Magnus Berg (MagnusB@DataVis.se)
Sun, 2 Aug 1998 18:50:42 +0100
Hi Squad
I think I start by resending a post that has been on hold
since our conversion to the Program form.
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I think the levels are totally orthogonal to each other, in other words,
you can for example never express biological patterns in terms of
inorganic, nor the other way around. Just as you can never
get to the point 2(X), 1(Y) in a X-Y coordinate system by just
walking the X-axis.
Almost everything that is referred to as a 'thing' can be split
up in these four types of patterns.
I'll show the different levels of, say, a fish.
Inorganic:
The fish has weight, it's the inorganic patterns that makes the
scale show 11.2 kg. Other patterns are quite incapable of that.
Biological:
The fish taste like fish, smells like fish. The taste and smell
have inorganic carriers, such as molecules in different forms,
which shows the dependency between the levels. But the taste and
smell *are* not the molecules. It is something else, biological
value.
Social:
Exactly the same inorganic and biological patterns can be
assembled in billions of ways. The fish is assembled like
a fish, that is the social pattern of a fish. Social patterns
do not smell, taste or weigh, but they are nonetheless very
real. It is the difference between a fish and a pile of
whatever a fish is made of. Needless to say, social patterns
are dependent on the two levels below.
Intellectual:
Yes, there's some of those too in a fish. A society needs
a language with which different organs communicate. A fish
has some kind of brain-like nerve center where signals from
the sensory organs are dispatched and perhaps are made to
contract a muscle somewhere. The intellectual patterns are
carried by inorganic patterns, electrons. They are dependent
on social patterns, because it is the social pattern that
constructed the set of signals, or language, that is used.
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Horse, you asked the other week about the odd relation-
ship between the levels. Being orthogonal seems to
refute any dependency. I think language is a very important
bit of that puzzle. It runs like a thread through all levels. It
is always dependent on inorganic patterns. Biological
patterns interprets it. Social patterns assembles it and
intellectual patterns use it to represent other patterns.
Magnus
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