Literacy, Language, and Market
Reference is made to the works of Margaret Wheatley (Management and the New Science); Michael Rothschild (Bionomics); Bernardo Huberman (Dynamics of Collective Actions and Learning in Multi-agent Organizations); Robert Axtel and Joshua Epstein (creators of Sugarscape, a model of trade); and Axel Leijonhufvud (Multi-agent Systems), all published as Webtexts.
Transactions as extensions of human biology evince the complex nature of human interactions. Maturana and Varela indirectly refer to human transactions: "Coherence and harmony in relations and interactions between the members of a human social system are due to the coherence and harmony of their growth in it, in an ongoing social learning which their own social (linguistic) operation defines and which is possible thanks to the genetic and ontogenetic processes that permit structural plasticity of the members" (Op. cit., p.199). They diagram the shift from minimum autonomy of components (characteristic of organisms) to maximum autonomy of components (characteristic of human societies).
A Walk Through Wall Street, in US News and World Report, Nov. 16, 1987, pp. 64-65. One from among many reminiscences by Martin Mayer, author of Madison Avenue, Wall Street, Men and Money.
"Wall Street as price setter for the country dealt with much more than pieces of paper. Commodities markets proliferated. The fish market was on the East River at Fulton; the meat market on the Hudson just to the north…. The 'physicals' of all commodities markets were present…there were cotton sacks in the warehouse of the Cotton Exchange, coffee bags stored here for delivery against the contracts at the Sugar and Coffee Exchange on Hanover Square and often a smell of roasting coffee.
"In the 1950's, this was a male world-women were not allowed to work on the floor of the Stock Exchange, let alone become members. The old-timers explained with great sincerity that there was no ladies room."
The report points out that today Wall Street "sees less of the real world outside, depends more on abstract information processed through data machinery and more than ever responds to forces far from its borders."
Zoon semiotikon, the semiotic animal, labeled by Paul Mongré (also known as Felix Hausdorf).
Charles S. Peirce gave the following definitions: Representamen: a Sign is a Representamen of which some interpretant is a cognition of a mind (2.242). Object: the Mediate object is the object outside the Sign; …the sign must indicate it by a hint (Letter to Lady Welby, December 23, 1908). Interpretant: the effect that the sign would produce upon any mind (Letter to Lady Welby, March 14, 1909).
In reference to the symbolic nature of market transactions, another Peircean definition is useful: "Symbols grow. They come into being by development out of other signs…. We think only in signs…. If a man makes a new symbol, it is by thoughts involving concepts" (2.307).