Mapping the analogy of institutions as organisms (1)

Institutions exhibit many characteristics reminiscent of life. I'm not the first one to acknowledge this. However generally when the analogy is made, we suggest that humans are cells. Generally in this metaphor we say something like a state’s government is the brain. But the analogy starts to fall apart quickly. Humans can belong to more than one institution. They travel between countries etc. It also fell out of favor because Nazi ideology pushed this analogy hard and scared people away from making it. And the fact that it was pushed by the Nazis it telling about a flaw in that way of thinking. Cells serve mostly a single purpose. Their function is very deterministic. They are wholly depending on the collective of other cells that make up the organism. There is no room in this metaphor for the variability of human nature. It views people as static. To this day the ideologues who hold those views believe that people’s traits are static over their life. That they are genetically determined.

However the fact is that institutions appear to behave like life. The similarities range from the superficial/aesthetic—for instance scribes transcribing and distributing religious codes, and them getting stored in a tabernacle for preservation is reminiscent of the way our cells treat DNA—to the more fundamental—for instance institutions clearly constrain the probability distribution of behaviors of the humans composing it, meaning they are driven away from their equilibrium states in a way that is used to do work that is not directly beneficial to that individual on behalf of the institution. There’s more discussion of these kinds of things in past posts, like this one, and this one.

So then the question is: what’s the appropriate way to map the analogy that can allow us to gain insight into how institutions are really functioning? All models are analogy, so whether this is truly a new model or just an analogy is immaterial. If it gives us new testable hypotheses that allow us to make better predictions, it’s something worth exploring. And in this case it would allow us to apply thermodynamic principles to the behavior of institutions which will give plenty of testable hypotheses.

If the intersection is this analogy using thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, then we might want to start there. We can say that work is the constraint of a probability distribution. Doing work on a particle means changing its probability distribution. The base probability distribution will be maximum entropy. When doing work, the probability distribution will have a relatively reduced entropy compared to the base. In the case of biological life, this probability distribution is the wave-function of the particles that compose it. If we consider a single-celled organism, we can see that it manipulates the particles in its environment using those sorts of constraints. An algae cell doing photosynthesis has photo-sensitive pigments which are tied to other molecules which can constrain an electron of a certain type of molecule to be excited by a photon. The system can trust that at some point a certain molecule will have an electron excited, and has another molecule in the chain ready to react to that movement from excitation back to equilibrium.

Similarly a company which makes toys relies on the fact if they offer money, they can excite some human, company, or other agent out of their equilibrium state, and constrain their route back to equilibrium such that the company can get work done on its behalf. For instance, by engaging a human in a contract to deliver a toy, that human will not reach equilibrium until the toy is delivered. This would indicate that whereas for us matter and fundamental forces are the medium through which we experience reality, for an institution, it may be through roles, agreements, policies and data.

To illustrate a bit further—imagine there’s some object—a tree in the amazon rainforest, let’s say. If we cannot perceive it, and we don’t have a representation of that specific tree, then we would not make any decisions based on that tree. So we can say that we don’t perceive the tree. This can also be true of things much closer to us. Bacteria for instance. Before we knew of bacteria, they were able to change our behavior, but only mediated through another representation—as spirits or energies. We did not perceive the actual bacteria. Similarly for institutions, if an object of reality is not represented by an institution through its policies, data, or implicitly through humans or other agents making decisions on its behalf, then we can’t say that the object is “perceived” by the institution. The institution is incapable of internally changing its behavior due explicitly to that object. So the realm of things that an institution can “perceive” is limited to the realm of things which can affect its roles data or policies. In other words, something that can constrain the probability distribution of its behavior… something that can do work on it.

A stronger statement might be that if an institution delegates decision-making to a process external to its policies, it is not perceiving the internals of those processes. In other words, that an institution is wholly composed of its policies. I’m not sure what to think about the stronger statement. I’m curious what any readers would think about this. I guess the equivalent for biological life would be to say that if there are forces or entities in the universe that affect the matter making up biological life, we cannot consider them to actually be a part of that biological life. In other words they should not be playing a thermodynamic role within a living system.

In the biological life there are quanta… specific degrees to which an electron can be excited, which then can drive certain amounts of work. From the perspective of an institution, the equivalent would be some sort of fundamental categorizations of policies. If we consider policies to be programs, and we can describe those programs in terms of category theory, it’s not out of the question there could be some fundamental level on which these policies are quantized, and hence institutional life would be quantized as well.

Moving up the scale, we can see that matter arranges itself in such a way as to create a semi-permeable boundary between interior processes which is a more complete ability to constrain, and external processes which need to be filtered. In the case of institutions, rather than molecules and intramolecular forces, we have agreements and the roles between which these agreements are made, the sum of which make up policy. When a person becomes a member of an institution, they are agreeing to fulfill a role. Often times some oath or contract will be signed. That role is then the way that they interact with the institution. This boundary was much clearer in the past when cities had city walls. There were only small openings. The gates had names that were referenced in a shared way. A superior officer was able to tell a group of soldiers to guard one gate or another. So, interestingly we can see that the walls are part of the policy. They fulfil a role. Thus they can be referenced in policy, despite not being able to actively execute instructions. Important buildings were also constructed according to policy. As they still are today with building codes. So we can see infrastructure plays an important part in institutions.

That said, while the buildings are important, they themselves are not part of the institution. That is, they are only perceived indirectly, through processes in which humans or other agents create data. That data is then analyzed by other processes which may trigger new processes in response. But the institution does not perceive the true state of the building. Take this example—a bridge which collapsed due to disrepair and a failure at several levels of decision-making. The inspectors noted the state of the bridge and its need for repair. However the institution did not have the resources (i.e. energy) to trigger the required processes to repair it. There were several layers through which the message had to be communicated that the bridge was in disrepair. Similarly someone who is too exhausted might sleep through a very loud sound, or fail to react to a ball being thrown at them.

So we have a foothold into a mapping of the analogy. Further discussion can be around (1) mapping the analogy further from an information theory and thermodynamic perspective (2) identifying some quantities that could be measured (3) develop some testable hypotheses that this could lead to (4) mapping the analogy further up and down the scales & providing more examples. Any readers, feel free to comment with which areas you would like to see future explorations into.