving ‘creatures of the semiosphere’, it is concluded that in the context of the rapidly self-organizing Global Brain, a close watch needs to be kept over the dynamics of the latter.
Information, 2018
We propose a venture into an existential opportunity for establishing a world ‘good enough’ for h... more We propose a venture into an existential opportunity for establishing a world ‘good enough’ for humans to live in. Defining an existential opportunity as the converse of an existential risk—that is, a development that promises to dramatically improve the future of humanity—we argue that one such opportunity is available and should be explored now. The opportunity resides in the moment of transition of the Internet—from mediating information to mediating distributed direct governance in the sense of self-organization. The Internet of tomorrow will mediate the execution of contracts, transactions, public interventions and all other change-establishing events more reliably and more synergistically than any other technology or institution. It will become a distributed, synthetically intelligent agent in itself. This transition must not be just observed, or exploited instrumentally: it must be ventured into and seized on behalf of entire humanity. We envision a configuration of three kinds of cognitive system—the human mind, social systems and the emerging synthetic intelligence—serving to augment the autonomy of the first from the ‘programming’ imposed by the second. Our proposition is grounded in a detailed analysis of the manner in which the socio-econo-political system has evolved into a powerful control mechanism that subsumes human minds, steers their will and automates their thinking. We see the venture into the existential opportunity described here as aiming at the global dissolution of the core reason of that programming’s effectiveness—the critical dependence of the continuity of human lives on the coherence of the socially constructed personas they ‘wear.’ Thus, we oppose the popular prediction of the upcoming, ‘dreadful AI takeover’ with a call for action: instead of worrying that Artificial Intelligence will soon come to dominate and govern the human world, let us think of how it could help the human being to finally be able to do it.
Journal of Accounting & Organizational Change, 2018
Purpose – Achieving specific changes within autonomous organizations is often a necessary conditi... more Purpose – Achieving specific changes within autonomous organizations is often a necessary condition for the success of strategic public policy. Wherever it is impossible to induce such changes by regulations, a frequently used tool is inducing their occurrence with financial stimuli. This practice appears to have been fully substantiated by the early systems-evolutionary understanding of the relationship between organizations and their environment, whose peak popularity in the 1950s and 1960s coincided with the appearance of new international organizations formulating strategic policies on a previously unprecedented scale. The conceptual framework available at that time failed, however, to provide a solid ground for operationalization and systemic evaluation of such interventions. As a result, even though it was implicitly presumed that policy implementation depended on organizational changes taking place in a large number of organizations, a conceptualization of the exact ways of how to ensure and assess such changes was hardly pronounced. This paper aims to uncover the problematique of that missing conceptualization.
Design/methodology/approach – In this paper, the author draws on the second-order stream of systems thinking, arguing that without such a deliberate operationalization, it seems much more likely that the external financing of organizational changes functions merely as organizational “perturbations” which do not crystallize into lasting changes, as they are mitigated by equally potent “compensation” to cancel out the perturbations. Using the theory of social system’s autopoiesis, the author posits that adaptive fluctuations evoked in organizations by the interferences of the policymakers may thus be considered “change” just as well as non-change.
Findings – Once the behavior of an autopoietic organizational system is seen as a continuous perpetuation of its own identity pattern, fashioned discursively as the organization’s self-description, then the only change which seems worthy of the publicly assigned resources and efforts is a shift in that pattern.
Originality/value – It is argued that the assessment of whether target organizations are indeed implementing or only superficially performing (and instantly compensating for) the desired changes should be inferred from a qualitative analysis of the daily discursive practices that forge the target domains rather than by a comparison of the measurable parameters, which are currently dominating in the evidence-based paradigm.
ECCO Seminar, Free University of Brussels, 2017
A 2017 seminar, arguing for an operationalisation of a mode in which humanity’s existential oppor... more A 2017 seminar, arguing for an operationalisation of a mode in which humanity’s existential opportunities would be systematically explored until exhaustion. I envisage existential opportunity explorations as operational blends of philanthropreneurship, science, development, social activism and diplomacy: non-institutionalized, self-styled, and self-limiting, yet nonetheless intense, rigorous, and complete.
Procedia Computer Science, 2016
We present a socio-human cognitive framework that radically deemphasizes the role of individual h... more We present a socio-human cognitive framework that radically deemphasizes the role of individual human agents required for both the formation of social systems and their ongoing operation thereafter. Our point of departure is Simondon’s (1992) theory of individuation, which we integrate with the enactive theory of cognition (Di Paolo et al., 2010) and Luhmann’s (1996) theory of social systems. This forges a novel view of social systems as complex, individuating sequences of communicative interactions that together constitute distributed yet distinct cognitive agencies, acquiring a capacity to exert influence over their human-constituted environment. We conclude that the resulting framework suggests several different paths of integrating AI agents into human society. One path suggests the emulation of a largely simplified version of the human mind, reduced in its functions to a specific triple selection-making which is necessary for sustaining social systems. Another one conceives AI systems that follow the distributed, autonomous architecture of social systems, instead that of humans.
