Re: `Structure' and contingency

Dear List;

     I've casually followed and enjoyed the latest incarnation of
the agency <==> structure dialogue, and have generally agreed
with the arguments of both Carl & Andy about the emergence of
structure as an unintended consequence of individual decisions
about matters unrelated to the broader structure that their
decisions create.
     What prompted me to shift modes from "Lurker" to "Actor" was
the charming list of critical individual decisions that altered
history provided by Richard (?) Barendse.  Recently I've been
reading about the ideas from physics on the phenomenon of self-
organization sometimes found in fluids, chemical reactions, and
biological systems.  These ideas seem to me directly relevant to
this discussion:

     1)  Once the conditions for a complex system have been
created, the "freedom" of a participant within that system (be it
an atom, molecule, or human) to alter the dynamics of the system
itself are highly constrained by the macro-dynamics of the
system, hence minimized.  This condition of constraint of the
options available to an individual actor--the "realm of freedom"-
-would be typical of most "healthy" systems most of the time
(e.g.--a country at peace, a healthy living organism, the
molecular movement within a boiling pot of water).  Disruptions
("Perturbations") introduced to these systems tend to rapidly
dampen off until they are overwhelmed by the forces reproducing
and maintaining the structural integrity of the system (e.g.--the
containment and ultimate re-absorption of the anti-systemic
political movements of the 1960's).

     2)  The vulnerability of the structural stability of these
self-regulating & hence self-perpetuating systems to the
"choices" of their individual participants--be they molecular or
human--is greatest at each of two key points: (a) the initial
emergence of the system OUT OF a previous period of "chaotic
turbulence"; or (b) the point of systemic collapse INTO a period
of "chaotic turbulence."  Within this context, it is no
coincidence that Barendse's examples of crucial individual
decisions all are drawn from periods of war, which is one social
equivalent of systemic turbulence.  They are exceptions proving
the rule--after all, I strongly doubt that any of the readers of
this list have dramatically altered the course of global history
by any decisions that we have ever made.  One must be in
precisely the right place at precisely the right chaotically
turbulent time to have had such an extremely rare influence.

     3)  One last point.  "Structure" does not *DIRECTLY* "cause"
anything.  It lacks self-conscious awareness.  All it does is
constrain the choices of actors/agents.  To be sure it seems to
have a "life of its own" insofar as it is reproduced across
generations.  But the awesome beauty of this process of
reproductive stability lies in its (unintended) capacity to
reproduce the constraints imposed on one generation so that they
apply with equal force to the next.  At the deepest level, the
transient viability of particular structures and their ultimate
displacement by others is the process of evolution itself.

--Peter