Presentation for [University of Melbourne Department of Information Sciences Research Seminar - 13 October 2006. Based on a paper and presentation "Emergence and growth of knowledge and diversity in hierarchically complex living systems" for the Workshop "Selection, Self-Organization and Diversity CSIRO Centre for Complex Systems Science and ARC Complex Open Systems Network, Katoomba, NSW, Australia 17-18 May 2006.

1. Personal Research
EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY OF
SPECIES AND
ORGANIZATIONS
http://www.orgs-evolution-knowledge.net/
William P. Hall
National Fellow
Australian Centre for Science, Innovation and
Society - University of Melbourne
DIS: ICT 5.39 - 8344 1522
Head Office / Engineering
Tenix Defence, Williamstown
bill.hall@tenix.com
Visiting Faculty Associate
University of Technology Sydney
Dept Info Sci - 13/10/2006
Emergence and Growth of Knowledge and
Diversity in Hierarchically Complex
Organised Systems:
Genesis of a theoretical framework

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Some background
My path to organisational KM is unique
– physics (3½ years from 1957)
– computers (all generations from cog-wheel calculators)
– neurophysiology (2+ years as research assistant - signal processing)
– comparative ethology, comparative anatomy and ecosystem theory
– PhD Evolutionary Biology (Harvard, 1973) - genetic system, systematics
– personal KM in the sciences with bibliographic search engines
– studied epistemology and scientific revolutions (1977-1979)
– I bought my first microcomputer in 1981 and it had to pay for itself
– 1980's: computer literacy journalism, software tech writing, and
documenting Hogan banking systems
 With Tenix Defence since Jan 1990
– full life of the ANZAC Ship Project - On time, on budget, all the time
– building content authoring/management systems
– now working on cross divisional knowledge management solutions
This gives me some different perspectives!

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The work summarised here began ~1977 in response
to paradigmatic misunderstandings over my PhD
 PhD Evol. Biol. Harvard 1973
 University of Melbourne Research Fellow in Genetics 77-78
– Problems with reviewers of papers following my PhD led to studies in
epistemology and history and philosophy of science
 Worked with computers since 1981; Tenix Defence since Jan 1990
 Technical writers' holy wars in 2000 over content oriented vs page
oriented writing & management led to book project
– Co-evolution of cognitive tools and human cognition
– When I got to KM organisations I found my understanding of
"knowledge" differed from what my peers thought it was
– Had to stop writing until I understood the difference
 Solution re-formulates org theory and KM on evolutionary principles
– Reformulation now well underway with peer-reviewed published papers
– I am also reinventing the theory of life itself
• theory of self-organizing hierarchically complex dissipative systems
• evolutionary epistemology
• autopoiesis

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KM is a mess in several other areas as well with too
many poorly understood paradigms
Epistemology (theory of knowledge)
– personal knowledge (Michael Polanyi)
– objective knowledge (Karl Popper)
Organization theory (Donaldson recognises 15 paradigms)
– resource view
– environment view
– autopoietic view
How to analyse knowledge in the organization
– individual view
– social view
– critical view
– alternative views
How organizations create knowledge
– cognitivist view
– connectionist view
– autopoietic view
Donaldson, L. 1995. American Anti-Management Theones of Organization, Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge University Press – see also McKelvey, B. 1997. Quasi-natural
organization science. Organization Science 8:352-380

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Foundation Problems in KM:
We can’t even define knowledge consistently
A few definitions from the literature
Author(s) Data Information Knowledge
Wiig (1993) Facts organised to describe
a situation or condition
Truths and beliefs,
perspectives and concepts,
judgements and expectations,
methodologies and know how
Nonaka and Takeuchi
(1995)
A flow of meaningful
messages
Commitments and beliefs
created from these messages
Spek and Spijkervet
(1997) *
Not yet interpreted
symbols
Data with meaning The ability to assign meaning
Davenport (1997) Simple observations Data with relevance and
purpose
Valuable information from the
human mind
Davenport and Prusak
(1998)
A set of descrete facts A message meant to change
the receiver’s perception
Experiences, values, insights,
and contextual information
Quigley and Debons
(1999)
Text that does not
answer questions to a
particular problem
Text that answers the
questions who, when, what,
or where
Text that answers the
questions why and how
Choo et al. (2000) Facts and messages Data vested with meaning Justified, true beliefs
Stenmark, D. 2002. Information vs. Knowledge: The Role of intranets in Knowledge Management. In Proceedings of
HICSS-35, Hawaii, January 7-10, 2002 *
* Full text free to the web

