I'll join

[BillHall]

I hope to engage in some reasonably scientific discussions of
autopoiesis and its extensions.

As a one-time organismic and cellular biologist interested in the
evolution of systems of heredity, I now find myself managing
organizational knowledge, and I find autopoiesis to be a more than
adequate definition of what it means to be living at any level of
organization - cellular, organismic or organizational.

Regards,

William P. (Bill) Hall, PhD
Documentation & KM Systems Analyst
Head Office/Engineering
Nelson House Annex, Nelson Place
Williamstown, Vic. 3016 Australia
Tel: +61 3 9244 4820
Email: bill...@tenix.com
URL: http://www.tenix.com

Evolutionary Biology of Species and Organizations
http://www.hotkey.net.au

Visiting Faculty Associate
University of Technology Sydney

National Fellow
Australian Centre for Science, Innovation and Society
History and Philosophy of Science
University of Melbourne
Email: wh...@unimelb.edu.au
URL: http://www.acsis.unimelb.edu.au/

[kent.d...@gmail.com]

Bill---

I am interested in Knowledge Management and Ontology myself.

How do you see the relation between KM and autopoiesis working?

Kent

[Bill Hall]

Kent,

I have dealt with this question at some (but not complete!) length in
several papers that are now published. Some of my earlier thoughts on the
ideas were discussed on the autopoiesis-net site. All are available on my
web site (and in one case to do so I retained copyright rather than sign it
over to a publisher that wasn't willing to accept the reservation.

The 2003 and seminar presentation works are probably the most accessible.
The epistemological side is based very strongly on Karl Popper's 1972 and
later works - which take what is close to a radical constructivist view of
knowledge. What Popper does that differs greatly from the constructivists is
that he explains how constructed knowledge can grow to approach representing
the real world.

What I have done is to combine Popper's theory on the emergence and
evolution of knowledge with an understanding of autopoiesis as it can be
applied to hierarchically complex systems.

Hall, W.P. 2003. Organisational Autopoiesis and Knowledge Management.
Presented to ISD '03 Twelfth International Conference on Information Systems
Development - Methods & Tools, Theory & Practice, Melbourne, Australia, 25 -
27 August, 2003 -
http://www.hotkey.net.au/~bill.hall/OrgAutopoiesisAndKM(final).pdf

Hall, W.P. 2005. Biological nature of knowledge in the learning
organization. in special issue Doing Knowledge Management, eds. Firestone,
J.M. and McElroy, M.W. The Learning Organization 12( 2):169-188 -
http://www.hotkey.net.au/~bill.hall/TheBiologicalNatureshortrevjmf1bh3.pdf

Hall, W.P. 2005. Towards a science of knowledge. Seminar presentation.
University of Technology Sydney, 27 July 2005.
http://www.hotkey.net.au/~bill.hall/TheElephant2(internet).pps [this has
some PowerPoint animations you may find interesting - Acrobat doesn't know
what to do with them]

Hall, W.P., Dalmaris, P., Nousala, S. 2005. A biological theory of knowledge
and applications to real world organizations. Proceedings, KMAP05 Knowledge
Management in Asia Pacific Wellington, N.Z. 28-29 November 2005 -
http://www.hotkey.net.au/~bill.hall/No%20Robots/publicAutopoiesisOrg4.doc

Nousala, S., Miles, A., Kilpatrick, B., Hall, W.P. 2005. Building Knowledge
Sharing Communities Using Team Expertise Access Maps (TEAM). Proceedings,
KMAP05 Knowledge Management in Asia Pacific Wellington, N.Z. 28-29 November
2005 - http://www.hotkey.net.au/~bill.hall/No%20Robots/TEAMOctober1web.doc

A number of other papers in biology and organizational knowledge management
are also available via my list of publications:
http://www.hotkey.net.au/~bill.hall/PapersandPresentations.htm

More work is in progress.

I will be more than happy to explore with you any questions or issues you
think the papers may raise. This can only help me to better understand what
are some very complex ideas in their own right, to say nothing of my
expression of them.

Regards,

Bill

Bill Hall

Evolutionary Biology of Species and Organizations

url: http://www.hotkey.net.au/~bill.hall
------------------------------------------
Information is not knowledge
Knowledge is not wisdom
Wisdom is not truth
Truth is not beauty
Beauty is not love
Love is not music
Music is THE BEST
-----------------------------
(Zappa - Packard Goose)