elearnspace

This is important: Weinberger states: “Truth is a property of networks…It is, of course, an unowned, self-contradictory, unsettled truth that is too big to be contained by any individual. It is outside of us and among us. It is gained not by trying to contain it but by traveling through it.”
I agree…it’s inline with what Stephen Downes has been saying, though his focus is more on the emergent nature of meaning as a function of networks.
This gets back to some conversations (and here…and here) I’ve had in the past on the objective/subjective nature of knowledge. If, as Weinberger asserts, truth is a property of networks, it generates, partly, the notion of synchronization advocated by Steven Strogatz. Simply – some physical items do not connect unless they share some capacity or similarity to enable connection/synchronization. This capacity to synchronize is based on clear attributes contained in physical entities, outside of our interpretation as humans (i.e. an item is more than our perception of it, it possesses something in itself that is acknowledged by the item which seeks to synchronize with it), as reflected by organism’s (or atoms or other physical entity) ability to recognize and meaningfully relate to the attributes contained in “the other”. Truth, then, as a function/attribute/property of networks, also suggests that the objective attributes of entities extend beyond what they are in themselves and what is created as these entities are combined in a myriad of possible ways. The truth represented by the network is a repurposing of the attributes held in an entity…a creation of something new, but that possesses, in part, the attributes each entity held prior to being consummated into a network. This doesn’t say anything about understanding and meaning – at this level, subjectivity becomes more prominent. Do ideas or people possess the same self-organizing elements that are reflected in nature? What happens when people inject volition and will into the nature of connection forming? A self-forming network based on synchronization of similarity and recognition of attributes inherent in the items involved, is different from people injecting subjectivity through choice and reflection. Put another way, an entity “is”, but when influenced by our choice in connecting and organizing, it becomes what we “will it” to be and only then shifts to subjectivity.
Update: David updates the post: “It would have been clearer for me to say understanding is a property of networks. Then I wouldn’t have left the impression that I think facts are a matter of majority opinion. Facts are facts. That’s pretty much their essence. Understanding, however, is plural, at least in many domains — less so in the sciences, more so in the humanities.”