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Conflicting paradigms of knowledge in KM
Michael Polanyi (1958, 1966): personal/tacit knowledge
– Focus
• knowing subjects
• knowledge of doing, personal skills
• belief, faith and intuition final arbiters of "truth"
• followers tend to denigrate explicit knowledge to mere "information"
– Popularised in KM and organization theory by Nelson & Winter,
Sveiby, Nonaka, von Krogh & Roos
Popper (1972): epistemology without a knowing subject
– Knowledge grows through conjecture & refutation, i.e., criticism
against reality
– Different kinds of knowledge:
• Subjective or dispositional – as embodied in instantaneous structure
• Persistent or objective – in codified form
– Joe Firestone of Macroinnovation Associates one of few KM
practitioners using Popperian epistemology

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Incommensurability of the paradigms
Search dates: 11/02/2002, (15/08/2002), [14/07/2004]
Michael Polanyi "Personal Knowledge"
– Google hits = 1,760 (1,450) [4,040]
Karl Popper "Objective Knowledge“
– Google hits = 1,850 (1,570) [3,730]
Both together
– Google hits = 64 (55) [88]
Only 1.1% of authors citing either book cited both!
Conclusion
– Writers concerned with one author's thinking were not
interested in or could not cope with discussing the other
author's thinking in the same document - even to the extent
of listing them in a single bibliography.

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Key ideas for answering “What is knowledge?”
Evolutionary biology and evolutionary epistemology
– J.D. Watson & Francis Crick (molecular genetics)
– Ernst Mayr (was still writing in his 100th
year), Steven J. Gould
– Donald T. Campbell
– Karl Popper’s mature epistemology: 1972 and later – published in
his 70th
year
Autopoiesis (auto = ‘self’ + poiesis = ‘production’)
– Humberto Maturana & Francisco Varela
• Chilean neurobiologists working in the 1970’s
• Defining what it means to be alive
Emergence of complex hierarchical systems
– Hebert Simon, Ilya Prigogine, Stuart Kauffman
Biosemiotics
– Howard Pattee, Luis M Rocha, Hoffmeyer & Emmeche

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What is knowledge?
Karl Popper - a philosopher who studied science
– "All life is problem solving"
– Knowledge is solutions to problems
– Epistemology summary
• Knowledge is fundamentally based on external reality
• The ultimate authority for deciding the truth of a claim to
know is its correspondence with external reality - but....
• Claims to know are cognitively constructed
• Impossible to prove any claim to know is true (or false)
– Any number of favourable tests are logically falsified by a single
failure
– Any falsification can be "immunised" by auxiliary hypotheses
Knowledge is fallible (Firestone & McElroy 2003)

10. Personal Research
Popper's three worlds
Polanyi's epistemology of
personal knowledge
encompassed within
Popper's World 2
3.
Expressed language
Computer memory
Recorded thought
Logical artefacts
Heredity
Reproduction/Production
2.
Cybernetic
self-regulation
Consciousness
Cognition
Drive/Enable
Regulate/Control
Development/Recall
Inferred
logic
Describe/Predict
Test
Observe
1.
Energy
Thermodynamics
Physics
Chemistry
Biochemistry
Existence/Reality
World 1
Organismic/Personal
Knowledge exists in
World 2
Emerges from
World 1 processes
Objective
Knowledge
forms World 3
Persistent logical
Content produced /
evaluated by World 2
processes
© William P. Hall

