Tuesday, January 28, 2003

Now, i have new interpretation of machine after reading tzonis le corbusier: the poetics of machine and metaphor. this new interpretation leads me to believe that the basic premise of HIllier's configurational theory actually treating subjects of configuration (people and space) as presummably interacting autopoietic system. and if this is the case, simulating structural coupling between these subjects as the cognitive process behind architecture design then we do not have to make new program. since many (at least 7 according to jasss review) multi agent social simulation software is exactly define to enable such simulation to happen. but i reserve a worry about the kind of interaction, coupling sytem these conifguration will have to be visualised, because the nature of relation between them may not be supported by those software. firstly, because their relation is quite unique. people are inside spaces, they are being inside space makes a space been defined. empty spaces, ie. unused spaces are not part of a considerable configuration.

tzonis book explains that le corbusier wants architecture to become a cognitive tool. architecture becomes something that makes people see spaces. by seeing space they will be able to identify, understand its properties and usage. this is related to the motto, house is a machine for living in, where machine here is a metaphor of a particular style which can be known and then identified to its architect. seeing spaces, seeing architecture means understanding the architect.

now according to biology of cognition, this is a reverse to the above. what being understand is really not what is being seen, but in the object that try to understand, the biology of that object. thats why in maturana's paper 1988 the ontology of observing, it clearly said that his problem started while identifying a flaw of knowing when a particular part its biology (prolly something in the brain) is not there.

now, if Hillier stated a configurational theory is bla bla bla, then it is in his biology that the understanding of architecture came out as configurational theory. then, what am i in this part of adding knowledge to that? simulating the premise will let me to see what Hillier's see.

now the object of knowledge itself, the thing i am trying to see what has been seen by Hiller, some part of it resemblance to what its called languaging and or linguistic behavior in autopoietic terms

http://www.informatik.umu.se/~rwhit/EA.html


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"Linguistic behavior is behavior in a consensual domain. When linguistic behavior takes place recursively, in a second-order consensual domain, in such a manner that the components of the consensual behavior are recursively combined in the generation of new components of the consensual domain, a language is established."
(Maturana, 1978, pp. 50-51) "For an observer, linguistic interactions appear as semantic and contextual interactions. Yet what takes place in the interactions within a consensual domain is strictly structure-determined, interlocked concatenations of behavior." (Maturana, 1978, p. 52) "...[L]anguage is a biological phenomenon because it results from the operations of human beings as living systems, but it takes place in the domain of the co-ordinations of actions of the participants, and not in their physiology or neurophysiology. Languaging and physiology take place in different and non intersecting phenomenal domains. Or, in other words, language as a special kind of operation in co-ordinations of actions requires the neurophysiology of the participants, but it is not a neurophysiological phenomenon."
(Maturana, 1988a, p. 45) "No behavior, no particular gesture or corporal posture constitutes in itself an element of language, but it is part of it only insofar as it belongs to a recursive flow of consensual coordinations of behavior. So, words are only those gestures, sounds, behaviors or corporal postures, which participate as consensual elements in the recursive flow of the consensual coordinations of behavior that constitute language. Words are, therefore, ways of consensual coordinations of behavior." (Maturana, 1989) "...[L]anguage is not a domain of abstractions or symbols, it is a concrete domain of coordinations of concrete doings, and symbols and abstractions are secondary to language." (Maturana & Verden-Z?ller, 1996)

language = concrete domain of coordinations of actions.

Configurational theory is a generalisation of how special spatial language could take place, a situation being in the domain of the co-ordinations of actions of the configurational subjects. this will be called language of space, ie. spatial language/language of space is a domain where coordinations of actions between configurations of people and space happens. thus configurational theory of space is a result of observing architecture by way of seeing subjects (people and space) as systems coordinating to each other. and thus emerge the language of architecture as biological phenomenon, ie physiology of configurations which can be identified to what le corbusier wanted from each architecture to be.

now the next important point is to recognise configurational subjects as systems. this also should be not far from autopoietic term for system.

lets go back abit. there is a condition has to be taken for granted when we adopt characterisation of language as a matter of reciprocal coupling in a consensual domain to orientational effect: we need to see phenomes, or syntactic patterns, as only corollaries to a manner in which systems interact via language, ie. via concrete domain of coordinations of actions. thus syntax is not the meat of language, we cannot rely on it. what is important is the coupling, the real time interaction between two systems.

the implication to interpret theory of spatial configuration as this, means that configurational subjects, both space and people, is to point if they have properties of such systems.

so which original system mentioned in the biology of cognition? the answer is living system, ie. an autopoietic machine. now what is determinitive criteria of such machine? there are 6 criteria, but i have to skip this because somebody has identify a social domain as phenomenological autopoietic, ie. by way of Hejl. this is why:
1. social domains is being generated through a process of mutual interactions and hence modulation (an instantiation of a social domain) which results in a partial parallelization of their cognitive states and which interact with respect to that cognitive states.
2. social system is intersection between their composite identity and individual participants which is syn-referential, ie. constitute by livingsystem components that interact with respect to social domain.

thus explain how configuration of people, a physicality of social interactions could be interpret in phenomenological autopoietic terms.
how about configuration of space? lets see what it means by social phenomena, social system in terms of biology of cognition.

social phenomena is
In specific usage: "...those phenomena that arise in the spontaneous constitution of third-order couplings." (Maturana & Varela, 1992, p. 193), or "...those phenomena associated with the participation of organisms in constituting third-order unities." (Maturana & Varela, 1992, p. 195)
"...[S]ocial phenomena are the phenomena of coexistence that take place when living systems spontaneously interact recurrently with each other in the flow of their living just because it happens to them in their conservation of organization and adaptation." (Maturana, 1985) Because this ongoing recursive interaction -- particularly as it relates to an orientation of acceptance in coexistence with others -- forms the basis for Maturana's formulation of love, it is no surprise that he draws a connection between love and social phenomena: "If love occurs, there is socialization, if it does not occur, there is no socialization. Furthermore, I am also saying that as such love is expression of a spontaneous structural congruence that constitutes a beginning that can be expanded or restricted, and even disappear, in the coontogenic structural drift that begins to take place when it takes place. And, since I say that social phenomena are the phenomena that take place in the spontaneous coontogenic structural drift, I am also saying that love is the fundament of social phenomena and not its consequence, and that social phenomena in any domain of interactions last only as long as love lasts in that domain." (Maturana, 1985)


ok so there is a third order autopoietic system ie.
In principle, a composite system whose constituents are (or include) second-order autopoietic systems and among which there is third-order structural coupling. Maturana (Maturana & Varela, 1980, p. 11) uses a colony of honeybees as an example of a "third-order self-referring system", which (given this essay's predating of the term "autopoiesis") can be considered the same.

and there is a third order structural coupling ie.
Given two or more second-order autopoietic systems (e.g., multicellular organisms) structurally coupling with each other, third-order structural coupling connotes the recurrent or persistent phenomenological domain circumscribed by the coupling systems' co-ontogeny.
It is important to note that Maturana and Varela (1992) limit this attribution of "third-order" to this scope (coupling, co-ontogenic drift, and a possibly-transient phenomenological domain). They do not take the additional step of declaring that such ("social", so to speak) third-order couplings constitute a third-order autopoietic system. This additional step is taken (if only implicitly) by those writers who ascribe autopoiesis to social systems (e.g., Niklas Luhmann), to the extent that one analyzes such ascriptions as coherent from the level of individual biology up to level of society.