From Alexander Tzonis Le Corbusier: The Poetics of Machine and Metaphor
Repeatedly Le Corbusier used the expression "eyes that do not see" to criticize his contemporaries. By that he stressed that "seeing" is a cognitive rather than a retinal phenomenon. Seeing involves identifying, understanding properties and usages, and follows from learning. Le Corbusier's mission was to instruct his contemporaries how to "see" artifacts rather than to make artifacts just to be seen. Indeed, his structures, paintings, sculptures, and publications were objects good for learning and not producst to be consumed and experienced only.

AP as I understand it is to do with a scientific attempt to establish how
cognition and consciousness can be understood, and that as long as you keep
the design ok (structurally closed system, perturbable - that paper from
cogs was good on the definition) you can posit any cognitive process you
like. Luhman pdf enclosed, it was one of roberts set texts some years ago.

p

if autopo should b the main thing....
i read somewhere that maturana didn't approve its application to social
phenomenon. i haven't read wat luhman did about this, but i know he tried
to bridge it, i have a link to that source. and i also have a source
explaining why is it difficult to apply autop. to soc. phen.
do u have more sources about this?
me

i need to analyse/compare autopoiesis original algorithm to cellular automata concept.

keywords spatial, autopoiesis

result: Barry McMullin: Some Remarks on Autocatalysis and Autopoiesis

http://www.eeng.dcu.ie/~alife/bmcm9901/html-single
here's the summary of paper above


download to pda

The primary purpose here has been to review and contrast the notions of autopoiesis and collective autocatalysis. This has resulted in a focus on the autopoietic requirement for spatial localization or confinement to itself be a product of the reaction network. I have attempted to make this criterion as clear as possible by proposing a specific heuristic test. In essence this says that the critical test should not merely involve the ability of an entity to discriminate or demarcate itself from some sort of relatively disorganized background. Rather, it should require the ability for an agent to discriminate itself from other, spatially adjacent, but organizationally identical, agents. In particular, although it is not an integral element of the autopoietic concept, it seems to me that for agents to serve as actors in a Darwinian selective process, it is essential that they should be capable of this minimal ``individuation''.


In reviewing a number of abstract models of biological organization, I have tried to bring out the fact that--as envisaged by Kauffman--the emergence of collective autocatalysis seems to be relatively easy or robust. Systems with wildly different underlying architectures seem to exhibit this phenomenon, corroborating the claim that the conditions for its appearance are relatively weak. On the other hand, it seems that none of these systems should qualify as exhibiting properly autopoietic organization--including even the SCL system which was specifically concepted as an exemplar of autopoiesis.


It is not clear to me whether this is merely because these systems have not (with the obvious exception of SCL) been designed with this end in mind; or because autopoietic organization is, in fact, a fundamentally more elusive phenomenon than collective autocatalysis. I would welcome discussion on the question.


i also has read his paper computational autopoiesis: the original algorithms

why luhmann's cannot be use as spatiosocial concept this is from randall whitaker site

Luhmann redefined social systems as being realized in a domain of 'communications'. In other words, the constituent elements of the social system are communications, and the required conditions for autopoiesis are met in terms of such communications. This has the advantage of describing the system in terms of its operational characteristics, independent from the specific participants in that system at any given time. Luhmann's approach is radical in the sense that it treats social systems solely in terms of 'communications', making the human participants peripheral components at most. His ideas are most persuasive in his specific application of the principles to the field of law (cf. Teubner, 1988), where highly-structured 'communications' are more easily considered as a network unto themselves than is the case for most enterprises.


Luhmann's approach resembles conventional organizational studies in its focus on the enterprise as the primary object of concern. However, his ideas are problematical with respect to autopoietic theory itself. For example, a system can be considered autopoietic to the extent it realizes the necessary relations in a given space. Luhmann has not provided a comprehensive definition of the space in which his 'communications' are manifested. The most common informal reaction to Luhmann's approach is apprehension about his having effectively filtered humans out of his model. Mingers (1994) discusses these and a number of other problems with Luhmann's approach. The papers in Teubner (1988) provide an extended debate over Luhmann's ideas with specific regard to law as an autopoietic system.


