Commenting on the Overview of Systems Science (draft version 0.5) for the Guide to the Systems Engineering Book of Knowledge is problematic. Applying systems thinking on systems thinking constitutes a mess of ideas that is difficult to tease apart. Breaking the idea of “systems science” in its parts of (i) “systems” and (ii) “science” is reductive. The more compatible approach is to view “science” with a larger context of “systems thinking”.

I’ll attempt to shed some more light on concerns and perspectives in the following sections:

• 1. The definition of science often tends towards disciplinarity; systems thinking aims for transdisciplinarity
• 2. Science is part of thinking, which can be philosophically framed as episteme (know why), techne (know how) and phronesis (know when, know when, know whom)
• 3. Domains of systems thinking can be categorized into systems theory, systems methods, and systems practice
• 4. Incomplete systems thinking may suggest paths through which gaps may be filled
• 5. Systems thinking has evolved with roots of linear causality, circular causality, complexity theory and reflexivity theory
• 6. Opportunities to refresh ties between systems thinking and action science, theory of practice and social learning could be pursued

The discussion of science and systems thinking leads to perspectives at another level. There’s an additional appendix on applied philosophy that illustrates that such inquiries are not without history.

1. The definition of science often tends towards disciplinarity; systems thinking aims for transdisciplinarity

In a previous post on systems thinking and (the) systems science(s) in a system of ideas, the correlation between the term “systems science” and “social systems science” at the University of Pennsylvania was reviewed. While “social systems science” was chosen as a term to be purposively clumsy, Russell Ackoff preferred more generally to use the label of “systems thinking”, obviating some criticisms on definitions of science. Science tends to be organized as disciplines. In the Oxford English Dictionary, one definition of discipline is “a branch of instruction or education; a department of learning or knowledge; a science or art in its educational aspect”. Another is “a particular course of instruction to disciples”, which implies a master. Ackoff criticized disciples as anti-systemic, challenging his students and followers to transcend his body of work.

Effective research is not disciplinary, interdisciplinary, or multidisciplinary; it is transdisciplinary.

Systems thinking is holistic; it attempts to derive understanding of parts from the behavior and properties of wholes rather than derive the behavior and properties of wholes from those of their parts.

Disciplines are taken by science to represent different parts of the reality we experience. In effect, science assumes reality is structured and organized the way universities are. This is a double error.

First, disciplines do not constitute different parts of reality; they are different aspects of reality, different points of view. Any part of reality can be viewed from any of these aspects. The whole can be understood only by viewing it from all the perspectives simultaneously. Second, the separation of our different points of view encourages looking for solutions to problems with the same point of view from which the problem was recognized. Paraphrasing Einstein, we cannot deal with problems as effectively as possible by employing the same point of view as was used in recognizing them.

When we know how a system works, how its parts are connected and interact to produce the behavior and properties of the whole, we can almost always find one or more points of view from which better solutions to the problem can be found than can be found from the point of view from which the problem was recognized. For example, we do not try to cure a headache by brain surgery, but by putting a pill in the stomach. We do this because we understand how the body, a biological system, works. When science divides reality up into disciplinary parts and deals with them separately, it reveals a lack of understanding of reality as a whole, as a system.

Systems thinking not only erases the boundaries between the points of view that define the sciences and professions, but also erases the boundary between science and the humanities. Science, I believe, consists of the search for similarities among things that are apparently different; the humanities consist of the search for differences among things that are apparently similar. Science and the humanities are the head and tail of reality, viewable separately, but not separable. It is for this reason that I have come to refer to the study of systems as part of the scianities. [Ackoff 1999, pp. 426-427, editorial paragraphing added]

In his books, Ackoff wrote that “the pursuit of truth is the function of science“.  Truth is one of the four ideals from ancient Greek philosophy (including the good, beauty, and plenty). More practically, coming at problematique — a system of problems — with a disciplinary lens can lead — as Ian Mitroff says — to a Type III error, as “the error of solving the ‘wrong’ problem precisely” or “the probability of solving the ‘wrong’ problem when one should have solved the ‘right’ problem”. Ackoff and Mitroff were both students of C. West Churchman, who developed the Design of Inquiring Systems. Inquiry is “an activity which produces knowledge” [Churchman 1971, p. 8]. Transdisciplinary would be one of the features of the “fifth way of knowing“, as unbounded systems thinking.

2. Science is part of thinking, which can be philosophically framed as episteme (know why), techne (know how) and phronesis (know when, know when, know whom)

For a deeper appreciation of the meaning of science, let’s go back to ancient Greek philosophy, and then work our way towards the present. The intellectual virtues of episteme, techne and phronesis are articulated in ancient times, although phronesis has been slower to develop in modern philosophy. Here’s a table summarizing some of the language used in philosophy. While episteme is often described as “know why” and techne as “know how”, it’s my personal intellectual contribution to describe phronesis as “know when, know where, know whom”. This is related to themes coming from phenomenology and social theory.

