Eigenmode

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In dark age theory, an eigenmode is a self-consistent solution to the problem of social living. It is an exemplar of the phoenix principle, insofar as the solution is not pre-posited on existing developemnts, but leaps from first principle to a fully-developed meta-framework, requiring that development take place horizontally, across a society's strands, rather than vertically, working only within one sub-section of society, divorced from the uber-reality of communcal consensus.

[edit] Eigenmode theorists

An early statement of the eigenmode concept was by Bronislaw Malinowski in The dynamics of culture change (New Haven 1945). Reflecting on the sight of a bicycle leaning against a hut in an African village, he perceived that the bicycle was symbolic of far-reaching transformations taking place in African life. It was made by a firm in Japan specially for the African market. It required maintenance, involving a supply of technical knowledge and spare parts. It would be useless unless its African owner had roads to travel on and reasons for travelling. Hence, the arrival of the bicycle depended on the simultaneous arrival of numerous other innovations. In other words, societies cannot change piecemeal but must do so in a self-consistent way across many fronts.

Niklas Luhmann provides a more explicit account of this point in Social systems (Stanford 1995). He characterises societies as autopoietic or self-reproducing systems, in which 'no part of the system can control others without itself being subject to control' (p. 36).