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Karl Popper's "tetradic schema" or
"general theory of evolution"
Pn a real-world problem
faced by an entity
TS a tentative solution or
tentative theory
EE a process of error
elimination
Pn+1 changed problem as
faced from by an
entity incorporating a
surviving solution
TS1
TS2
•
•
•
•
•
TSm
Pn Pn+1EE
TS1
TS2
•
•
•
•
•
TSm
Pn Pn+1EE
TS1
TS2
•
•
•
•
•
TSm
Pn Pn+1EE
 TS may be embodied in W2 in the individual entity, or
 TS may be expressed in words as a hypothesis in W3, subject to objective
criticism
 Objective expression and criticism lets our theories die in our stead
 As an iterated cyclic process, solutions can approach reality

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John Boyd's OODA Loop process wins conflicts
 An organisation's success in a competitive environment depends critically its ability to
do a better job of assimilating information, increasing its epistemic quality to generate
strategic power, and reducing decision cycle times. See http://www.belisarius.com.
AO
OBSERVE
(Results of Test)
OBSERVATION
PARADIGMS
EXTERNAL
INFORMATION
CHANGING
CIRCUMSTANCES
UNFOLDING
ENVIRONMENTAL
RESULTS OF
ACTIONS
ORIENT
D
DECIDE
(Hypothesis)
O
CULTURE
PARADIGMS
PROCESSES
GENETIC
HERITAG
E
MEMORY OF HISTORY
INPUT
ANALYSIS
SYNTHESIS
ACT
(Test)
GUIDANCE AND CONTROL
PARADIGMS
UNFOLDING
INTERACTION
WITH EXTERNAL
ENVIRONMENT

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Some OODA definitions
 Observation assembles data about the world in which the adaptive entity
exists (including the entity's own effects and those of its competitors on
that world). Data is given a context relating to the entity's interactions
with the world.
 Orientation processes that observations into semantically linked knowledge
in the form of a world view comprised of
– new information,
– memories of prior experience (which may be explicit, implicit or even tacit,
– genetic heritage (i.e., "natural talent"),
– cultural traditions (i.e., paradigms), and
– analysis (destruction) of the existing world view, and synthesis (creation) of a
revised world view including possibilities for action. This generates intelligence (in
a military sense).
 Decision selects amongst possible actions generated by the orientation,
action(s) to try. Choice is governed and informed by
– wisdom based on prior experience gained from previous OODA cycles, and
– the synthesis (creation) of new possibilities to try.
 Action involves putting the decision to test by applying it to the world. The
loop begins to repeat as the entity observes the results of its action.

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Maturana and Varela: autopoiesis defines life
 Autopoiesis (= self + production) is the condition achieved by a
bounded and self-regulating autocatalytic set of processes able to
maintain its existence as an autonomous entity in the face of
environmental perturbations; i.e., that which gives a living entity the
property of life.
 Recognizing an autopoietic entity (see von Krogh & Roos)
– Self-identifiably bounded (membranes, tags)
– Individually identifiable components within the boundary (complex)
– Mechanistic (i.e., metabolism/cybernetic processes)
– System boundaries internally determined (self reference)
– System intrinsically produces own components
– Self-produced components are necessary and sufficient to produce
the system (autonomy)

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Paradigm of the autopoietic organised system
Maturana and Varela (1980) - Autopoiesis & Cognition –
properties of living things
– Early 1970s quest to define the property of life
– Autonomous entities defined by self regulation and self production
Emergence
– I. Prigogine - Nobel Laureate
• Principles of non-equilibrium thermodynamics
– H. Simon (1962) – Architecture of Complex Systems
– H. Morowitz (1968) – Energy Flow in Biology:
• Systems forced through time to evolve increasingly complex cycles to
transport energy/matter from sources to sinks
– J.J. Kay (1984) – Self-organization in living systems
– S. Salthe (1985, 1993)
• emergence in a scalar hierarchy
– S. Kauffman (1993) – Origins of Order:
• "autocatalytic sets"
• "organization for free"

