Yesterday I had a wondeful day at school. I had planned on using the whole day to read organisation theory, but instead I ended up doing some very theoretical sociology/philosophy. I've tried to write blogposts explaining my theories and viewpoints on this before, but I find it way difficult. My thoughts revolve around concepts, bring together enormous structures and deal with the whole of society at the same time. It is not that the individual words are so hard, but to I find that to provide that "scope" is truly difficult. It is as if you were to write a novel as a short story, and at the same time write from both the first and the third perspective.
However for the initiated I can throw ten words out there, and I promise that if you put those ten together you will start to come close:
1: General System Theory.
2: Self organisation and Autopoiesis.
3: Memetic theory. (The Dan Dennett version, shy away from that Blackmore stuff)
4: Social constructivism
5: Agrippas Trilemma
6: Theory of Evolution
7: Graph theory/Network theory
8: Persistent concepts (help please!)
9: Abstractions
10: Representation
I guess it can be described as a project for modeling society using general systems theory, where you flesh out the model using phychological, philosophical and sociological theory. Doing a study would entail doing a network analysis, trying to snatch out as much information as possible, and looking for what concepts where enacted upon in each node. Just as when studying neurons, one should expect that where information flows, each new push of information strenghtens the bonds, and readies for new transmission. One should treat each node, and the network in it as a field where ideas propagate, and seek to create a picture of the situation, such as it is. When I use agrippas trilemma, it is because it describes the "route" of information very well - either the concepts in the group (based on experience) seem to be founded upon a regression of some kind, or a more or less closed loop. But I believe that with a sound network map, one would be able to rout out the loops better and expose a few hidden truths. Well. Coupled with autopoiesis (self maintenance), self organisation, an evolutionary view of the spread of information and a good idea about how the brain works, I think one could get far.
