Grammatization

The PLAST is based on the ‘grammatization’ or in other words the breaking down of systemic behaviors and effects into discrete elements descriptive of flows and movements, and changes of state - Jane Jacobs’ ‘smaller segments’- or systems operators, which can then help reconstruct step by step ‘computation’ of the system’s operations, what arises as it is observed or intuited and ‘walked through’ into aggregate patterns. Visual grammatized language enables the representation of the system itself, where the corpus is the ontology, the epistemological thread, and the fractal grouping representative of the system as a whole.

Grammatization helps describe how behaviors aggregate and propagate through interconnected networks of relationships, how flows, including value flows, circulate and accumulate, while interfacing with other types of components such as spaces, entities and events.  It shows how effects can build up, in various contexts and at various levels of complexity. This walk through helps describe how transformation plays out, i.e. how new structures are formed and how this formation affects the objects causing it.  In other words, it attempts to bring the hidden ‘computations’ or algorithms of the system out of the black box, and into awareness, in ways that make it as easy as possible to understand.

Grammatization enables simultaneous analysis and synthesis. It is analytic in that it differentiates and breaks down dynamics in elementary components, creating understanding by describing experience. It is synthetic in that it ‘reconstructs’ dynamics into sequences that can be probed, opening up possibilities.

The two together, in decoding-encoding sequences, are the two sides of interpretation, one inward looking, which strives to make sense of reality within specific contexts, the other outward looking that renders and shares meaning across contexts.

Grammatization provides a learning experience and possibilities different from those offered by closed models such as systems dynamic archetypes to design solutions. Cyclic processes are often illustrated by feedback loops. Actual processes however often involve independent events which become connected through environments where the output of one thing are inputs for another, and so the loops follow *opportunistic* pathways rather than *deterministic* ones, especially for complex living systems.  

There are probably no clear or even real beginning, nor end to these pathways. But the first thing observed or the first step taken is always a good step in that it provides a beginning for an inquiry.

Grammatization allows the possibility of starting points, and impulses, with discrete incrementation of behavior and provides the opportunity to form hypothesis and questioning at each step that can help grasp what comes next. Using hypothesis enables to bring the unknown into the ‘reasoning’ and to probe it, to ‘bootstrap’ it (Fauré 2009). This grammatized approach includes the heuristics that enable the assessment of margins of manoeuver for change or space for action, and the perpetual adjustment of patterns and their sequencing, including notions of limits and optima beyond which remedies become toxic or pattern become anti-patterns. 

Kurt Laitner 2:54 AM Nov 5

Helene Finidori 2:55 PM Nov 5

I am taking the concept of grammatization from Bernard Stiegler, himself referring to Deluze Guattari's ecoding decoding of flows: http://bit.ly/1s4c4uO (in French). This would need to be unpacked. But in ballpark, it's the process of description, formalisation, discretization of what appears to be continuums or aggregates into smaller segments in view of their reproductibility: the process described by Jenny Quillien to unravel 'organized' complexity. Here not into words, but directly into systems operators, elementary units of what affects dynamics and therefore aggregate outcomes.

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Helene Finidori 3:54 PM Nov 5

Kurt Laitner 2:56 AM Nov 5

and this the definition of synthesis.. is grammar just analysis and synthesis?

Helene Finidori 3:01 PM Nov 5

In a way yes. Like in linguistics. It enables you to analyze and synthesize meaning or the 'sense' of any flow. It's the decomposition of the elements that can be infinitely recombined into new combinatories and patterns. I think reduction happens when elements are left aside, not just through the process of analysis. It enables to say OK, what do we have here. And with the proper questioning, to make sense of what is there.

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Helene Finidori 3:47 PM Nov 5

Not all analysis is reductive a priori. Analysis that tries to follow templates or 'fit' into a model or categories may be reductionist because the framework is itself reductionist. But if your analysis is a sense making one, it is only 'reduced' by the worldview, not by a formalized model or framework. One can refer to Dave Snozden's Cynefin framework here, and his distinction between categorizing framework and sense making framework.

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Kurt Laitner 8:27 PM Nov 5

[reductionist sub thread] so reductionist in the sense of breaking into smaller parts, but holistic in how the parts are not taken on their own but as parts of a system - ok

Kurt Laitner 8:27 PM Nov 5

Kurt Laitner 2:58 AM Nov 5

Kurt Laitner 3:00 AM Nov 5

also I think you differentiated between mere synthesis and the generativity of a grammar earlier, and I think that is an important point - Pierre Levy was very clear about the fact that his semantic sphere is not a model but a language, due to its infinite generativity through combinatorics

Helene Finidori 4:17 PM Nov 5

Yes maybe we are more in the logic of the reconstruction of systemic coherence than a mere reductive synthesis as you say.