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Complexity theory: Hierarchically complex dissipative
systems and the focal level (complex triad)
HIGH LEVEL SYSTEM / ENVIRONMENT
SYSTEMSYSTEM SYSTEM
SUBSYSTEMS
boundary
conditions,
constraints,
regulations
FOCAL LEVEL
Possibilities
initiating
conditions
universal
laws
"material -
causes"
Emergent
properties
• Synthesis
cannot predict
higher level
properties
• Behaviour is
uncomputable
• Boundary
conditions &
constraints
select
• Analysis can
explain
• Stanley Salthe (1993) Development and Evolution: Complexity and Change in Biology

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Emergence of knowledge
 Cognition is the cybernetics of autopoiesis (Maturana)
 Emergence = establishment of a complex system at a new level in the
hierarchy between two pre-existing levels of complexity (Salthe)
 Early autopoietic systems emerge close to thermodynamic equilibrium
between coalescence/disintegration (Kauffman's autocatalytic sets)
– Autopoietic systems produce more components that favour autopoiesis
– Dis-integrationg systems lose history, but return components to the
environment that have previously worked in autopoietic systems
• Knowledge of autopoiesis is inherent in the environment, thus shared promiscuously
• Promiscuity impedes specialisation because random components need to work together
– Early reproduction requires only growth and fragmentation - where fragments
would retain some of the parent's history
 Selection for self-stabilization evolves towards clonal reproduction away
from equilibrium, to preserve structural history that worked
 Knowledge defines the nature and behaviour of the autopoietic system
 Meaning = knowledge of solutions to life embodied in dynamic structure
 Knowledge = heredity = historically accumulated 'information' controlling
autopoietic cybernetics to regulate problem responses

18. Personal Research
The nature and growth of autopoietic knowledge
 Turbulent flow from available energy (exergy) sources
to entropy sinks forces conducting systems to become
more organised (state of decreased entropy) -
Prigogine, Morowitz, Kay and Schneider, Kauffman)
 Coalescent systems have no past. Self-regulatory/self-
productive (autocatalytic) activities that persist for a
time before disintegrating produce components whose
individual histories "precondition" them to form
autopoietic systems. Each emerged autopoietic system
represents a tentative solution to problems of life.
Those that dis-integrate lose their histories
(heredity/knowledge).
 Stable systems are those whose tentative solutions
enable them to persist indefinitely. Competition among
such systems for resources is inevitable. Survivors thus
perpetuate historically successful solutions into their
self-produced structure to form dispositional or tacit
knowledge (W2). Those that fail to solve new problems
dis-integrate and lose their histories.
 Replication, transcription and translation. With
semantic coding and decoding, knowledge can be
preserved and replicated in physiologically inert forms
for recall only when relevant to a particular problem of
life. Objective knowledge may be shared across space
and through time. - Howard Pattee (1965-2000)
series of papers; Luis Rocha (1995-) series of papers.
Knowledge: a phenomenon of emergent and evolving
autopoiesis
Tentative solutions
Coalescence / Emergence
†
Stable solutions
Stabilised autopoiesis
†
Selected solutions
Dispositional autopoiesis
†
Semiotic autopoiesis
Knowledge sharing
Shared
solutions
†
Criticised
solutions
Dis-integration
Integration
Turbulence
Evolutionary Stage

19. Personal Research
Emergent orders of autopoietic
complexity
 Presence of autopoietic system self-defines the focal level of a complex triad
 1st order triad
– Focal level = living cell
– Subsystems/components = macromolecules
– Supersystem/environment = dynamic medium/ecosystem/multicellular organisms
 2nd order triad
– Focal level = multicellular organism
– Subsystems/components = living cells
– Supersystem/environment = dynamic ecosystem
 3rd order triad
– Focal level = society of organisms (ants, bees, termites)
– Subsystems/components = multicellular organisms
– Supersystems/environment = dynamic ecosystem
 3rd order triad
– Focal level = human economic organization
– Subsystems/components = entities with linguistic capabilities
– Supersystems/environment = dynamic economy

