The Body of Education

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The Body of Education

• What might a healthy education system look like?

R. Darren Stanley University of Alberta Plexus
Institute
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Some lessons from medicine and human
physiology
Conventional medical wisdom holds that...
... disease and aging rise from stress on an
otherwise orderly and machinelike system that
the stress decreases order by provoking erratic
responses or by upsetting the bodys normal
periodic rhythms.
Counterintuitive findings suggest that...
...various physiological systems have a capacity
for rather erratic behaviours when human beings
are young and healthy. It is counter-intuitive,
but as human beings age or develop certain
illnesses, particular systemic behaviours become
increasingly regular.
- A. L. Goldberger et al. Chaos and fractals in
human physiology, Scientific American, Feb 1990.
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Put differently, irregularity and
unpredictability are important aspects of healthy
physiological systems indeed, for a healthy
life. Decreased variability and accentuated or
increased more regular, periodic interactions
tend to be associated with or increase the
possibility for disease and dying.
Changelessness is a sign of death,transformation
a sign of life. - Commentary on the I Ching
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Promising advances from paradigmatic
complexity
Healthy variability can now be understood and
even quantified through an increasing growth of
concepts and tools introduced by mathematicians
and computer scientists to the biological systems.
In particular, fractal geometry and non-linear
dynamics have become very useful tools for
thinking about, exploring and understanding
complex systems. Moreover, medical clinicians
and researchers are just finding ways to quantify
and understand the chaotic dynamics of fractal
structures or architectures.
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Medical research studies of complex
biological phenomena
Fractal structures and processes have been
observed in a variety of different physiological
contexts

• blood vessels

• nerves

• bronchial tubes

Images from www.pedriatriconcall.com,
www.psychclassics.yorku.ca (Wilhelm Wundt,
Principles of Physiological Psychology (1902),
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White blood cells and circulatory dynamics...
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Disorders affecting the human gait...
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Why fractal anatomies?
Fractal anatomies in different organ systems
serve seemingly different functions. Fractal
branches and folds...

• Increase the surface area for absorption
  (intestines)

• Amplify the distribution or collection of various
  fluids or gases (blood vessels, bile ducts,
  bronchial tubes)

• Facilitate information processing (nerves,
  nervous system)

These structures exhibit redundancy and high
irregularity, and thus are more robust and
resilient to injury or perturbations.
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Normal sinus rhythms of the heart
Cardiologists regularly refer to the seemingly
constant, predictable pulse in the wrist of a
healthy person at rest as a regular sinus rhythm.
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Patterns of health and illness
Severe Congestive Heart Failure
Healthy Heart
Severe Congestive Heart Failure
Cardiac Arrhythmia, Atrial Fibrillation
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The healthy record (B), far from a homeostatic
constant state, is notable for its visually
apparent nonstationarity and "patchiness." These
features are related to fractal and nonlinear
properties. Their breakdown in disease may be
associated with the emergence of excessive
regularity (A) and (C), or uncorrelated
randomness (D). Of note in (C) is the presence
of strongly periodic oscillations (1/min), which
are associated with Cheyne-Stokes breathing, a
pathologic type of cyclic respiratory pattern.
Quantifying and modeling the complexity of
healthy variability, and detecting more subtle
alterations with disease and aging, present major
challenges in contemporary biomedicine. -A. L.
Goldberger, Physionet Dataset
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Lessons learned...
... a REGULAR, SINUS rhythm is not the sign of a
healthy heart at all. In fact, a regular,
predictable, sinusoidal heart beat pattern is the
sign of an aging or some cardiac disorder. In
addition, uncorrelated random patterns are signs
of disease as well. Thus, variability appears to
be a necessary organizing principle for a healthy
heart. That is, some variability is necessary,
but not anything goes.
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Complex dynamics...
A variety of tools exist for analyzing the
dynamics of complex non-linear systems. Fourier
spectrum analyses of time-series data would work
in this case for identifying the possibility of a
chaotic system. Given any waveform, a Fourier
analysis would reveal the presence of any
periodic components. Also, tools for representing
the phase space of complex non-linear systems
are convenient for identifying classes of
behaviors over many different initial
conditions. Trajectories in these phase spaces
tend to follow what are commonly referred to as
point-attractors, limit cycle-attractors, or
strange attractors (chaotic attractors). Research
seems to indicate that healthy heart beat
(beat-to-beat variability) is more chaotic in
nature!
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The functional advantages of chaotic systems