As a way of illustrating some distinctions between the approaches, let me describe an experience that I’ve had with practitioners of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). For some time, I’ve been seeing Dr. David Lam, who is trained in both western and Chinese techniques. He thus has been able to give me explanations in multiple ways (e.g. the west sees cortisone produced in the adrenal gland, TCM sees cortisone as produced by kidney system). He applies techniques of pulse diagnosis, and prescribed herbs — now standardized into pill form, manufactured in China. Dr. Lam exhibits understanding and experience all three virtues of episteme, techne, and phronesis. More recently, I’ve also tried an apothecary in Chinatown, who similarly uses pulse diagnosis. He prescribes decoctions of raw herbs to be cooked at home. This apothecary demonstrates techne and phronesis, as knowledge passed down through multiple generations in his family, in the practice of “tasting a thousand herbs“. As effective as the remedies have been, the apothecary has not demonstrated the skill of episteme. He does not have the university diplomas on the wall, as does Dr. Lam. My ailment may have been cured, but the theoretical explanation is incomplete.

A more detailed description of episteme, techne and phronesis as interpreted from Aristotle by Bent Flyvbjerg writes:

Episteme concerns universals and the production of knowledge that is invariable in time and space and achieved with the aid of analytical rationality. Episteme corresponds to the modern scientific ideal as expressed in natural science. In Socrates and Plato, and subsequently in the Enlightenment tradition, this scientific ideal became dominant. [....]

Whereas episteme resembles our ideal modern scientific project, techne and phronesis denote two contrasting roles of intellectual work.Techne can be translated into English as ‘art’ in the sense of ‘craft’; a craftsperson is also an artisan. For Aristotle, both techne and phronesis are connected with the concept of truth, as is episteme. [....]

Techne is … craft and art, and as an activity it is concrete, variable, and context-dependent. The objective of techne is application of technical knowledge and skills according to a pragmatic instrumental rationality, what Foucault calls ‘a practical rationality governed by a conscious goal’ (Foucault 1984b: 255). [...]

Whereas episteme concerns theoretical know why and techne denotes technical know how, phronesis emphasizes practical knowledge and practical ethics. Phronesis is often translated as ‘prudence’ or ‘practical common sense’. [....] Phronesis is a sense or a tacit skill for doing the ethically practical rather than a kind of science. [Flyvbjerg 2006, pp. 371-371]

Science in the age of the Enlightenment – which is at the foundation of science in the west today — emphasized episteme and techne. However, the primacy of phronesis in Aristotle’s philosophy has required reiteration.

In Aristotle’s words phronesis is an intellectual virtue that is ‘reasoned, and capable of action with regard to things that are good or bad for man’ (Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics …). Phronesis concerns values and goes beyond analytical, scientific knowledge (episteme) and technical knowledge or know how (techne) and it involves judgements and decisions made in the manner of a virtuoso social actor. [....]

Aristotle was explicit in his regard of phronesis as the most important of the three intellectual virtues: episteme, techne, and phronesis. Phronesis is most important because it is that activity by which instrumental rationality is balanced by value-rationality, to use the terms of German sociologist Max Weber; and because, according to Aristotle and Weber, such balancing is crucial to the viability of any organization, from the family to the state. [Flyvbjerg 2006, p. 370]

In a common sense view of the world, applying “know why” (episteme) and/or “know how” (techne) in the wrong place, wrong time and/or with the wrong people signals immaturity in practice. Applying “know when, know where, know whom” appropriately demonstrates an appreciation of the situation at hand, a possible implicit weighing of values, and the setting for an appreciative system.

3. Domains of systems thinking can be categorized into systems theory, systems methods, and systems practice

One breakdown of systems thinking is a three way categorization into systems theory, systems method and systems practice. This is not the only way to analyze systems thinking, yet it may be useful in an alignment with episteme, techne and phronesis. Here’s a list of some top-of-mind systems thinking domains as a sample of the breadth of knowledge, inquiries and approaches. This list is intended as indicative, rather than exhaustive, so other system thinkers may have different views. In addition, since theory and methods and practice can all influence each other, there are some ties between the domains that may not be readily apparent.

Even the most well-read systemicists may have only a passing recognition across the multitude of theories, methods and practices labelled as systems thinking or systems science. One authentic path through the body of knowledge is historical, as key figures in the systems movement have each had a system of ideas that has influenced his or her work. Surfacing some of the relationships and social ties between proponents of the systems movement was an objective of systems sciences connections conversations.

4. Incomplete systems thinking may suggest paths through which gaps may be filled

Presuming an interest in rounding out a knowledge of systems thinking, each individual comes from a different background of experiences. We each take different courses in secondary and post-secondary education, and then avocations and passions bring us along different paths. As an exercise, let’s think through three cases in which systems thinking might be developed from different staring points. These are summarized in the following table.

Summarizing approaches to logic described by Peirce:

• Deduction starts from a rule (major premise), applies a case (minor premise) and concludes with a result.
• Induction starts from a result (major premise), applies a case (minor premise) and concludes with a rule.
• Abduction starts from a rule (major premise), applies a result (minor premise) and concludes with a case.

Let’s flesh out some potential descriptions where systems thinking needs development.

Path (a): Strong on episteme and techne, weak on phronesis:

A person could be strong in episteme (e.g. classroom or book learning) and techne (e.g. methods and techniques), but weak in phronesis (e.g. practical experience). A deductive path of learning could include conscious placements into those situations (i.e. appropriate when, where and whom) on which the phronesis could be developed. This is the spirit behind job rotation, in the development of well-rounded employees.

Path (b): Strong on techne and phronesis, weak on episteme:

A person could be strong in techne (e.g. project management) and phronesis (e.g. hand-on experience), but weak in episteme (e.g. theoretical science). An inductive path of learning could include mentoring by a master who can develop insight into how prior experiences are (or are not) similar. Such regimens of abstraction can deepen expertise, separating the novice who still needs the textbook from the guru who writes them.

