Very interesting article. Coming from an Enterprise Architecture perspective, I wonder whether “identity + state + trajectory” is sufficient for something to be considered a holon.
In my own modelling work, I tend to view a holon as an active structural element that participates in a recursive whole–part pattern. For example, an enterprise contains departments, departments contain positions, positions are occupied by people; similarly facilities contain equipment, equipment contains components. The same organizational grammar repeats at multiple scales.
Under that view, a kettle could be considered a holon because it is an active structural element within a functional system and participates in this recursive decomposition. Water, however, would be passive structure (material) and part of the holon’s environment rather than a holon itself.
This makes me wonder whether fractal organization should be part of the definition of a holon, rather than identity and trajectory alone.
I suspect you're right. I have an article on fractals and holons that I've had in the queue for a while. May be time to dig into it. You need an agent to attach a timeline (or trajectory) to. That timeline is traced across the containing holon. I recently completed a dungeon crawl with a primary agent representing the user character (the user becomes the actor that motivates that character), as it wended its way through the dungeon, moving items around, killing (or not killing) monsters, and so forth. There were portals that connected various rooms, and each portal had a boundary that indicated whether the portal could be crossed or not. This isn't necessarily typical of all holarchies, but it's at least suggestive that the quartet of agent, holon, event, and context provides a very common pattern.
Very interesting article. Coming from an Enterprise Architecture perspective, I wonder whether “identity + state + trajectory” is sufficient for something to be considered a holon.
In my own modelling work, I tend to view a holon as an active structural element that participates in a recursive whole–part pattern. For example, an enterprise contains departments, departments contain positions, positions are occupied by people; similarly facilities contain equipment, equipment contains components. The same organizational grammar repeats at multiple scales.
Under that view, a kettle could be considered a holon because it is an active structural element within a functional system and participates in this recursive decomposition. Water, however, would be passive structure (material) and part of the holon’s environment rather than a holon itself.
This makes me wonder whether fractal organization should be part of the definition of a holon, rather than identity and trajectory alone.
I suspect you're right. I have an article on fractals and holons that I've had in the queue for a while. May be time to dig into it. You need an agent to attach a timeline (or trajectory) to. That timeline is traced across the containing holon. I recently completed a dungeon crawl with a primary agent representing the user character (the user becomes the actor that motivates that character), as it wended its way through the dungeon, moving items around, killing (or not killing) monsters, and so forth. There were portals that connected various rooms, and each portal had a boundary that indicated whether the portal could be crossed or not. This isn't necessarily typical of all holarchies, but it's at least suggestive that the quartet of agent, holon, event, and context provides a very common pattern.