Hejl approach is more realistic to my problem

Hejl then goes on to address the problem in a manner more analogous to autopoietic theory's phenomenological aspects. He defines social domains as being generated through "...a process of mutual interactions and hence modulation which results in a partial parallelization of the interacting systems." (1984, p. 68) This is basically a variation on consensual domains invoking 'parallelization' rather than 'mutual orientation'. What others had viewed as a unit social system, Hejl defined as an instantiation of a social domain -- "...a group of living systems which are characterized by a parallelization of one or several of their cognitive states and which interact with respect to these cognitive states." (Op.cit., p. 70)

In Hejl's view, social systems are defined in terms of an intersection between their composite identity and the individual participants. He characterizes such phenomena as syn-referential, i.e.:


"...constituted by components, i.e., living systems, that interact with respect to a social domain. Thus the components of a syn-referential system are necessarily individual living systems, but they are components only inasmuch as they modulate one another's parallelized states through their interactions in an operationally closed way." (1984, p. 75)

Syn-referentiality allows a view of interaction from an autopoietic perspective which accounts for social domains in a manner fundamentally different from that of traditional sociological approaches such as structuralism (e.g., Talcott Parsons) or functionalism (e.g., Luhmann). Although Hejl's analysis invokes some novel or variant conceptualizations, it should be clear that he is very consistent with Maturana and Varela's statements on social systems.

okay now from Autopoiesis, what is an organisation (of a machine)?

organization of the machine is what gives *it* a unity, ie. what determines the dynamics of interactions and transformations which it may undergo such a unity
(common definition: a machine is an organised unity of various component parts and processes)

structure of the machine is constituted by the actual relations which hold among the components which integrate a concrete machine in a given space.

consequently, organisation of a machine is independent of the properties of its components thus a machine can be realised in different ways with different components.

organisation ~ information in a sense that it signifies a functional process or effect, not dependent on the exact nature of its supporting material substrate.

a second corollary is that the use to which a machine may be put, is not a feature of its organisation, but of the domain in which the machine operates

tracing the meaning of machine in Space is The Machine


Le Corbusier 1923 ... a house is a machine for living in ...

Index: 16, 56, 377, 404

p. 16. Hillier refuted Scruton's idea that the meaning of architecture is shared by observers (us participating daily) vernacularly. The background of his refutation is that it won't explain *innovations/ambitious aspirations* made by major architectural innovators (examples are Palladio and Le Corbusier).

p. 56. Again, refutation to Scruton, when he said that architecture could never have a *theory* because architecture can never be universal (theory arises from the clain of universality). Hillier use the essence of science as background, that theories are analytic, not intentionally normative. Scientific theory is a rational construct intended to capture the lawfulness of how the world is, not a set of guidelines as to how it should be. Theories are descriptions of how the world is, not prescription of how it ought to be. That in Palladio's and Le Corbusier's, one could find such descriptions, ie. generic principles underlying an approach to design.

p. 377 Hillier analyses metaphor of the machine, and rejects paradigm of the machine. The definition taken for a machine is that an organisation of matter that transforms other matter through its operation. Le Corbusier did not mean the machine as formal analogue for the organisation of house, but the metaphor of a style. Using Le Corbusier's exploration of plan, Hillier constructs an argument that a plan is important part of architecture because space organised by a plan is the ultimate expression of architectural creativity. The generic principle of Le Corbusier is the axis, ie. the organisation of a building is organisation of its axis, ie. the sequences of experience. organisation of space, ie. a plan is a machine in a sense of a specific sequences of experience, known or identified by observer as particular style of its architect

p. 404 footnote to p. 377

space is the machine. *not* as living system interpreted as autopoietic machine. what sort? how to judge the model of space-agent interaction built based on autopoietic theory? the same question goes for social system. looking for the limit

autopoiesis understands living system as machine; autopoietic machine. the main characters of any autop machine are: autonomous (ie. operationally close) and coupled (ie. interactionally open). the frog retina case clearly shows what it means by observer in autop envi.

my problem: how to view autopoietic model of space-agent? first instance, they are not living system as in physical being sense.
hillier stated that space is the machine. what sort of machine, i will list its necessary character regarding this. and then compare this to first level of autopoiesis and then if there is, compare it to the next level (luhmann's autop social system could help identify next level of autop)

this guy has an interesting compilation of papers in my subject. all pdf... i wish i have *it*, so i dont have to print these all out...

i'm looking for macro recorder for acad. here's old page about that i join autocad developer newsgroup, see if anybody response to my macro recording query

another one cadvance basic language more complicated?

as part of ... ansoft i want the recorder only

who is david gooding? see his work. where did i read his name? quite sure have encountered sometime before. yup, chris lucas link is here too... and chris goldspink @JASSS and Dietrich Fliedner@JASSS