Path (c) Strong on episteme and phronesis, weak on techne:

A person could be strong on episteme (e.g. theory) and phronesis (e.g. learning by doing), but weak on techne (e.g. standardized processes). An abductive path of learning could propose repeatable methods that might cover the most common situations, and gradually expand to include greater variability. Technique can be improved both at individual and collective levels.  

Getting some parties to admit to gaps in knowledge may require working on their humility. Identifying the gaps to be filled is a first step in learning.

5. Systems thinking has evolved with roots in linear causality, circular causality, complexity theory and reflexivity theory

The domains of knowledge in systems thinking (and the systems sciences) have not been standing still. Critics of mainstream science often center on a philosophy of logical positivism. In a broader view, Stuart Umbleby describes four models used in the systems sciences: (i) linear causality; (ii) circular causality; (iii) complexity theory, and (iv) reflexivity theory:

One way to understand how the system sciences are developing is to look at the creation of new methods for conducting inquiry. Presently four models are being used in science.

1.1 Linear Causality

Linear causality is the way most science has been done and is still being done. It is the way most dissertations are written. It is supported by many statistical techniques, including multiple regression. It has numerous advantages. Hypotheses can be falsified. Propositions can be assigned a level of statistical significance. The objective is to create descriptions which correspond to observations.

1.2 Circular Causality

Circular causality is essential to any regulatory process – a thermostat, an automated assembly line, driving a car, or managing an organization. Circular causal processes can be modeled with causal influence diagrams and system dynamics models. Often a psychological variable is involved, e.g., perception of…, or desire for…

1.3 Complexity Theory

Complexity theory is primarily a method of computer simulation. It is based on cellular automata and genetic algorithms. The “game of life” is a simple example. The basic idea is very general and encompasses competition among species or corporations, also conjectures and refutations in philosophy. There are two processes involved — the creation of new variety and selection of appropriate variety. The combination of these processes explains emergence of new order.

1.4 Reflexivity Theory

Reflexivity theory requires operations on two levels – observing and participating. Reflexivity involves self-reference, hence paradox, hence inconsistency. Reflexivity violates three informal fallacies – circular arguments, the ad hominem fallacy, and the fallacy of accent (referring to two levels of analysis at one time). [Umpleby 2010, p. 1]

Reflexivity theory has only begun to rise over the past few decades. Since systems thinking centers on appreciating with multiple levels and time scales in relations between parts and wholes, reflexivity is not necessarily such a big stretch for the immersed. The conceptual challenge is likely greater for those more comfortable within the boundaries of disciplinary-focused perspectives. Scientists successful in the current scientific mainstream may not be so motivated to go through a paradigm shift.

… we can now ask which models are considered acceptable by the contemporary academic community. Linear causality, the first model, is the dominant conception of science. It is what doctoral students are taught to use when writing dissertations. Circular causality, the second model, was used in first order cybernetics, but it involves circularity, which some people interpret as fallacious reasoning. Complexity, the third model, includes Stephen Wolfram’s [2002] “new kind of science” and the idea of self-organizing systems. Complexity theory uses a new kind of mathematics, but does not violate any informal fallacies. It is easily recognized as “science” by people trained in the physical sciences. Reflexivity, the fourth model, is very close to second order cybernetics.

Models 1 and 3 – linear causality and complexity theory — are acceptable. No informal fallacies are violated. Model 2 — circular causality — is suspect. It involves circular reasoning. But it has proven to be useful. Model 4 — reflexivity — violates 3 informal fallacies, so is highly suspect. Scientists shun it. They do not take it seriously. Indeed physical scientists seem to have a visceral reaction against it. But the informal fallacies are just “rules of thumb.” [....]

Practicing managers and social scientists will readily agree that human beings are both observers and participants in social systems. Indeed, they say this idea is “not new.” But this perspective is not permitted by the classical conception of science. The conception of science needs to be expanded in order fully to encompass social systems. [Umpleby 2010, pp. 4-5]

Second order cybernetics dates back into the 1970s.  Reflexivity has made significant inroads into social theories in cultural anthropology (e.g. Pierre Bourdieu, with An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology and in understanding the workings of financial markets (e.g. George Soros, with a General Theory of Reflexivity).

6. Opportunities to refresh ties between systems thinking and action science, theory of practice and social learning could be pursued

Some ways of thinking in domains regarded as outside the systems movement may not have been recognized as part of systems thinking, yet could be highly compatible. With some effort from both sides, bridges could be built for mutual benefit. Many of these advances has been associated with interests in (human) action, practice and (social) learning.

Action science, as originally developed by Chris Argyris, was the foundation for the more familiar concepts of organizational learning and double-loop learning. Systemicists have often closely related this work to learning as described in Steps to an Ecology of Mind, by Gregory Bateson.

