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Structure–organization–process
In The Tree of Knowledge (1987:47), Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela set out a way of describing the nature of living things: “… norganization denotes those relations that must exist among components of a system for it to be a member of a specific class. Structure denotes the components and relations that actually constitute a particular unity r thing��” While Maturana and Varela (1987:28) do not pursue a specific discussion about process, they set out to understand the role of cognition as “… the universal nature of doing”. Maturana and Varela are seeking to understand what they term autopoiesis, how living things self–produce. Maturana and Varela (1987:47) claim: “… by realizing what characterizes living beings in their autopoietic organization, we can unify a whole lot of empirical data about their biochemistry and cellular functioning”. In this description we find that structure refers to the component parts that comprise something and organizations r ...
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Humberto Maturana
Humberto Maturana Romesín (September 14, 1928 – May 6, 2021) was a Chilean biologist and philosopher. Some name him a second-order cybernetics theoretician alongside the likes of Heinz von Foerster, Gordon Pask, Herbert Brün and Ernst von Glasersfeld. Maturana, along with Francisco Varela and Ricardo B. Uribe, was known for creating the term "autopoiesis" about the self-generating, self-maintaining structure in living systems, and concepts such as structural determinism and structural coupling. His work was influential in many fields, mainly the field of systems thinking and cybernetics. Overall, his work is concerned with the biology of cognition.Magnus Ramage, Karen Shipp (2012) ''Systems Thinkers'' Maturana (2002) insisted that autopoiesis exists only in the molecular domain, and he did not agree with the extension into sociology and other fields: The molecular domain is the only domain of entities that through their interactions give rise to an open ended dive ...
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Francisco Varela
Francisco Javier Varela García (September 7, 1946 – May 28, 2001) was a Chilean biologist, philosopher, cybernetician, and neuroscientist who, together with his mentor Humberto Maturana, is best known for introducing the concept of autopoiesis to biology, and for co-founding the Mind and Life Institute to promote dialog between science and Buddhism. Life and career Varela was born in 1946 in Talcahuano in Chile, the son of Corina María Elena García Tapia and Raúl Andrés Varela Rodríguez. After completing secondary school at the Liceo Alemán del Verbo Divino in Santiago (1951–1963), like his mentor Humberto Maturana, Varela temporarily studied medicine at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile and graduated with a degree in biology from the University of Chile. He later obtained a Ph.D. in biology at Harvard University. His thesis, defended in 1970 and supervised by Torsten Wiesel, was titled ''Insect Retinas: Information processing in the compound eye''. After ...
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Fritjof Capra
Fritjof Capra (born February 1, 1939) is an Austrian-born American author, physicist, systems theorist and deep ecologist. In 1995, he became a founding director of the Center for Ecoliteracy in Berkeley, California. He was on the faculty of Schumacher College which was disestablished in 2024. Capra is the author of several books, including '' The Tao of Physics'' (1975), '' The Turning Point'' (1982), ''Uncommon Wisdom'' (1988), ''The Web of Life'' (1996), and '' The Hidden Connections'' (2002), and co-author of ''The Systems View of Life'' (2014). Life and work Born in Vienna, Austria, Capra attended the University of Vienna, where he earned his PhD in theoretical physics in 1966. He conducted research in particle physics and systems theory at the University of Paris (1966–1968), the University of California, Santa Cruz (1968–1970), the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (1970), Imperial College, London (1971–1974) and the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (1975–198 ...
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Autopoiesis
The term autopoiesis (), one of several current theories of life, refers to a system capable of producing and maintaining itself by creating its own parts. The term was introduced in the 1972 publication '' Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living'' by Chilean biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela to define the self-maintaining chemistry of living cells. The concept has since been applied to the fields of cognition, neurobiology, systems theory, architecture and sociology. Niklas Luhmann briefly introduced the concept of autopoiesis to organizational theory. Overview In their 1972 book ''Autopoiesis and Cognition'', Chilean biologists Maturana and Varela described how they invented the word autopoiesis. They explained that, They described the "space defined by an autopoietic system" as "self-contained", a space that "cannot be described by using dimensions that define another space. When we refer to our interactions with a concrete autopoieti ...
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Prigogine
Prigozhin or Prigogine () is a masculine East Slavic surname originating from the adjective ''prigozhii'', meaning ''useful'', ''suitable'', ''nice''; its feminine counterpart is Prigozhina. The surname may refer to the following notable people: * (1896—1937), Soviet historian * Alexandre Prigogine (1913–1991), Russian-born Belgian ornithologist * Ilya Prigogine (1917–2003), Russian-born Belgian physicist noted for his work on dissipative structures, complex systems, and irreversibility ** 11964 Prigogine, a minor planet named for Ilya Prigogine ** Prigogine's theorem, a theorem of thermodynamics of non-equilibrium processes formulated by Ilya Prigogine * Iosif Prigozhin (born 1969), Russian music producer * (1937—2017), Russian theater historian * (1926–1994), Soviet composer *Pavel Prigozhin (born 1998), leader of Wagner Group since 2023 * (1914–1999), Soviet/Ukrainian scientist and engineer *Yevgeny Prigozhin Yevgeny Viktorovich Prigozhin (1 June 1961 � ...
