Complex Behaviors
Towards a Fourth Generation Pattern Language: Patterns as Epistemic Threads
Understanding how complexity acts together with intentional design in social systems also requires examination of the telos - purpose or directionality - of complex systems and how this can be influenced through design. Considering biological systems, O’Grady and Brooks distinguished three types of complex behaviours:
- teleological (end is defined by human or other external agent);
- teleonomic (end is 'programmatic', setting defined limits within which possibilities can unfold in many different ways, such as those of the genetic code) and
- teleomatic (end is contingent, the consequence of concomitant forces, like in ecosystems).56
Similarly from a social design standpoint, systems thinker and design thinker Peter Jones distinguished purposive systems - well structured or institutionalized social systems that embed deterministic mechanisms dedicated to prescribed outcomes - from those which are purposeful or purpose-seeking. Purposeful systems target pre-determined outcomes and fulfil specified purposes through differentiated means. A purpose-seeking system seeks to converge towards an ideal future state, and upon attainment of any of its intermediate goals then seeks another goal which more closely approximates its ideal.57 {Looks close to STA Methodology postulated "Way"-, or method-focused, and "Goal"-focused methodology of development? - DVS}
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