(Action science) is an inquiry into social practice, broadly defined, and is interested in producing knowledge in the service of such practice. Thus, what counts as a solution for action science both overlaps with and diverges from prevailing scientific criteria. Like the empirical-analytic tradition, action science requires that knowledge include empirically disconfirmable propositions that can be organized into generalizable theory. But at the same time, it also requires that these propositions be falsifiable in real-life contexts by the practitioners whom they are addressed. Like applied research, action science requires knowledge to be useful. Yet in so doing it emphasizes the designing and implementation of social action, and it rejects the current dichotomy between basic research and applied research. It instead asks that its knowledge illuminate basic issues in ways that are at once generalizable and applicable in particular cases. (Argyris et al. 1985, p. 232)

Theory of practice was revolutionized by Pierre Bourdieu. His system of ideas has influenced a generation of sociologists and organization scientists. Bourdieu didn’t believe in defining terms as independent and objective entities. A concise description appears in a chapter by Moishe Postone, outlining the key ideas of habitus, capital and field, in a reflexive perspective:

[In] attempting to transcend the opposition between science and its object, Bourdieu treats science and scientists as part and product of their social universe. The scientific field can lay claim to no special privilege as against other fields; it too is structured by forces in terms of which agents struggle to improve their positions. Science seeks to analyze the contribution of agents’ conceptions to the construction of social reality, while recognizing that those conceptions frequently misrecognize that social reality. By the same token, scientists’ constructions of their own reality — the scientific field and the motivations for scientific behavior — often misrecognize that reality. Consequently, it is essential to advance and endorse a reflexive science of society.

Bourdieu’s project, then, can be described generally as an ongoing attempt to overcome theoretically the oppositions that have characterized social theory and to formulate a reflexive approach to social life. Three fundamental concepts lie at the heart of this project: “habitus,” “capital,” and “field.”

The notion of habitus is central to Bourdieu’s theory of practice …. To this end, Bourdieu treats social life as a mutually constituting interaction of structures, dispositions, and actions whereby social structures and embodied (therefore situated) knowledge of those structures produce enduring orientations to action which, in turn, are constitutive of social structures. Hence, these orientations are at once “structuring structures” and “structured structures”; they shape and are shaped by social practice. Practice, however, does not follow directly from orientations, in the manner of attitude studies, but rather results from a process of improvisation that, in turn, is structured by cultural orientations, personal trajectories, and the ability to play the game of social interaction.

[....] The habitus is at once intersubjective and the site of the constitution of the person-in-action; it is a system of dispositions that is both objective and subjective. So conceived, the habitus is the dynamic intersection of structure and action, society and the individual. [....]

Bourdieu’s notion of capital, which is neither Marxian nor formal economic, entails the capacity to exercise control over one’s own future and that of others. As such, it is a form of power. This notion of capital also serves to theoretically mediate individual and society. On one level, society is structured by the differential distribution of capital, according so Bourdieu. On another level, individuals strive to maximize their capital.[....] The capital they are able to accumulate defines their social trajectory (that is, their life chances); moreover, it also serves to reproduce class distinctions.

Much of Bourdieu’s work focuses on the interplay among what he distinguishes as social, cultural, and economic capital. [....] Although the economic is crucially determining, it must be symbolically mediated. [....] Symbolic capital functions to mask the economic domination of the dominant class and socially legitimate hierarchy by essentializing and naturalizing social position. [....]

The purpose of Bourdieu’s concept of field is to provide the frame for a “relational analysis,” by which he means an account of the multi-dimensional space of positions and the position taking of agents. The position of a particular agent is the result of an interplay between that person’s habitus and his or her place in a field of positions as defined by the distribution of the appropriate form of capital. The nature and range of possible positions varies socially and historically.

Each field is semi-autonomous, characterized by its own determinate agents (for example, students, novelists, scientists), its own accumulation of history, its own logic of action, and its own forms of capital. The fields are not fully autonomous, however. Capital rewards gained in one field may be transferred to another. Moreover, each field is immersed in an institutional field of power and, even more broadly, in the field of class relations. Each field is the site of struggles. [....]

Bourdieu interrelates the three central concepts we have outlined. He conceives of social practice in terms of the relationship between class habitus and current capital as realized within the specific logic of a given field. An agent’s capital is itself the product of the habitus, just as the specificity of a field is an objectified history that embodies the habitus of agents who have operated in that field. The habitus is self-reflexive in that, each time it is animated in practice, it encounters itself both as embodied and as objectified history.

On the basis of these three concepts, Bourdieu has attempted to formulate a reflexive approach to social life that uncovers the arbitrary conditions of the production of the social structure and of those dispositions and attitudes that are related to it. [....] [Postone et al. 1993, pp. 3-6]

Social learning is generally known as the domain of “communities of practice”, originated by Etienne Wenger. With Bourdieu as one of his foundations, learning is expressed in both the contexts of individuals and collectives in a framework that includes (i) meaning, (ii) practice, (iii) community, and (iv) identity.

A social theory of learning must … integrate the components necessary to characterize social participation as a process of learning and of knowing. These components … include the following.

1) Meaning: a way of talking about our (changing) ability — individually and collectively — to experience our life and the world as meaningful.

2) Practice: a way of talking about the shared historical and social resources, frameworks, and perspectives that can sustain mutual engagement in action.

3) Community: a way of talking about the social configurations in which our enterprises are defined as worth pursuing and our participation is recognizable as competence.

4) ldentity: a way of talking about how learning changes who we are and creates personal histories of becoming in the context of our communities.

Clearly, these elements are deeply interconnected and mutually defining. [Wenger 1999, pp. 4-5]

The domains of systems thinking and systems engineering certainly have perspectives on action, practice, and learning. As we seek to deepen our appreciation of the meaning of (the) systems science(s), we should be aware of advances in other fields that could help to inform our understanding of the world.

Appendix: On applied philosophy

The above essay has jumped from science to broader definitions of thinking, and philosophy. In the same way that engineering is applied science, we shouldn’t hesitate to expand a view of science as applied philosophy. There’s a history of applied philosophy with the history of the systems movement, as described in the memoirs of Russell Ackoff.

