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About us |
Karner Consult Pte Ltd was
founded by two biologists, Markus Karner and We believe that human systems
follow similar dynamics as natural systems. They grow, evolve, self-organize
into larger wholes, and differentiate into ever more complex systems. Related
keywords such as dynamical system, evolution, ecology, ecological niche,
competition, fitness landscape, emergence, ontogeny etc., come to mind in the
same context. We call this entire spectrum of processes "organic development",
and dedicate both our company's efforts and this website to it. Organic development describes the
self-organizing, adaptive behavior of sufficiently complex dynamical systems
over time, which we can then consider in a sense “alive”. Many specialized disciplines have
developed over the past decades to deal with organic development, though
without necessarily calling it that. Foremost, complexity theory and the
study of nonlinear dynamical systems come to mind. While the word “organic” suggests
that we deal with living beings or environments, many models related to
organic development come from theoretical biology, physics, or information
theory. Some of the earliest prescient descriptions were actually given by
economists and social scientists: Adam Smith's "invisible hand" and
Friedrich Hayek's "spontaneous order" metaphors, to name just two
seminal insights. In Nature we find highly
relational, complex systems of two different kinds: * larger systems that show emergent
phenomena, self-organization, and evolution, but undirected outcomes
(example: ecosystems, or species over evolutionary time scales), and * organisms, kinds of “goal-oriented”
dynamical systems whose development paths follows highly reproducible
trajectories, as evidenced by embryonic development for instance (think the
development of identical twins from a single cell to very similar persons in
later life). We believe that just like all of
biology, most human-generated systems show spontaneous order and organic
development as well, and thus, take on a life of their own. Human
technological systems, cities and nations, political and legal institutions,
companies and economies, may well be of human making, but as a whole, not of
human design. To build goal-oriented and stable
self-organizing dynamical systems with any reliability, however, has so far
eluded human science. Understanding organic development would enable us to
create orderly structures by using the same underlying principles that arose
in Nature by themselves, leading to exceptionally well adapted structures. To understand how things grow and
live, as opposed to being built and maintained, and to apply this
understanding to whatever humans create – buildings, nations, corporations –
is the real frontier today: in science, politics, and economics. |
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