Organizational axiomatics

From TheInvariantGardener

This is an attempt at axiomatizing the very idea that any organization whatsoever is a cycle, i.e., a positive feedback loop, that tends to produce more of itself in order to maintain itself. This is understood as a logical consequences of what Dawkins labelled as "the law of stability" or, in other words, the darwinian principle beautifully expressed by Gregory Bateson in the following statement  : "what Darwin called 'Natural Selection' is the surfacing of the tautology or presupposition that what stays true longer does indeed stay true longer than what stays true not so long (Mind & Nature, 1979:206 (220 in the 1980 Fontana edition). In [Edge 149]http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bateson04/bateson04_index.html an other quotation is proposed: "Any descriptive proposition which remains true longer will out-survive other propositions which do not survive so long". I prefer the first one.

What follows is my first attempt to formulate the organizational axiomatics which I see at the very root of any future synthetic psychology :

1. Every (any ?) thing is/has an organization
2. Every thing tends to persevere in its being (Spinoza)
3. Every organization tends to persevere in its being
4. Every organization is an (efficient) circular causality loop since it is the result of its own activity
5. An organization is a positive feedback loop
6. Like natural selection, a negative feedback loop has no existence as such, it's a mere perspective, a side effect of our figure/ground false distinctions
7. Natural selection results from competition between differentially reproducing organisms. What "exist" is the organism. Natural selection is no entity. It is the infered cause of the differential reproduction process. But this process doesn't need any external cause. Differential reproduction IS the explanation of its result.
8. Differential reproduction is an inevitable necessity. Since "what stays true longer does indeed stay true longer than what stays true not so long". It is a tautology. Therefore, it is true. And the miracle is that it is useful.
9. As it is a tautology, differential reproduction knows no exception. But it doesn't mean that all biological traits have come under a selective pressure.
10. Those organizations that reproduce more are... the most successful, they will have more chances of survival.
11. In the chaos of the primordial soup, among the infinite serie of the possible causal chains, only those which loop on themselves will reproduce, hence survive.
12. These are positive feedback loops. At any rate, negative feedback loops have no meaning in the primordial soup. They have no existence since the existence of organizations (self-reproducing hence positive feedback loops) is THE necessary condition for the perception of a regulatory process to be perceived as 'negative feedback'.
13. The interaction dynamics of competitive positive feedback loops is the place where anything like negative feedback can occur.
14. This is a radical constructivist hypothesis. It is also girardian, in a sense that goes beyond Girard's perspective since he doesn't assume the inescapable constructivist aspect of his theory.
15. This conception of feedback loops and organization in terms of cycles could be put to the test in the analysis of heliotropism.
16. The endeaviour will be to let appear the fact that heliotropism is better understood with a competitive positive feedback loops model than with the negative feedback mechanism of the classical control theory.