Churchman and I designed an Institute of Experimental Method that was intended to conduct interdisciplinary research and problem solving where societies were involved. We took our proposal to the President of University [of Pennysylvania] who showed interest in it. He said he would create such an Institute if we could get the support in writing of three different departrnents. lt took almost a year to get the approvals required. In the meantime the President had retired due to illness and had been replaced by a lower level officer of the University. When we showed him the proposal and conditions for approval that his predecessor had established, he told us he was not bound by agreements made by his predecessor. He showed no interest in our proposal. I took that as a rejection of our idea and saw no reason to remain at Penn even if I could have.

I graduated with a PhD in the spring of 1947. During the summer that followed I accepted an appointment in the Philosophy Department of Wayne University in Detroit. (lt was not then a state supported institution. That came later, after I had left the University.) The Dean of the College had assured me that he would support the creation of an Institute much like the one Penn had rejected. lt was to be called the Institute of Applied Philosophy. [Ackoff 2010, pp. 98-99]

Criticism of “high science” are not new. The disconnects from Plato through Descartes have been described by Stephen Toulmin, in support of broader views of science (e.g. participatory action research).

The High Science model, then, rests on two chief assumptions. The older of these — the assumption that the only authentic knowledge is universal, general and timeless — can already be found in the Greek philosophers of Antiquity. This belief is what gave the theorems of abstract geometry their particular charm for Plato and his successors; within an axiomatic system, our understanding of spatial relations and other properties of Nature achieves — so they dreamed — a general, eternal, immutable order unavailable to the pedestrian, disorderly facts of everyday experience.

This superior kind of knowledge came to be called episteme (theoretical grasp): the Platonist dream was that the knowledge we generate in dealings with the world can be organized into systems of theorems, from whose axioms all humbler, more detailed kinds of knowledge can be formally deduced. As the inscription over the entry to the Academy declared, no one could hope to grasp the principles of public affairs who had not already mastered the model High Science — i.e. geometry.

The other assumption of thc High Science model is more recent and more elaborate. In all his own writings, from 1629 on, René Descartes combined a scientific admiration for Galileo’s telescopic discoveries with philosophical commitment to this kind of Platonism. After 1640 the use of axiom systems to organize knowledge and experience of other kinds soon became common form: Isaac Newton’s Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy was just one very successful example out of many. In this respect theoretical physicists, up to James Clerk Maxwell and beyond, have shared Descartes and Newton’s Platonic vision, of episteme as the exemplar of high, pure science.

Before long, the geometrical model of a scientific theory was linked to half a dozen other maxims of method. These concerned

• the kinds of experiments and observations that. are acceptable in a Science;
• the objective. detached posture of the scientist toward his objects of study;
• the inferior status of ‘practical’ knowledge, as a secondary (applied) mode of understanding.

As a youth, Descartes found Poetry and History entrancing; but, when introduced to Philosophy, he decided that those fields — though pleasing — lacked intellectual depth. History, in particular. was like Foreign Travel: it broadened the Mind. but it did not deepen it. Only mathematical knowledge (he concluded) could do that!

If, in methodological terms. the only legitimate approach to Science is to accept the Platonist vision of episteme — with or without its Cartesian additions -— the methods of inquiry of participatory action research are philosophically indefensible. Confronting these methodological hurdles, it falls at the first fence. It has practical not theoretical aims, it fails to separate the observer and observed, and its empirical results cannot be generalized or abstracted from their original loci; the list of defects goes on and on. lf we are to find a way ahead from this point, we shall need another line of approach, powerful and reputable enough to stand comparison with the familiar model of High Science. [Toulmin 1996, pp. 206-207]

Aristotle’s criticism of the Platonic model are further fleshed out by Toulmin.

Later in the Ethics, Aristotle goes on to classify the different species of knowledge: these included techne (know how) and phronesis (the ability to spot the action called for in any situation) as well as Plato’s favored episteme (theoretical grasp}. In this way, he raises the possibility that different inquiries can be pursued and judged ‘rational,’ in their own different, yet appropriate ways. He elaborates on this view in later works, starting with the Art of Rhetoric. Geometry may be admirable in its way; but practical inquiries like clinical medicine and helmsmanship do not demand (say) the formal skills possessed by mathematical whizzkids. Practical competence in such arts is acquired, rather, over the course of long experience.

Aristotle treats the multiplicity of intellectual disciplines in a democratic, not in an elitist way. We need not enthrone any single discipline as the Master Science, whether geometry for Plato or theoretical physics for 20th century readers. Nor need we rule out, as unsound, inquiries that do not follow the methods or conform to the standards of the Platonist ideal. Each discipline can match its methods and standards to its special subject matter and problems. Fields like clinical medicine, horticulture and ornithology are, thus, no more bound than political science to produce axiomatic theories, Indeed, from this alternative point of view, the High Science model is not so much convincing as pretentious. [Toulmin 1996, pp. 207-208]

To bring us up to date from the ancient Greeks to the 20th century, Rojcewicz provides an interpretation of Heidegger’s interpretation of Aristotle (interpreting Plato). We add technology into the mix.