Emergence: Complexity & Organization, 2016
We argue the case that human social systems and social organizations in particular are concrete, ... more We argue the case that human social systems and social organizations in particular are concrete, non-metaphorical, cognitive agents operating in their own self-constructed environments.
Our point of departure is Luhmann’s (1996) theory of social systems as self-organizing systems of communications. Integrating the Luhmannian theory with the enactive theory of cognition (Di Paolo et al., 2010) and Simondon’s (1992) theory of individuation, results in a novel view of social systems as complex, individuating sequences of communicative interactions that together constitute distributed yet distinct cognitive agencies.
The relations of such agencies with their respective environments (involving other agencies of the same construction) is further clarified by discussing both the Hayek-Hebb (Hebb; 1949; Hayek, 1952; Edelman, 1987) and the perturbation-compensation (Maturana & Varela, 1980) perspectives on systems adaptiveness as each reveals different and complementary facets of the operation of social systems as loci of cognitive activity.
The major theoretical points of the argument are followed and demonstrated by an analysis of NASA’s communications showing how a social organization undergoes a process of individuation from which it emerges as an autonomous cognitive agent with a distinct and adaptive identity. With this example we hope to invite a debate on how the presented approach could inform a transdisciplinary method of cognitive modeling applied to human social systems.
Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 2017
The Global Brain can be defined as the distributed intelligence emerging from all human and techn... more The Global Brain can be defined as the distributed intelligence emerging from all human and technological agents as interacting via the Internet. It plays the role of a nervous system for the social superorganism. A brief history of this idea is sketched, with a focus on the developments leading to the creation of the Global Brain Group, and the Global Brain Institute(GBI) that emerged out of it. As directors of the GBI, the authors of this paper took the initiative of editing a special issue on the topic of “the Global Brain as a model of the future information society”. We briefly sketch the contributions from the different papers in this issue. We conclude by reviewing some common dystopian misconceptions associated with the Global Brain paradigm, and by offering an optimistic outlook on how the “offer network” protocol inspired by this paradigm may lay the foundation for a much more synergetic and sustainable society.
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Publications by Marta Lenartowicz
The new VUB School of Thinking is an experimental program with the mission of challenging us all to achieve just that. Deploying an innovative combination of mobilization methods, the program sets out to cultivate the cognitive strategies, practices, and habits that are the marks of exceptional thinkers.
This book invites the public to join the School of Thinking students in their endeavour. The reader will find here a variety of interdisciplinary research articles and discussions that took place in the school. It's a rare peek into a lively academic project committed to taking seriously the 'Sapiens' in 'Homo Sapiens'.
I like these exchanges because of Bohm’s radical and yet almost ungraspable staging of the practice of thinking. On the one hand, he asserts that the ‘system of thought’, as he calls the entire cognitive complex we will be inquiring into, does nothing short of ruling our existence. This might suggest that in attempting to understand and refine the human condition, comprehending our thinking should be the matter of highest importance. On the other hand, Bohm is refreshingly honest in not just admitting, but insisting that we do not and cannot comprehend how thinking is in fact situated. Thinking remains mysteriously opaque in removing itself from the spotlights it sheds and in presenting its own compositions as the states of affairs for us to act upon —as problems to be tackled, as conclusions to be made, as emotional arousals to be expressed, or as our own characteristics to be actualised. It makes us believe that it is then and only then —once the problems, clues, perceptions, stimuli, and properties are already in place, waiting— our thinking commences. But who has arranged the stage? Who has chosen the decorations and props?
I wonder, then, how is it that the claims of relatedness may be so appealing and ring so true, while their cultural, social realisation be disappointing? Why is that so? What is wrong with us?
Design/methodology/approach – In this paper, the author draws on the second-order stream of systems thinking, arguing that without such a deliberate operationalization, it seems much more likely that the external financing of organizational changes functions merely as organizational “perturbations” which do not crystallize into lasting changes, as they are mitigated by equally potent “compensation” to cancel out the perturbations. Using the theory of social system’s autopoiesis, the author posits that adaptive fluctuations evoked in organizations by the interferences of the policymakers may thus be considered “change” just as well as non-change.
Findings – Once the behavior of an autopoietic organizational system is seen as a continuous perpetuation of its own identity pattern, fashioned discursively as the organization’s self-description, then the only change which seems worthy of the publicly assigned resources and efforts is a shift in that pattern.
