System Change

The concept of event also concerns what is understood as “**system change**.”

At the operative level, meaning-constituting systems are very unstable, their basal →self-reference signaled by the constant destruction and production of elements. Elements as events can only be identified through the difference between before and after, i.e., elements cannot be changed.

Only structures can change, because their identity remains relatively stable over time. For instance, a scientific discipline can change its paradigms upon the establishment of new distinctions that guide the development of research. However, in order for that to happen, communications must be produced that orient themselves to this new distinction.

This means that social systems, at the level of its structures of expectations [→Expectations (Erwartungen)] are capable of learning. This cannot happen at the level of communication, since communication flow is irreversible. The stability of systems with temporal complexity must therefore be attributed to their structures and not their autopoiesis, where they are instead constitutively unstable.

> From this perspective, memory [→Time] does not have the function of maintaining elements, but rather the function of maintaining their ability to generate structures. This is possible only due to the constant reproduction of disintegration and reintegration of elements.

Unlike objects, which manifest only their own state, identifying events requires distinguishing between two states: the state before and the state after. This gives the event a paradoxical character—it is neither the before, nor the after. Instead, it is the unity of this distinction: an event’s identity is itself a distinction and both the before and the after are always present in every event. [G.C.] – (Unlocking Luhmann, p 87– 89)

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> Classes as regular objects are described by other (regular) classes called metaclasses. A metaclass has a single instance (except metaclasses involved in the kernel of Smalltalk). It establishes a couple class/metaclass schema. Inheritance on metaclasses follows the one at the class level (cf Figure 1), defining the Smalltalk metaclass composition rule.

> […] In the temporal dimension, the irreversibility of time permits the introduction of asymmetry. This arises through the differentiation of, on the one hand, the past, which is from this moment onwards lost and irretrievable, and, on the other hand, the contingent, uncertain future. The past provides the opportunity to accept and legitimize the situation in the present; whereas the open, foreseeable future makes it possible to set goals and finalize decisions regarding what we have, in a specific instance, attempted to achieve or imagined as probable. Situations and events are revealed in the passage of time, and, in the present, we must act in order to bring about or avoid future situations or events. The immutability of the past and the uncertainty of the future create an asymmetry in the temporal dimension, an asymmetry that can only be introduced in the present: past and future are imaginary constructs of a system that exists only in its present.

> The **ClassBuilder** uses the `become:` primitive (cf 2.1.1) to proceed with the strutural modifications, by replacing the old objects with the new ones throughout the entire system.

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DOT FROM lambda-browsing

What solved problems yesterday will block progress tomorrow. Recognize that change that matters involves a complex system of influence that has more to do with history than anything intrinsic to the problem space.