• Chaotic systems operate under a wide range of
  conditions, thus making them
• Adaptable
• Flexible or plastic
• Capacity to cope with an unpredictable and
  changing environment

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Perturbations to the system
Depending upon the health of the system,
perturbations can have some profound affects ...
or not. Ensembles of perturbations they are
seldom single in number may have the affect of
pushing a system out of its equilibrium state
into another qualitatively different one. On the
other hand, particular features may persist under
certain perturbations to the system. In the
latter, it sometimes said that the system,
particularly a biological system, is robust.
That is, the system has a capacity to withstand
perturbations in structure without changing its
overall function (mutational robustness).
Robustness can also be seen as a systems ability
to perform different functions without the need
to change the structure of the system
(phenotypical plasticity). - Erica Jen,
Stable or robust? Whats the difference?,SFI
Working Paper
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Toward a view of a healthy education system
It would seem apparent that certain pathologies
arise under particular conditions that might be
otherwise described as unhealthy. This view of
physiological health might be useful for thinking
about the sorts of conditions for a healthy
education system. And, indeed, the notion of
diversity within social systems is a common
enough notion discussed at this level. The
notion of variability, however, seems to have a
much wider connection with organizations of all
kinds.
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Variability across bodies and boundaries
By shifting focus to relationships instead of
separate entities, scientists made an amazing
discovery system properties are awesomely
elegant in their simplicity and constancy
throughout the universe, from suborganic to
biological and ecological systems, and mental and
social systems, as well. - Joanna Macy
Davis Sumara. (2000). Curriculum forms on
assumed shapes of knowing and knowledge, J.
Curriculum Studies, 32(6), 821-845.
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Healthy bodies in educational contexts

• Biological Bodies
• Sleeping patterns, eating habits, exercise,
  social relations

• Social Bodies (Collectives)
• Classroom structures, relationships
  implications for teaching (early childhood
  development, schooling, post-secondary, adult
  education, professional programs)

• Political Bodies
• Actions celebrating cultural differences,
  recognizing differences in the work
  place/society/schools critical discourses in
  academia economics and the business of
  education service to communities

• Ecological Bodies
• Degradation of and being out of touch with the
  environment

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Some final thoughts...from others
From a management point of view, the current
division of human knowledge into disciplines is
managerially stupid and an often evil design of
science, which blocks off inquiry into critical
issues because the issues don't fit into the
disciplines. C.W. Churchman Change the
environment, not the person. Buckminster
Fuller What unites all beings is their desire
for happiness. Dalai Lama Creativity comes from
freedom. W. Edwards Deming A human being is part
of a whole, the universe. Our task must be to
free ourselves from the delusion of
separateness. Albert Einstein
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Suggested Readings
J. B. Bassingthwaighte, L. S. Liebovitch and B.
J. West. (1994). Fractal Physiology. Oxford
University Press Oxford. B. Davis and D J.
Sumara. (2000). Curriculum forms on assumed
shapes of knowing and knowledge. Journal of
Curriculum Studies, 32(6), 821-845. B. Davis, D.
J. Sumara, R. Luce-Kapler. (2000). Engaging
minds Learning and Teaching in a Complex World.
Lawrence Erlbaum and Associates Mahwah, NJ. A.
L. Goldberger. Fractal variability versus
pathologic periodicity complexity loss and
stereotypy in disease. Perspectives in Biology
and Medicine, 40(4), 543-561. A. L. Goldberger,
D. R. Rigney and B. J. West. (1990). Chaos and
fractals in human physiology. Scientific
American, 262(2), 42-49. K. McCandless and K. Yu.
(2001). Images of simplicity on the other side
of complexity. Plexus Institute
presentation. D. W. Orr. (1994). Earth in Mind
On Education, Environment, and the Human
Prospect. Island Press Washington, DC.