Originality/value – It is argued that the assessment of whether target organizations are indeed implementing or only superficially performing (and instantly compensating for) the desired changes should be inferred from a qualitative analysis of the daily discursive practices that forge the target domains rather than by a comparison of the measurable parameters, which are currently dominating in the evidence-based paradigm.
Our point of departure is Luhmann’s (1996) theory of social systems as self-organizing systems of communications. Integrating the Luhmannian theory with the enactive theory of cognition (Di Paolo et al., 2010) and Simondon’s (1992) theory of individuation, results in a novel view of social systems as complex, individuating sequences of communicative interactions that together constitute distributed yet distinct cognitive agencies.
The relations of such agencies with their respective environments (involving other agencies of the same construction) is further clarified by discussing both the Hayek-Hebb (Hebb; 1949; Hayek, 1952; Edelman, 1987) and the perturbation-compensation (Maturana & Varela, 1980) perspectives on systems adaptiveness as each reveals different and complementary facets of the operation of social systems as loci of cognitive activity.
The major theoretical points of the argument are followed and demonstrated by an analysis of NASA’s communications showing how a social organization undergoes a process of individuation from which it emerges as an autonomous cognitive agent with a distinct and adaptive identity. With this example we hope to invite a debate on how the presented approach could inform a transdisciplinary method of cognitive modeling applied to human social systems.
The new VUB School of Thinking is an experimental program with the mission of challenging us all to achieve just that. Deploying an innovative combination of mobilization methods, the program sets out to cultivate the cognitive strategies, practices, and habits that are the marks of exceptional thinkers.
This book invites the public to join the School of Thinking students in their endeavour. The reader will find here a variety of interdisciplinary research articles and discussions that took place in the school. It's a rare peek into a lively academic project committed to taking seriously the 'Sapiens' in 'Homo Sapiens'.
I like these exchanges because of Bohm’s radical and yet almost ungraspable staging of the practice of thinking. On the one hand, he asserts that the ‘system of thought’, as he calls the entire cognitive complex we will be inquiring into, does nothing short of ruling our existence. This might suggest that in attempting to understand and refine the human condition, comprehending our thinking should be the matter of highest importance. On the other hand, Bohm is refreshingly honest in not just admitting, but insisting that we do not and cannot comprehend how thinking is in fact situated. Thinking remains mysteriously opaque in removing itself from the spotlights it sheds and in presenting its own compositions as the states of affairs for us to act upon —as problems to be tackled, as conclusions to be made, as emotional arousals to be expressed, or as our own characteristics to be actualised. It makes us believe that it is then and only then —once the problems, clues, perceptions, stimuli, and properties are already in place, waiting— our thinking commences. But who has arranged the stage? Who has chosen the decorations and props?
I wonder, then, how is it that the claims of relatedness may be so appealing and ring so true, while their cultural, social realisation be disappointing? Why is that so? What is wrong with us?
Design/methodology/approach – In this paper, the author draws on the second-order stream of systems thinking, arguing that without such a deliberate operationalization, it seems much more likely that the external financing of organizational changes functions merely as organizational “perturbations” which do not crystallize into lasting changes, as they are mitigated by equally potent “compensation” to cancel out the perturbations. Using the theory of social system’s autopoiesis, the author posits that adaptive fluctuations evoked in organizations by the interferences of the policymakers may thus be considered “change” just as well as non-change.
Findings – Once the behavior of an autopoietic organizational system is seen as a continuous perpetuation of its own identity pattern, fashioned discursively as the organization’s self-description, then the only change which seems worthy of the publicly assigned resources and efforts is a shift in that pattern.
Originality/value – It is argued that the assessment of whether target organizations are indeed implementing or only superficially performing (and instantly compensating for) the desired changes should be inferred from a qualitative analysis of the daily discursive practices that forge the target domains rather than by a comparison of the measurable parameters, which are currently dominating in the evidence-based paradigm.
Our point of departure is Luhmann’s (1996) theory of social systems as self-organizing systems of communications. Integrating the Luhmannian theory with the enactive theory of cognition (Di Paolo et al., 2010) and Simondon’s (1992) theory of individuation, results in a novel view of social systems as complex, individuating sequences of communicative interactions that together constitute distributed yet distinct cognitive agencies.
The relations of such agencies with their respective environments (involving other agencies of the same construction) is further clarified by discussing both the Hayek-Hebb (Hebb; 1949; Hayek, 1952; Edelman, 1987) and the perturbation-compensation (Maturana & Varela, 1980) perspectives on systems adaptiveness as each reveals different and complementary facets of the operation of social systems as loci of cognitive activity.
The major theoretical points of the argument are followed and demonstrated by an analysis of NASA’s communications showing how a social organization undergoes a process of individuation from which it emerges as an autonomous cognitive agent with a distinct and adaptive identity. With this example we hope to invite a debate on how the presented approach could inform a transdisciplinary method of cognitive modeling applied to human social systems.