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Gregory Bateson
Gregory Bateson (9 May 1904 – 4 July 1980) was an English anthropology, anthropologist, social sciences, social scientist, linguistics, linguist, visual anthropology, visual anthropologist, semiotics, semiotician, and cybernetics, cyberneticist whose work intersected that of many other fields. His writings include ''Steps to an Ecology of Mind'' (1972) and ''Mind and Nature'' (1979). In Palo Alto, California, Bateson and in these days his non-colleagues developed the double bind, double-bind theory of schizophrenia. Bateson's interest in systems theory forms a thread running through his work. He was one of the original members of the core group of the Macy conferences in Cybernetics (1941–1960), and the later set on Group Processes (1954–1960), where he represented the social and behavioral sciences. He was interested in the relationship of these fields to epistemology. His association with the editor and author Stewart Brand helped widen his influence. Early life and e ...
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Linda Glassop
Linda is an English feminine given name, derived from the Spanish word , meaning "pretty." Linda may also refer to: Names * Linda (given name), a female given name (including a list of people and fictional characters so named) * Linda (singer) (born 1977), stage name of Svetlana Geiman, a Russian singer * Miss Linda, long-time manager and wife of Welsh wrestler Adrian Street Surname * Anita Linda (born Alice Lake, 1924–2020), Filipino film actress * Bogusław Linda (born 1952), Polish actor * La Prieta Linda (1933–2021), Mexican singer and actress * Sarah Linda (born 1987), British actress and model * Solomon Linda (1909–1962), South African Zulu musician, singer and composer who wrote the song "Mbube" which later became "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" Places * Linda, Tasmania, Australia, a ghost town * Linda Valley, Tasmania * Linda, Georgia, a village in Abkhazia * Linda, Bashkortostan, Russia, a village * Linda, California, United States, a census-designated place * ...
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Social Structure
In the social sciences, social structure is the aggregate of patterned social arrangements in society that are both emergent from and determinant of the actions of individuals. Likewise, society is believed to be grouped into structurally related groups or sets of roles, with different functions, meanings, or purposes. Examples of social structure include family, religion, law, economy, and class. It contrasts with " social system", which refers to the parent structure in which these various structures are embedded. Thus, social structures significantly influence larger systems, such as economic systems, legal systems, political systems, cultural systems, etc. Social structure can also be said to be the framework upon which a society is established. It determines the norms and patterns of relations between the various institutions of the society. Since the 1920s, the term has been in general use in social science, especially as a variable whose sub-components needed to be d ...
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Structure And Agency
In the social sciences there is a standing debate over the primacy of structure or agency in shaping human behaviour. ''Structure'' is the recurrent patterned arrangements which influence or limit the choices and opportunities available. '' Agency'' is the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices. The structure versus agency debate may be understood as an issue of socialization against autonomy in determining whether an individual acts as a free agent or in a manner dictated by social structure. Structure, socialization and autonomy The debate over the primacy of structure or of agency relates to an issue at the heart of both classical and contemporary sociological theory: the question of social ontology: "What is the social world made of?" "What is a cause of the social world, and what is an effect?" "Do social structures determine an individual's behaviour or does human agency?" Structural functionalists such as Émile Durkheim s ...
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Complexity Theory And Organizations
Complexity theory and organizations, also called complexity strategy or complex adaptive organizations, is the use of the study of complexity systems in the field of strategic management and organizational studies. It draws from research in the natural sciences that examines uncertainty and non-linearity. Complexity theory emphasizes interactions and the accompanying feedback loops that constantly change systems. While it proposes that systems are unpredictable, they are also constrained by order-generating rules. Complexity theory has been used in the fields of strategic management and organizational studies. Application areas include understanding how organizations or firms adapt to their environments and how they cope with conditions of uncertainty. Organizations have complex structures in that they are dynamic networks of interactions, and their relationships are not aggregations of the individual static entities. They are adaptive; in that, the individual and collecti ...
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Social Change
Social change is the alteration of the social order of a society which may include changes in social institutions, social behaviours or social relations. Sustained at a larger scale, it may lead to social transformation or societal transformation. Definition Social change may not refer to the notion of social progress or sociocultural evolution, the philosophical idea that society moves forward by evolutionary means. It may refer to a paradigmatic change in the socio-economic structure, for instance the transition from feudalism to capitalism, or hypothetical future transition to some form of post-capitalism. Social development is the people that develop social and emotional skills across the lifespan, with particular attention to childhood and adolescence. Healthy social development allows us to form positive relationships with family, friends, teachers, and other people in our lives. Accordingly, it may also refer to social revolution, such as the socialism, Socialist rev ...
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Negarchy
Negarchy is a term coined by Daniel Deudney to mean a form of status quo maintained by the interrelations of the power structure and authority that modern states hold in relation to one another, which negate one another because of their respective influence. Negarchy is described as being a form of governing between "anarchy and hierarchy". In response to the increased military and nuclear capacities of major states, as well as the likely increase in their respective capacities to enact violence due to impending space expansionism, Deudney argues that the cooperative establishment of "mutual restraints," could function as a sort-of global federalism. Deudney poses negarchy as a favorable outcome in opposition to the potential for global hierarchy created by space expansion. See also * Anarchy in international relations *Balance of power in international relations *Complex adaptive system * Complex interdependence * Coopetition *Separation of powers The separation of powers ...
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