"There are numerous cases - he says - when the tide is running from his place of origin, but the water does not move - like the waves formed in May at nivah course winds: the waves seem to be running on the field, between those fields from his seat not disappear . Indeed, imagine a solitary wave traveling along the surface of the water: it can not be identified with some part of the water, it captures in its sphere of influence all the new particles and passes on. Figuratively speaking, the wave can not scoop up a bucket. Is not it like this for their quality on the ship Theseus or university?
The science has long been attempts, deliberate or natural, summarized the physical concept of a wave, referring to its specified characteristics, and to consider from this point of view of the phenomenon, far beyond physics. "A living organism - wrote one of our famous biologist VN Beklemishev - does not have the constancy of the material - its shape is similar to the form of a flame formed by the rushing stream of rapidly heated particles are replaced by particles, the form remains." Beklemishev thus refers to Cuvier, who wrote: "Life is a whirlwind, then faster, then slower, more complicated or less complicated, enthralling in the same direction the same molecule. However, each individual molecule enters into it and leaves it, and it lasts continuously, so that the form of living matter are more important than material.
The founder of cybernetics, Norbert Wiener compares the living organism with a signal that can be transmitted through radio or television. "We only eddies in the ever-flowing river, - he writes. - We are not a substance which is retained, but the shape of the structure, which perpetuates itself. Study the structure of a signal, and it can be transmitted as a signal. " Referring to Wiener, our home, and now American psychologist VA Lefebvre wrote about systems, drawn on the systems, relationships between which he calls the attitude of "web-design". "But it is not drawing such a picture on the carpet - he writes - it is rather a moving image on the screen. A similar example - your shadow that moves behind you, grabbing all the new parts of the surface.
We propose to call all the phenomena of this kind Kumatoid (from the Greek kuma - wave). The specific feature of Kumatoid - their relative indifference to the material, their ability, as it were "floating" or "slip" through the material like a wave. This Kumatoid differ from the usual things that we are accustomed to identify with the pieces of matter. If you go back to the ship Theseus, and to the problem which has tormented the ancient Greeks, we can say that as Kumatoid ship remains the same, but the body is like a piece of matter, he changes and becomes another vehicle.
Among Kumatoid include a huge number, generally speaking, heterogeneous phenomena, from the waves on the water to living organisms. We primarily are interested in social phenomena, but they all show clear signs of Kumatoid. We have already seen that the Moscow University, as indeed any other, nothing in this plan does not differ from the ship Theseus, ie, also represents Kumatoid. But science, in turn, very similar to the university. Indeed, unless it can be associated with some fixed material? Everything is changing: people, buildings, institutions, equipment of laboratories.
But then, every human activity can be considered from this point of view. In the previous chapter, we compared the science activities carpenter. But what is this last? It can be understood as a single act of processing a fixed material in the final product. But is it we mean when we talk about the activities of the carpenter, carpenters, masons, etc.? No, of course. We assume that such singular acts constantly repeated and reproduced. This means that the activity loses its connection with a fixed concrete material, because everything changes: the same substance can not be reworked twice, the same operation can not be implemented twice, tools change too, and replaced completely.
In our social life we are literally surrounded by Kumatoid, we represent the material on which they live, they are acting on our behalf, they make us human. Consider, for example, such an object, like the word, for simplicity, any noun in our language: house, tree, pineapple. The word can be spoken aloud, can be written on paper, can be cut in stone. In each of these cases is possible, and practically implemented, in principle an infinite number of options. In other words, content words all the time. But the constantly changing and those items that word means. In the city of every house you can call "home" in the forest, every tree a "tree". Pineapple buy and eat, but once bought pineapple - is also a "pineapple". Of course, like a wave, Kumatoid enough voters, and lives only in a certain environment. The ocean waves can not propagate into the interior of the continent, the word "pineapple" does not mean a house or a rock.
But let us turn to the phenomenon of knowledge, without which it is impossible to understand the science. When it comes to the analysis of knowledge, the identification of its structure, then the first thing that strikes the eye is some uncertainty in the very formulation of the problem. What, indeed, we should investigate? Knowing how the object is not similar to what we normally encounter, speaking about the structure or structure. It does not seem, for example, a crystal or molecule. First of all, striking him some kind of vague spatial-temporal localization of. Indeed, where, and how there is this specific knowledge? Immediately it can be represented by patches of printing ink on paper or sound vibrations, or scratches on the stone. It is unlikely, however, we can assume that, repeating the same phrase or propagating a manuscript in large numbers, we thus increase the amount of knowledge. We have something to increase, but what? It is obvious that all copies of the book course on theoretical physics by Landau and Lifshitz contain the same knowledge, if there are no typographical, no torn pages, etc. Is not it strange?
With a glass of water, we can pour water into a cup, but none of them will be at the same time complete. If the number of glasses to increase strongly, then each separately would be virtually empty. With the knowledge this does not happen, because multiplying scientific book or an article in large numbers, we each get the same knowledge as a whole, not piecemeal. Knowledge in this respect resembles fabulous inconvertible ruble. And it underlines once more that in speaking about the structure of knowledge, we must throw too direct analogy with the structure of matter.