For Heidegger … technology is a theoretical — not a practical — affair. Technology is not directed toward making things, doing things, finding means to ends, instrumentality. More precisely, technology is primarily a theoretical affair. There is a practical side to technology, but that is secondary; it follows upon the theoretical understanding. Technology is, of, course, related to making things and doing things, but it is so related only because technology first of all is an understanding of what things are in general. Technology does determine our doing and making, but only because it determines what we take to be a thing in general in the first place. Technology is not practical directly, but only indirectly: by disclosing to us what constitutes beings, it provides us with a guideline that governs all our relations to beings, including our practical relations. lt is in virtue of the truth disclosed in technology, i.e., in virtue of its theoretical significance, that technology is practical. Technology can do things only on account of what it sees, and what it sees is that which makes a being be a being at all. [Rojcewicz 2006, pp. 56-57]

Techne can then be framed with the changeable, and episteme with the unchangeable.

What then, for Aristotle, is the difference between techne and episteme, between techne and knowledge pure and simple? As Heidegger says, they differ with respect to what they disclose and how they disclose. Episteme discloses what is unchangeable, techne what is changeable. And episteme is disclosure for its own sake, while techne has an ulterior motive beyond mere disclosure. Thus episteme is literally knowledge pure and simple: it is knowledge of what is simple (the eternal and unchangeable), and it is pure knowledge (for its own sake). Let us delve a little more deeply into this basic characterization of episteme in order to understand how techne differs from it.

For Aristotle, knowledge does not change. What most properly deserves the name knowledge is constant and permanent. But such a knowledge is possible only of unchanging objects. For Aristotle it is primarily the object that determines the character of the knowledge, not vice versa. There can be genuine knowledge, then, only of what is changeless, and what is changeless is eternal, never having come into being and never going out of being. Hence, there is no genuine knowledge of individual things; knowledge is possible only of the principles of things, the essences of beings (in Plato’s terms, the Ideas), and the ultimate principle of beings is Being. The most genuine knowledge is then ontological knowledge, and this more than anything else deserves to he called knowledge, episteme. Accordingly, there is only one genuine episteme, and that is philosophy or the understanding of Being as such. This knowledge has no ulterior motive, since the object of the knowledge, Being, cannot be influenced or manipulated or changed in any way. This knowledge is disclosive looking for the mere sake of disclosure; it is purely theoretical.

Techne, in contrast to episteme, is knowledge of changeable things; its objects come and go and change in various ways, and so techne cannot be considered knowledge in the most proper sense. In particular, its objects are not the changeable things of nature, which come and go of themselves, but the things that come and go due to a role played by the one who possesses the techne. This person discloses what does not yet exist concretely; and that disclosure is subject to change, since the thing may turn out differently than it was envisioned. [Rojcewicz 2006, p. 59-60]

With a shared understanding of the foundational philosophies, the thinking originating in the times of the ancient Greeks may be advanced with our contemporary pursuits.

References

Ackoff, Russell L. 1999. On Passing Through 80. Systemic Practice and Action Research 12 (4): 425-430. doi:10.1023/A:1022404515140.http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A:1022404515140.

Ackoff, Russell L. 2010. Memories. Triarchy Press. Preview at http://books.google.ca/books?id=63e3LQfZFYQC.

Argyris, Chris, Robert Putnam, and Diana McLain Smith. 1985. Action science. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Preview at http://books.google.ca/books?id=0lfRjwEACAAJ.

Churchman, C. West. 1971. The Design of Inquiring Systems: Basic concepts of Systems and Organization. Basic Books. Preview athttp://books.google.ca/books?id=gRBgAAAAMAAJ.

Flyvbjerg, Bent. 2006. Making Organization Research Matter: Power, Values, and Phronesis. In The Sage Handbook of Organization Studies, ed. Stewart R. Clegg, Cynthia Hardy, Thomas B. Lawrence, and Walter R. Nord, 370-387. Second. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.http://flyvbjerg.plan.aau.dk/Publications2006/PhronOrgClegg0603Handbook.pdf

Mitroff, Ian I., and Harold A. Linstone. 1993. The unbounded mind: Breaking the chains of traditional business thinking. New York: Oxford University Press, Preview at http://books.google.ca/books?id=AYX5ixVQpGcC&q.

Postone, Moishe, Edward LiPima, and Craig Calhoun. 1993. Introduction: Bourdieu and Social Theory. In Bourdieu: Critical Perspectives, ed. Craig J. Calhoun, Edward LiPuma, and Moishe Postone, 1-13. University of Chicago Press. Preview at http://books.google.ca/books?id=13fqL4FBGr8C.

Rojcewicz, Richard. 2006. The Gods and Technology: A Reading of Heidegger. SUNY Press. Preview at http://books.google.ca/books?id=BmV6_EFKUOMC.

Toulmin, Stephen. 1996. Concluding Methodological Reflections: Elitism and Democracy Amongst the Sciences. In Beyond Theory: Changing Organizations through Participation, ed. Stephen Toulmin and Björn Gustavsen, 203-225. John Benjamins Publishing. Preview athttp://books.google.ca/books?id=hMi4h6L7gWsC.

Umpleby, Stuart. 2010. From Complexity to Reflexivity: The Next Step in the Systems Sciences. In European Meeting on Cybernetics and Systems Research. Vienna, Austria. http://www.gwu.edu/~umpleby/recent_papers/2010 EMCSR Complexity an Reflexivity final.doc.

Wenger, Etienne. 1999. Communities of practice: learning, meaning and identity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Preview athttp://books.google.ca/books?id=heBZpgYUKdAC.

