Meaning Finds a Way: Chaos (Theory) and Composition
by Bonnie Lenore Kyburz
College English, Volume 66, Number 5
May 2004 (pg. 503-523)
Me - sorting stuff out about chaos - a work in progress...
These scholars intimate that meaning or knowledge emerges from complex negotiations within a (chaotic) epistemic complex, following James Berlin, whose "epistemic complex" consists of negotiations among interlocutor(s), audience(s), material realit(ies)y, and language(s)." (504)
epistemic: of or relating to knowledge or knowing
I think this passage is talking about how meaning is constructed (or emerges?) from social interactions - knowledge and knowing is socially constructed - nothing new there - or at least nothing new to me. This is suggesting that we move within a knowledge complex that represents chaos or is chaotic in that there is no apparent order to some people in various pockets of information. By that ridiculously incoherent sentence I meant that if a person were studying phonology - a pocket of information - they would initially find that pocket of information to be chaotic or without apparent order.
Now, I'm wondering if information represents the chaotic epistemic complex and knowledge represents that same complex once I've begun to make sense of it - once I've begun to organize the information into some order?
The article was asking if chaos was the metaphor or if chaos was the theory and I wonder if it can be both? As a theory isn't it also a metaphor? We know that science uses metaphors to describe those things that we cannot see...and I wonder if chaotic systems really change into orderly systems or if they just seem to change into orderly systems once we begin to recognize the patterns within the system?
Here's what I wrote when I got to writing group the other day and was waiting for others to show:
Often, we find outselves in a state we call chaos. We don't recognize where we are, we have numerous bits an dpieces but don't know what to do with them. The passage is really just talking about HOW we move from chaos to order - that is, our movement is a socially constructed event (although later I'll talk about that movement as being figurative only). What he is saying is that seeing order where there was once chaos is a result of social interactions, or negotiations, which are highly dependent upon these 4 variables: interlocutor, audience, material realities, and language. The notion is that a deficiency or weakness in any one of these variables will prevent us from finding the order. I'm particularly interested now about the language aspect. Without control of the language our clients, students, will not be able to make sense of their world. This is why those with strong linguistic skills are more successful - I used to think it was because we privileged those with strong linguistic skills, we valued those skills more, but perhaps their success if also partly due to the fact that they are capable of finding an order in ways that others are not capable.
Here's what Jeri said in writing group the other day. She interpreted this passage to be talking about how we are always in a state of chaos. We pick and choose what elements of that chaotic environment to attend to and depending upon which elements we choose to attend to (the ones the "emerge[s] from complex negotations") we create some kind of meaning. So, given the same state of chaos, two individuals might find different orders out of that chaos. The differences that appear are a result of our own experiences, which are different, and those experiences cause our interactions in terms of those four variables to be different and again, it is those differences that cause us to make sense in different ways (or it is because of similarities of experiences we might make sense in similar ways of a chaotic situation). I like the notion of always being in a state of chaos and that we make sense by making deliberate (or defensive? or offensive?) choices about what elements of that chaos we choose to grab. We then make sense of those elements by establishing some kind of relationship between them and then we begin to grab more elements that look like they have a relationship with the first two.
For, as Eubanks reminds us, "Just as conceptual metaphors have certain internal entailments, the entailments of complementary conceptual metaphors can align and overlap." That is, certain metaphors do not contradict one another, and neither functions without the other, ontologically or ethically. (504)
ontological: relating to or based upon being or existence
ontology: a branch of metaphysics concerned with the nature of relations of being; a particular theory about the nature of being or the kinds of existents
existents: having being; existing now
entailments: to restrict by limiting the inheritance to the owner's lineal descendants or to a particular class thereof; to confer, assign, or transmit as if by entail; to fix a person permanently in some condition or status; to impose, involve or imply as a necessary accompaniment or result
Does this mean that chaos can be both the metaphor and the theory? Yes, she said she doesn't want these to be seen as discrete and I'm assuming, different. We do, she says, actively construct metaphors and not just passively receive them. I know this to be true...as I hear someone else's metaphor I tend to always revise it somewhat to fit my experiences...that's active construction. Because of this it is possible to think of chaos as a state which can motivate us into action - shift our positions - that "paradigm shaping/shifting tool" idea that the next quote raises.
The chaos of chaos theory is about - to borrow Faigley's phrase - "coherent contradictions" that create meaning. By examining our epistemological orientations with regard to chaos and the forms it may appear to take, we may begin to see chaos theory as a sort of paradigm shaping/shifting tool that is capable of clearing progressive spaces within which we might imagine our work and its meanings, its ideational, political, and material effects. (505)
The term "coherent contradictions" makes me think about how people won't (or don't) really change their opinion or how they understand something until their paradigm stops working for them. The flawed paradigm then present a contradiction. When we are presented with evidence that suggests that our paradigms don't really work anymore, we set out to create new meanings for ourselves.
Depending on how we understand learning to occur with regard to chaos - we may see chaos theory as a way for us to understand what happens when a certain paradigm ceases to be functional for us and we move to a new paradigm. Pointing to the state of chaos as a new space or place allows us to morph into something different. Moving from where we are into a state of chaos, which really doesn't require us to literally move at all because once our paradigm is rendered useless we no longer see our world in quite the same way - the order we know/knew vaporizes with our paradigm and we simply find ourselves in a state of chaos. As we shift and shape and create new meaning, that is - identify new patterns by which we sense order - there are ideational, political, and material effects.
