Examples of Open and Closed systems in human institutions.

The street is an open space. You can walk there and do business there and you are generally not interfered with. Subject to the culture there are certain things you can do and cannot do, but basically the street is an open public space. A street in a corporate campus is a closed space. You cannot just walk in there, start playing the guitar under a tree. Well, even if nobody stops you at any time a security guard can appear and send you on your way. In other words even if it appears to be accessible, the law of property ownership concerns the right to close off certain spaces. The English family home is a closed space for example.

The public hospital is a mixture of open and closed space. Anyone can walk in looking fort treatment, but you can’t just walk around anywhere smoking and coughing on everybody.

And so, of interest to the philosopher is what the open and closed spaces are, and why they are open or closed. It is not the role of open philosophy to argue that all things should be open. This would be as ridiculous as forcing the rosebuds open in midwinter demanding that they would flower. Rather it is the open philosophy which enquires into the state of the rosebud. To observe it as it opens to the summer. And it is an open philosophy that knows when to be open and when to be closed.

To close off public resources to the public, and to dispense them among the minority elite by way of trickery and deceit is contrary to the open philosophy. Like wise, to open up private homes to the general public is not at all the nature of an open philosophy.

Things open and close by their nature.