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Dialogic design and systems thinking can be closely related, although not everyone appreciates the ties.  For the Design with Dialogue community, at the invitation of Peter Jones, we jointly organized a workshop based on some ideas that I had previously brought together in teaching in Finland.  I’ve posted the slides — both with builds and as printable — over on the Coevolving Commons.  For people who weren’t there, I can provide an outline of the activities of the three hours.

After introducing ourselves in the circle, and speaking about dialogues that each of us might be interested in pursuing, I provided an explanation of the Map of Ignorance, as described in the Curriculum on Medical Ignorance by Witte, Kerwin and Witte in the University of Arizona College of Medicine.  We walked through the interpretation of Unknown Knowns, Known Unknowns, and Errors.

Unknown Knowns, Known Unknowns, Errors

Unknown unknowns raise questions about what might or might not be knowable.

Unknown Unknowns

Taboos and denials typically don’t enter a dialogue unless the facilitator ensures that they do.

Taboos, Denials

Questions of knowledge bring us to conceptions of science, related to scientific revolutions, whereby a quick outline of Thomas Kuhn and paradigm shifts was described.  This led to a discussion of mainstream science and post-normal science, following the work of Jerome Ravetz.  The combination of systems uncertainty and decision stakes might lead us to approaches based on applied science (e.g. engineering), professional consultancy (e.g. scientists) or post-normal science (e.g. dialogic design)

Attendees broke out into six groups.  From the predispositions individuals had outlined in the circle introductions, each group quickly chose a dialogue of focus for design.  They were asked to (i) create a quick map of ignorance for the topic, and (ii) discuss how the dialogue might be approached in the frame of mainstream science or post-normal science.

Returning to the circle, the second set of explanations was around the design of inquiring systems, as originally developed by C. West Churchman, with more concrete descriptions by Mitroff and Linstone.  Stories helped to differentiate four ways of knowing, as (i) inductive-consensual, (ii) analytic deductive, (iii) multiple realities, and (iv) dialectic.

A fifth way of knowing, a multiple perspectives systems approach, was presented as a challenge, sweeping in the four other inquiring systems.  For some attendees who were interested in business applications, I mentioned that Vince Barabba had described a multiple perspectives systems approach in Meeting of the Minds, and has recently published a new book The Decision Loom.

Participants returned to their groups to discuss what types of inquiring system(s) might be appropriate for the dialogues they were designing.

We closed down the Design with Dialogue session a little bit later than usual, as all groups seemed to want to continue working.  There was a question as whether we had covered all of systems thinking or part of it.  Inquiring systems are only one part of the larger body of knowledge in systems thinking.  Perhaps we’ll look to schedule some more systems thinking sessions relevant to dialogue designers in the future.

References

Barabba, Vincent P. 1995. Meeting of the minds: creating the market-based enterprise. Harvard Business Press, preview at Google Books.

Barabba, Vincent P. 2011. The Decision Loom: A Design for Interactive Decision-Making in Organizations. Triarchy Press. http://www.triarchypress.com/pages/The-Decision-Loom.htm.

Churchman, C. West. 1971. The design of inquiring systems: basic concepts of systems and organization. Basic Books, preview at Google Books.

Mitroff, Ian I., and Harold A. Linstone. 1993. The unbounded mind: Breaking the chains of traditional business thinking. New York: Oxford University Press, preview at Google Books.

Ravetz, Jerome R. 2004. “The post-normal science of precaution.” Futures 36 (3): 347–357. doi:10.1016/S0016-3287(03)00160-5. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0016-3287(03)00160-5.

Witte, M. H, A. Kerwin, and C. L Witte. 1998. Curriculum on medical and other ignorance: shifting paradigms on learning and discovery. In Memory distortions and their prevention, ed. Deborah L Best and Margaret J. Intons-Peterson, 125–156. Psychology Press, preview at Google Books.

On the discussion list of the Systems Science Working Group, there’s a request to comment on the Overview of Systems Science wiki page (draft version 0.5) that is part of the Guide to Systems Engineering Book of Knowledge.  Basic descriptions are hard to write.  Asking the “what is …” question is a challenge of ontology, and may not cover the “why …” question coming from the perspective of teleology or the “how …” question coming from the history and philosophy of science.

I appreciate that novices like definitions.  In a scholarly style, I generally cite descriptions by individual thinkers who each have a system of ideas.  In an attempt to appreciate commonalities and differences between prominent figures in the systems movement, I had been hosting a series of Systems Sciences Connections Conversations aimed at traversing social ties between individuals.  As a fun example, we asked Allenna Leonard if Stafford Beer and Jane Jacobs knew each other, as they both lived in the Annex neighbourhood in Toronto.  Allenna’s response was, of course, they would see each other in places like the drug store.  Stafford Beer did use Cities and the Wealth of Nations as a foundation for his work in Uruguay, but there wasn’t really an occasion for ongoing collaboration.  Developing a network of systems of ideas is a more modest endeavour than trying to create a system of system of ideas.

Describing the world in objective entities isn’t the way I think.  I’m strongly influenced by the idea of reflexivity (described in the context of social theory on Wikipedia).  Pierre Bourdieu invited a path into his system of ideas as reflexive sociology.  George Soros has a general theory of reflexivity.

For descriptions in this domain — not definitions, for which a dictionary might be a better source — I’ll defer to International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics, edited by Charles François.  I have a copy of the 1997 first edition, which was superseded by a larger 2004 second edition that I haven’t seen.  Based on some entries in this encyclopedia, some Russell Ackoff readings, and my accumulated perspective on systems, I’ll make some assertions.