All these difficulties can be overcome if we consider knowledge as Kumatoid. It is in this case, like a wave, which is all the time in the new material. Other instances of the same books, texts, written or spoken aloud, all are one and the same knowledge, the same "wave". Material changes, but the "wave" is the same. One and the same idea can be expressed in different ways, can be repeated several times, can be written on paper or on tape. Is not that amazing!
We now make one more step, important to understand what Kumatoid. Ship of Theseus is the same ship with the complete replacement of its constituent parts only because it retains the shape of these parts, their relationships and relative position. In other words, Kumatoid - not just the flow of material, we must still show that in this flow of something remains the same, to show the existence of certain invariants. University of Moscow, for example, changing its students and teachers can move to new premises, but he remains the University of Moscow, while his preserved function while both students and teachers, and staff carry out their assigned duties until the living traditions of Moscow University. We can say that the university - it is not buildings and not people, but a lot of programs in which all this works.
From this it follows that any Kumatoid can be regarded as a memory device, which recorded above invariants. For example, the ship Theseus will exist as Kumatoid only if it rebuilt gradually. The fact is that in circumstances where we take out only one board, all the rest "remembers" its size, shape and position. But removing just a lot of boards, we can destroy the "memory", and Kumatoid cease to exist. Of course, you can shape and arrangement of parts to fix with the help of drawings, but it just means that we have one memory device was replaced by another.

Social Kumatoid and social relay

As we have seen, the world Kumatoid is quite diverse and includes phenomena that are sometimes in all other respects very much alike. It is therefore hardly possible to find some common mechanism of their lives. What is common between science and water waves, except that in both cases we deal with Kumatoid? Probably nothing. Such poor in content similarity can, of course, have some methodological or heuristic value, but it is not enough to build a general theory.
We will, however, primarily interested in social Kumatoid, and in this case, the question of some general mechanism of their existence is quite appropriate and legitimate. Returning to our example of Moscow University. If we can not associate it with being a particular material, there remains only one thing - consider it as a program or, more precisely, as a set of programs in which is organized and operates all the time updating his material. This has already been discussed above. We have before us the flow of the material that comprises many interrelated programs. It is, of course, not only about training programs, but about the entire set of instructions, facilities, rules, traditions that define the work and the behavior of students, faculty, administration - everyone from the doorman to the rector.
But what is the mechanism of life of these programs, where and how they exist? It can be clearly defined and written instructions or tacit knowledge. The term "tradition", which we still use, firstly, does not conduct a sufficiently clear distinction between these two forms, and secondly, due to the first, focuses our attention not on the specific mechanism of the lives of others. Obviously, playing a large part of the relatively stable forms of our behavior and activity in no way connected with written texts, but most often not verbalized at all. Tacit knowledge is transmitted from person to person or from generation to generation on the level of play of direct specimens. There are therefore makes sense to isolate and specifically to consider this mechanism.
This is important because the language that underpin the more advanced forms of transfer of experience, he certainly is transmitted and reproduced in this way, ie at the level of direct samples of speech activity. The child, mastering the language does not use any dictionaries or grammars. The only thing that has at its disposal - a sample of live speech. And in one language environment, he begins to speak in Russian, in another - in English. It is obvious that we have in this play some of the initial, basic mechanism of social memory, the foundation, which provides the ultimate playback of all elements of culture. One can therefore attempt to distinguish between different kinds of traditions, as we have done until now, you can try to classify them, and we can derive all the different forms of the same basic shape. We will not do that, but this is precisely the ultimate aim of the theory of social relays.
Under the relay race, as is already clear from the foregoing, we mean the transfer of experience from person to person, from generation to generation through the reproduction of the immediate patterns of behavior or activities. Specific examples illustrating the power of this mechanism.
We are all familiar from childhood, Russian fairy tales, everyone knows about Baba Yaga, and the hut on chicken legs, everyone remembers, like geese, swans have taken Ivanushka, and much more. Actually, fairy tales are very varied and on a plot, and character actors. And then in 1928 appeared the work of Propp "Morphology of the Folktale, which was destined to become a classic. Propp showed that all fairy tales, despite their apparent diversity, are one and the same latent structure. It turned out that, no matter how varied the nature of actors, their functions remain largely constant. Suppose, for example, that in various fairy tales, we meet these episodes: 1) the king sent for the princess of Ivan, and Ivan is sent, and 2) my sister sends her brother for drugs, and my brother goes, and 3) smith sends a laborer for the cow, and the laborer is sent. Here, as invariants serve two functions: reference and output in the search. As for the characters, motivations and other references, this "value" variables. It was found that the number of functions is limited (31 function), and their sequence is always the same. Why?
This question Propp meets in another work, "Historical Roots of a fairy tale." Ancient basis of the tale, from his point of view, is a magical rite of initiation, initiation, widespread in tribal societies, the rite in which boys and girls were transferred to full members of the tribe. Thought Propp is the following: primitive initiation rite is accompanied by a story, interpret its contents; rite died, and the story continues to live up to now and is transmitted from generation to generation. In other words, the fairy tale, we listen to in my childhood and which they themselves tell or read to their children - it is something like a wave rolled toward us from ancient times, hunting magic rituals.