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Reproduction, sex, and diversification (1)
 World 2 knowledge transmitted by the division of pre-existing
dynamic structure
– inescapable consequence of autopoiesis
– entails some loss of computationally irreducible structure
– depends on what parts of structure passed on
 Emergence of world 3 knowledge depends on evolution of
codification systems
– Autocatalytic nucleic acid polymers in emergence of first order
autopoiesis.
• Nucleic acid polymers may have enzymatic and/or structural fns
• Autoreplication of polymer replicates the polymer's functions
• RNAs retain structural & enzymatic functions to apply control info
• DNAs codified control information into "genes"
– Selective advantages for grouping genes into chromosomes
• Accurate replication
• Controlled segregation into daughter cells

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Reproduction, sex, and diversification (2)
 Clonal reproduction in prokaryotes
– Clonal evol & differentiation of coadapted snippets in lineages
– Advantage: Protected accuracy of existing world 3 knowledge
– Disadvantage: Reduced ability to recombine tested knowledge from
different sources in one lineage
 Sexual recombination totally independent from reproduction
– Transformation (naked DNA absorbed from environment)
– Transduction (viral transfer)
– Conjugation (transfer of plasmid DNA via cell bridge)
– Recognition of related & rejection of unrelated DNA sequences
– Pairing & crossing over of homologous DNA
 Eukaryote DNA well isolated from external exchanges
 Choreographed cell & nuclear fusion
– Choreographed recombination and assortment
– Specialised knowledge allows emergence of biological speciation and gene
pools as evolutionary entities

22. Personal Research
Knowledge in higher order autopoiesis (1)
Second order systems (multicellular organisms)
– Clonal budding and alternation of generations common in lower orgs
– W2 knowledge transmitted via structure of egg cell
• Learning reflected in structural connections of neurones and other
aspects of dispositional structure (physiological adaptation)
• Most dispositional (somatic) learning cannot be transferred via sexual
reproduction
– Extended parental care can transfer some W2 knowledge via
demonstration and copying (i.e., tacit exchange)
– W3 knowledge in DNA
• All cells have same DNA
• Some DNA is control info for cell differentiation and development
• Only evolves via blind variation and selective elimination of carriers
– W3 knowledge in extrasomatic heritage
• Evolution of semiotic/linguistic transfers
• Encoded objects

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Knowledge in higher order autopoiesis (2)
Third order systems (societies, organizations)
– Pubs: Hall 2003, 2005, 2006; Else 2004; Hall et al. 2005;
Nousala et al, 2005; Dalmaris et al. 2007
– W2 knowledge
• layout and capabilities of plant and machinery
• social network structure
• tacit organizational routines
• tacit personal knowledge
• cultural dynamics
– W3 knowledge
• part of DNA at level of individual organisms encodes adaptations for
social behaviours
• pheromonal trails, published inducements, etc.
• records and documents of organizational significance
• explicitly defined processes and procedures

24. Personal Research
The organisation is a complex system in the
environment
 Processes (which may be complex subsystems that are autopoietic in their own
rights) are necessary responses to imperatives:
– Survival
– Self-maintenance of the processes themselves
Constraints and boundaries(laws of nature determine what is possible)
ProcessesProcesses
The organisation's imperatives and goals
Energy (exergy)
Recruitment
Materials
Income
Observations
Entropy/Waste
Products
Departures
Expenses
Actions

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 Organisations (and other living things) are complex
dissipative systems emerging from the medium
 They consume environmental resources that are limited
 Resources
 People
 Income
 Sinks for entropically degraded materials/devalued
energy
 Competition limits survival
Some concepts building on autopoiesis theory
and Karl Popper's theory of knowledge
WORLD 1 ("everything")
Medium or
supersystem
Resources
People
Economics
Information
Constraints
{
Organisation 1
Organisation 3
Organisation 2
Organisation 4