Chaos theory reconfigures chaos as a conceptual metaphor in ways that privilege chaos as order, as a complicated kind of order, or as potential order. (505)
I've been here before - I've argued that what we call chaos is not chaos in the sense that it means an absence of order. What we call chaos is really our inability to recognize the pattern in a system. Once we begin to see the pattern, we believe the system is no longer in chaos. This connects with what I wrote about earlier when I was saying that maybe we don't move from chaos to order. We don't move at all. We are in the same system or looking at the same system - we don't move at all and maybe - probably - the system doesn't change in a measurable way either. What changes is our perception of that system.
Spending time in the system, in the chaos, lets me come to know it - it becomes familar to me. Looking at the system with a different lens and different colored glasses allows me to see the system differently and perhaps see a pattern I was unable to see before. My trip to New Mexico taught me this. Here in WV I don't fully grasp the majesty, magnitude, or beauty of mountains because I'm too close to them and I never see the whole. From my hotel room in New Mexico I saw a whole mountain and it took my breath away! Of course, there in New Mexico I could not fully appreciate what it means to be hidden in the cool of a mountain path, close to the clouds, because I was too far away.
My point here is that to make sense of something I might need to get closer, or I might need to get farther away. Because life is inherently rich and complex I suspect I need to do both in order to gain a full appreciation of those things available to me. Wayne had to step away. He had to go to New Mexico in order to appreciate and understand what he had before him in his transcript.
This reminds me of when I was learning to write computer program on the MOO. I looked at a program and didn't understand anything - it was chaotic to me. I looked at the programmer's manual and didn't understand anything - more chaos. I kept reading that manual and nothing made sense to me. I read it once, twice...eight, nine times. Finally on the tenth read I understood a phrase - order began to emerge. The more I read, the more I understood and finally I organized the information into a pattern I understood and the system was no longer in chaos but perfectly ordered in a logical and sensible way. The programming language hadn't changed. What had changed was how I saw the programming language.
One challenge we encounter is semantic, and I argue that taking up this challenge has been possible because of a growing epistemology of chaos, one that views chaos not as a direct antithesis of order but as capable of demonstrating order itself - dynamic, complex, and nonlinear order that emerges with time and understanding. (506)
Main Entry: cha·os 
Pronunciation: <TT>'kA-"äs</TT>
Function: noun
Etymology: Latin, from Greek -- more at GUM
1 obsolete : CHASM, ABYSS
2 a often capitalized : a state of things in which chance is supreme; especially : the confused unorganized state of primordial matter before the creation of distinct forms -- compare COSMOS b : the inherent unpredictability in the behavior of a natural system (as the atmosphere, boiling water, or the beating heart)
3 a : a state of utter confusion b : a confused mass or mixture <a chaos of television antennas>
non·lin·e·ar 
( P ) Pronunciation Key (n
n-l
n
-
r)
adj.
- Not in a straight line.
- Mathematics.
- Occurring as a result of an operation that is not linear.
- Containing a variable with an exponent other than one. Used of an equation.
-
- Of or relating to a system of equations whose effects are not proportional to their causes. Such a set of equations can be chaotic.
- Of or relating to a device whose behavior is described by a set of nonlinear equations and whose output is not proportional to its input.
- Of or relating to the output of such a device.
Main Entry: frac·tal
Pronunciation: <TT>'frak-t&l</TT>
Function: noun
Etymology: French fractale, from Latin fractus broken, uneven (past participle of frangere to break) + French -ale -al (noun suffix)
: any of various extremely irregular curves or shapes for which any suitably chosen part is similar in shape to a given larger or smaller part when magnified or reduced to the same size
- fractal adjective
This is exactly what I was saying in my previous entry. How we understand chaos depends to a large extent on how we define chaos. Given the definition of the word chaos it doesn't seem likely that I'm right. However, we know that mathematicians have also identified fractals, the grain of sand that Parker Palmer talks about. The smallest unit one must understand to understand the whole. Essentially, we must find the smallest unit which demonstrates a way to order a system or the pattern that is actually already in the system. We know that chaos is an order we come to see with time and understanding. This is what we see with Wayne's work. Wayne spends time in the system - reading the transcript over and over and over again. The order (is all order this way really?) is dynamic, complex, and nonlinear and therefore not immediately apparent to him. Wayne finds it necessary to adjust the lens through which he is looking (he is looking too narrowly) and when he steps back he is able to see the fractal, an order or a pattern, to the conversation.
Hayles's description of changing views..."In both contemporary literature and science, chaos has been reconceptualized as extremely complex information rather than an absence of order." (504)
Otherwise known as the concept of "sensitive dependence upon initial conditions" (Gleick 23), this characteristic [the butterfly effect] of chaotic systems suggests that the production/organization, maintenance/duration, and deconstruction/dissipation of chaotic systems (a text, perhaps) occur in a comprehensive cultural matrix, within which small fluctuations in initial conditions can have huge effects....could it be that a similarly rich repertoire of events, thoughts, ideas, publications, student essays, and so on, contributes to the complexity, to the chaotic order that has shaped and will continue to describe the field of composition studies as well as the composing processes it explores? (508-509)
Systems (texts?) that seem chaotic can demonstrate the ability to organize...Self-organization makes potentially equivalent variables of all variables; thus, students, teachers, contexts, ideologies, and much more all carry equal potential to contribute to the creation of meaningful texts, meaningful theories, pedagogies, and changes to the orientation of the system. (510)
However, within chaotic systems, order can - and, according to Prigogrine's theories, does - exist. Time and space may complicate our capacity to withstand the "development" of order, but emergent order exists as potential and reality within chaotic systems. And while the structure may dissipate, another form may emerge....A dissipative structure (a chaotic system) may encounter a bifurcation, which represents a moment wherein the system or structure begins to develop differently, as if choosing between two paths. (510)
