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<p>DaveW -</p>
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<div style="font-family:Arial;">Some musings because Steve Smith
mentioned Christopher Alexander:</div>
</blockquote>
<p>Thanks for throwing in... If my mansplanatory off-key <i>song
to the self </i>here was intended to do anything (besides to
scratch it's own itch) it was to prompt some tangents such as your
reflecting on Alexander's influence on your own life and career.
I am glad you saw the reference/rhyme to Powell as well.</p>
<p>Macy is worth knowing (about)... early career work as an analyst
for the CIA (Sri Lanka) evolving into Buddhism, Systems thinking
(Club of Rome/World3), contemporary of Bateson and Capra,
Buddhism. Activism. At 96, she is a credit to her generation
(that of my parents). <br>
</p>
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cite="mid:976d5b30-c41b-4c8f-8a84-1ef11cbc5ae1@app.fastmail.com">
<div style="font-family:Arial;"><br>
</div>
<div style="font-family:Arial;">Alexander was a trained
mathematician (he wanted to be an artist, but dad insisted on
math/science).</div>
<div style="font-family:Arial;"><br>
</div>
<div style="font-family:Arial;">His Ph.D. thesis, published later
as <i>Notes on the Synthesis of Form</i>, specified a formal
"Science of Design;" equations galore. (Richard Gabriel later
demonstrated that the math did not compute.)</div>
</blockquote>
<p>I read <i>Notes</i> interleaved with Kauffman's <i>Investigations</i>
in late Dec 2000 while off-grid traveling NZ, watching the
debacle of the Gore/Bush unfold through BBC news channels.
Collectively that was a transformative moment for me.<br>
</p>
<p>I think my epistemic grounding is less "mystical" than
"mythopoetic". You and I probably read Alexander and Whitehead
very differently because of this? And yet. Maybe someone here
can mansplain this to me more better than I have to myself. I've
done my best to de-gender my evolving instance of GPT, but it
still man-splains when I give it an opening.<br>
</p>
<p>I usually feel very resonant in my wabi-sabi framing of the
topics on FriAM to your own, yet somehow I still haven't sorted
myself out around your language about anti or a-scientific
approaches. The distinction "rigorous but non-scientific" was a
hint. I'm working on it.<br>
</p>
<p>A difference might be that I have not had (any of?) the mystical
experiences you have, so I am busy using my mythopoetic effort to
prepare me for such if I ever encounter them, while you might be
lead to mythopoesy by your mystical experiences? <br>
</p>
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<div style="font-family:Arial;"><br>
</div>
<div style="font-family:Arial;">A seed was planted in <i>Notes</i>
in the form of "funny diagrams" later deemed to be "patterns."
Also a tiny bit of 'mysticism' in the chapter on the
"Non-selfconscious (sic) process." From the beginning Alexander
was conflicted—Scientist and Mystic.</div>
<div style="font-family:Arial;"><br>
</div>
<div style="font-family:Arial;">The book, <i>A Pattern Language</i>,
advanced the scientist side, (and had interesting impact on the
programming community) while <i>The Timeless Way of Building</i>
indulged the mystic—introducing the "Quality Without A Name"
(QWAN) along with chapter titles resembling the <i>Tao Te
Ching</i>.</div>
<div style="font-family:Arial;"><br>
</div>
<div style="font-family:Arial;">His penultimate work, the four
volume, <i>On the Nature of Order</i>, sets out a formalism for
design focusing on "Life" ("Liveness") and, ultmately, grounded
in God. (Alexander was a devout Catholic.)</div>
<div style="font-family:Arial;"><br>
</div>
<div style="font-family:Arial;">I am not familiar with Joanna
Macy, but the ethnological/anthropological work of J.W. Powell
has a lot of the same tension as Alexander.</div>
<div style="font-family:Arial;"><br>
</div>
<div style="font-family:Arial;">This make me curious as to why
there is so little interest in pursuing the "mystical" /
"non-scientific." Attempts to reconcile science and religion,
for example tend to be superficial, ignoring critical and
complex issues on both sides. Examples would be Polkinghorn
(quantum Christianity?) or Capra, et. al., (quantum Taoism).</div>
<div style="font-family:Arial;"><br>
</div>
<div style="font-family:Arial;">If "harmony," "peace," "humanity,"
"justice, " etc. are real goals and not just virtue signalling,
would it not be useful to develop a rigorous (<u>not scientific</u>)
program investigating the "mystical" or the "other than
scientific?" Whitehead's Process Philosophy, for example, or
Jung's psychological alchemy, (or Jung and Pauli's
synchronicity), or McGilchrist's <i>Master and His Emissary?</i></div>
<div style="font-family:Arial;"><br>
</div>
<div style="font-family:Arial;">I am convinced that the
mathematical, scientific, computational (AI be damned), rational
road will not take us anywhere near those goals.</div>
<div style="font-family:Arial;"><br>
</div>
<div style="font-family:Arial;">davew</div>
<div style="font-family:Arial;"><br>
</div>
<div style="font-family:Arial;"><br>
</div>
<div style="font-family:Arial;">On Thu, Jun 26, 2025, at 8:53 AM,
steve smith wrote:</div>
<div style="font-family:Arial;">> Maybe I am the choir singing
(off key) to itself but:</div>
<div style="font-family:Arial;">></div>
<div style="font-family:Arial;">> In the language of CAS, I
propose that "governance" should be considered </div>
<div style="font-family:Arial;">> as the process of setting the
rules of interaction, boundary conditions, </div>
<div style="font-family:Arial;">> and affordances in the goal
of obtaining the patterns of harmony, </div>
<div style="font-family:Arial;">> efficiency and creativity.
Christopher Alexander, Joanna Macy or JW </div>
<div style="font-family:Arial;">> Powell, not DOGE or the
ReichMinistry or GosPlan or the CCCP?</div>
<div style="font-family:Arial;">></div>
<div style="font-family:Arial;">> Thinking like a watershed,
like an ecosystem would seem to be the </div>
<div style="font-family:Arial;">> obvious metaphor, but I see
the charm (nod to Marcus) to choose to be a </div>
<div style="font-family:Arial;">> "free agent", a particle in
kinetic brownian motion. No system worth </div>
<div style="font-family:Arial;">> trusting -> collapse the
"self" to a point.</div>
<div style="font-family:Arial;">></div>
<div style="font-family:Arial;">> IMO Life and Consciousness
(whatever that is) is an exercise, a study in </div>
<div style="font-family:Arial;">> negEntropy. Giving over to
fascist or anarchistic extremes is like </div>
<div style="font-family:Arial;">> thinking "everything will be
perfect when the universe collapses into a </div>
<div style="font-family:Arial;">> bose-einstein condensate/or
becomes a equilibrium thermal-soup of "free </div>
<div style="font-family:Arial;">> agents".</div>
<div style="font-family:Arial;">></div>
<div style="font-family:Arial;">> It's the good stuff that
happens somewhere in between? I suppose I </div>
<div style="font-family:Arial;">> might just let go of the
silly conceit of "good stuff" though... </div>
<div style="font-family:Arial;">> non-attachment?</div>
<div style="font-family:Arial;">></div>
<div style="font-family:Arial;">> Mumble,</div>
<div style="font-family:Arial;">></div>
<div style="font-family:Arial;">> - Steve</div>
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