Re: genetic algorithms and learning org

Jim Campbell (hum_mgr03@hg.uleth.ca)
Mon, 12 Dec 1994 13:37:35 MST

I am intrigued by the challenge of drawing together genetic pattern change and
organizational evolution, I offer the following speculation on community among
self ordering human systems.

I have long been tantilized by comparing human evolutionary processes to a
trip along the DNA helix. If the process was along the helix our forward view
would always be a tangental perspective looking out from the curve. As we
wander out on the tangent as we do when we move towards destructive events we
turn back and again are looking across the line of development never looking
along the line of the helix. Occassionally one of us has the good response to
look in the right direction, as Einstein, or Gandhi to name a couple, and we
all respond with enthusiastic intuitative agreement ("when our vision has been
cleared") and understanding. Of course at that point we are again looking
along the helix and eventually off on a tangent.

I have been a student of working relationships and the longer I observe to more
frequently I see our personal ordering processes organizing our thinking,
connecting relationships and preferantial communities(academics, similiar
business types, professionals, ect.) What these colleagues say to us is in an
orderly pattern that we by preference respond to. "It makes sense", Sounds
Right to me", "I know what they are talking about", not only that "I hear
their ordering and thinking process" we often move away form those whose
order confounds or confuses us.

Is it possible that as Stuart Kauffman noted the "Order is inherent and comes
for free" that we are working on our inherent ordering in organizations
wandering along the edge of selection making what seem to be good decisions at
the time when it may only be a selection of one of the possible responses
within the perspective and constraints of the overall ordering pattern at the
edge?

Thanks Mark and John for your provocative remarks.

Jim Campbell Email: Campbell@HG.ULeth.CA
Phone: (403) 329-2753 Fax: (403) 329-2685
Training & Development, Human Resources
University of Lethbridge
4401 University Dr., Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada T1K 3M4