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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link="#0563C1" vlink="#954F72" style='word-wrap:break-word'><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal>Colleagues, <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Chemero’s book contains a glossary of “Dynamical Systems” terms, words that I have heard you wizards bandy about for years but never quite grasped. I am seeing this as a moment to get my hands firmly on them. The ninth term in the list is “decomposable”. Non-linear systems are not-decomposable, i.e. “they cannot be modeled as collections of separable components.”<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>But the tenth and last item in the list reads as follows:<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=quotation>10. Non-decomposable, nonlinear systems can only be characterized using global collective variables and/or order parameters, variables or parameters of the system that summarize the behavior of the system’s <span style='background:yellow;mso-highlight:yellow'>components</span>.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Neither “order parameters” nor “components” are defined in the list, so the reader is cut loose at this point. I have never quite understood what an order parameter is, despite decades of looking up definitions. I am guessing that it roughly corresponds to the redundancy of a system, the degree to which one can predict one part from another. So crystals have a higher order parameter than the solution from which they are precipitated. <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>This relates to my utter confusion when people start talking about breaking symmetry. This, I gather, requires me to think of fog as symmetrical but neatly arrayed rows of alto-cumulus as the result of “breaking symmetry.” This has always seemed like crazy talk to me. <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>But what truly puzzles me most about this item, is the last word, “components”. How can a non-decomposable system have components. I am guessing that practically what that means is that one postulates components and then analyzes the system from the point of view of those postulations, shifting from postulation to postulation until some seem more stable that others. Sounds a lot like perception to me. <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>This problem, trivial as it might seem to you all, has always been a block to my embracing of systems talk. I want to know the formal process by which we are empowered to talk about the components of non-decomposable systems. <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Nick <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Nick Thompson<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><a href="mailto:ThompNickSon2@gmail.com">ThompNickSon2@gmail.com</a><o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><a href="https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/">https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/</a><o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div></body></html>