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Material Reality
WORLD 1
AUTOPOIETIC
SYSTEM
Embodied
cybernetic
knowledge
WORLD 2
Constrain/Control
Observe/M
easure
Recall
ITERATION/SELECTION
THROUGH TIME
Produce
Symbolically
encoded
knowledge/
memory
WORLD 3
Knowledge in an autopoietic entity

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http://www.orgs-evolution-knowledge.net/
..
.
.
.
. ..
.
.
.
.
.
.
. ..
.
.
Emergent autopoietic vortexes forming world 2
and world 3 in a flux of exergy to entropy
.....
.
.
.
.
. ..
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
. ..
..
→ Flux along the focal level →
Exergy
source
Entropy
sink
Symbolic
knowledge
Embodied
knowledge
Autonomy
Autocatalytic
metabolism
Material
cycles

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Cognition (terms are meaningful in relation to
autopoietic or artificially intelligent systems)
 Observation: Initial change induced within the autopoietic system by
a perturbation
 Classification (/ decision): Process by which an induced change
results in the system settling into one of alternative attractor
basins on a landscape of potential gradients
 Meaning: The net result in the system due to the initial propagation
and classification of an observation
 Coombe's Hierarchy (Australian Army Info Mgmt Manual)
– Data: The atomic level of meaning
– Information (first level of synthesis): Classified observations assembled
into relationship structures
– Knowledge (second level of synthesis): Semantically identified and linked
information
– Intelligence (third level of synthesis): Tentative theory(ies) about the
world based on knowledge
– Wisdom (fourth level of synthesis): Solutions after the elimination of
errors through testing theories against the world
– Strategic power (the result): Wisdom applied to control the world

29. Personal Research
Coombe's hierarchy in the autopoietic entity
Environment
Autopoietic system
Cell
Multicellular organism
Social organisation
State
Perturbations
Observations
(data)
Classification
Meaning
An "attractor basin"
Related
information
Memory of history
Semantic
processing to
form knowledge
Predict, propose
Intelligence

30. Personal Research
Another view
Decision
Medium/
Environment Autopoietic system
World State 1
Perturbation
Transduction
Observation Memory
Classification
Evaluation
Synthesis
Processing Paradigm
Assemble
Response
Internal changes
Effect action
Effect
Time
World State 2
Iterate
Conscious OODA Loop in Material Terms
Codified knowledge
Observed internal changes

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Paradigm of the autopoietic organization (2)
Nelson & Winter (1982): Evolutionary Theory of
Economic Change
– Postulated that organizational knowledge transcends
knowledge of individual members to form
organizational heredity to maintain the existence and
behaviour of the organization (i.e., self-production).
– Assumed this transcendent knowledge was tacit
(Polanyi)
• physical layout
• routines
• contexts
• connections
von Krogh and Roos (1995) Organizational
Epistemology

32. Personal Research
Existing users of Autopoiesis neglect World 3
 Current paradigm of organizational autopoiesis
– Blind spot: Maturana & Varela legitimately did not include reproduction
in their minimal definition of autopoiesis
– As stated the concept does not consider persistent heredity
transcending the life of a single entity
 Nelson & Winter
– Focus on tacit personal & organizational knowledge
– Represents late 1970s early 1980s thinking
• As they were writing, world 3 organizational content largely consisted of
data, information & transaction records, not knowledge
 Roles of persistent knowledge (heredity) to guide growth &
maintenance of the living organization
 The exception is Hugo Urrestarazu (2004) On Boundaries of
Autopoietic Systems
– Three domains: phenomenological, "biological", "languaging
– Funct. equivalent to Popper's 3 worlds

33. Personal Research
Organisational knowledge in World 3
Persistent objects of corporate knowledge
– Articles of incorporation & employment agreements
– Contracts
– E-mails & correspondence
– Graphics and drawings
– Plans, records, process & procedure documents
– Enacted workflow systems
– Written history
– Links & captured contexts
– Databases
– AV recordings
World 3 comprises the bulk of organizational memory or
heredity

34. Personal Research
END