• 1. Systems thinking and the systems sciences are parts of an ecology of knowledge
• 2. Systems thinking prescribes an ordering of synthesis and analysis, emphasizing superordinates (containing wholes)
• 3. The development of the “systems sciences” historically correlates with the rise of the “social systems sciences” program at the University of Pennsylvania
• 4. The systems sciences have a heritages in cybernetics and general systems theory
• 5. Systems thinking and the systems sciences manifest as systems approaches

For considerations of length, the Systems Science Working Group may split the content into two separate articles on systems science and systems methodology.

1. Systems thinking and the systems sciences are parts of an ecology of knowledge

Systems thinking and the systems science could be seen as subfields of knowledge.  They’re related, yet distinct.  Applying systems thinking on describing systems thinking leads to describing an ecology.

ECOLOGY of KNOWLEDGE

“The study of pattern of interrelationships among the various “species” (subsystems, sub-subsystems, etc.) and fields and subfields of knowledge with emphasis on:

a) preserving the condition of dynamic balance between the “species” and their environment; and b) optimizing the overall symbolic fruits of synergistic interactions among them” (J.W. CLARK, 1972, p.168)

CLARK proposed a curriculum in “General ecology of knowledge” divided as follows in six sections, including among other subjects:

A. Systems Education Studies

Systems approaches; … simulation; … systems management; … game theory; … forecasting methods and operations research.

B. Basic Integrated Studies

General cybernetics; … eco-cybernetics; … meta- tools; … meta-skills; … metalanguages; … general ecology of knowledge

C. Global Design Heuristics

Heuristic forecasting; … synergetics; … synectics; … pattern recognition …

D Heuristic Meta-Policy Studies

The anatomy of meta-policy; … the anatomy of change; … Psychology of mass movements; … systems of signals and incentives; … games for global involvement; … the dynamics of feedback and re-inforcement …

E. Meta-Policy Sciences

Behavioral sciences and general systems perspectives; … designing and evaluating alternative futures; … integrative workshops

For the discussed complete program, see reference (p 165-180).

This proposal, made in 1972, does not seem to have been seriously debated and, still less, applied anywhere. The institution of interfaculties programs of this type would possibly be the only way to seriously expand the systemic approach and methods.  [François 1997, p. 111-112]

In the ecology of knowledge, both systems thinking and the systems sciences are challenged as interfaculty programs that require crossing disciplinary boundaries.

2. Systems thinking prescribes an ordering of synthesis and analysis, emphasizing superordinates (containing wholes)

My favourite practical description of systems thinking is related to the order of synthesis and analysis.

Synthesis, or putting things together, is the key to systems thinking just as analysis, or taking them apart, was the key to Machine-Age thinking. Synthesis, of course, is as old as analysis — Aristotle dealt with both — but it is taking on a new meaning and significance in a new context just as analysis did with the emergence of the Machine Age. Synthesis and analysis are complementary processes. Like the head and tail of a coin, they can be considered separately, but they cannot be separated. Therefore, the differences between Systems-Age and Machine-Age thinking derives not from the fact that one synthesizes and the other analyses, but from the fact that systems thinking combines the two in a new way.

Systems thinking reverses the three-stage order of Machine-Age thinking; (1) decomposition of that which is to be explained, (2) explanation of the behavior or properties of the parts taken separately, and (3) aggregating these explanations into an explanation of the whole. This third step, of course, is synthesis. In the systems approach there are also three steps:

1. Identity a containing whole (system) of which the thing to to be explained is a part.

2. Explain the behavior or properties of the containing whole.

3. Then explain the behavior or properties of the thing to be explained in terms of its role(s) or function(s) within its containing whole. [p. 16]

Note that in this sequence, synthesis precedes analysis. In analytical thinking the thing to be explained is treated as a whole to be taken apart. In synthetic thinking the thing to be explained is treated as part of a containing whole. The former reduces the focus of the investigator; the latter expands it. [Ackoff 1981, pp. 16-17]

The encyclopedia entry on “systemic thinking” goes back further to Angyal 1941.  Angyal was a key reference in Ackoff’s program on social systems science at the University of Pennsylvania.  François prefers the label of “systemic thinking” over “systems thinking” (with a separate entry for Systems Thinking (Critical) that refers to the work of Michael C. Jackson).

SYSTEMIC THINKING

A general approach to scientific inquiry that is specially interested in the study of complex situations and systems, using specific concepts and models.

Back in 1941, A. ANGYAL was already comparing the causal way of thinking with the systemic one, in the following terms: “In causal research, the task is to single out from a multiplicity of data, pairs of facts between which there is a necessary connection. In systems thinking the task is not to find direct relations between members but to find the superordinate system in which they are connected or to define the positional value of members relative to the superordinate system” (1941, p.24).

He added: “One thing … seems clear, namely that systems cannot be deduced from relations, while the deduction of relations from systems still remains a possibility. If that is the case then the more general logical genus would be ‘system’, while ‘relation’ would be a reduced, simplified system which is adequate only for the logical presentation of very simple specialized constellations” (Ibid., p.25).

This viewpoint seems however somehow contradictory with the concepts and methods of KLIR‘s reconstructability analysis. The ideas which seem to be lacking here are those about relations between relations and relations inbetween levels.

From a different viewpoint, M. BUNGE writes: “Some systems theorists believe that systemics belongs in mathematics. l submit that this opinion is mistaken, because, unlike pure mathematics, systemics is about real things. (Systemics has a mathematical formalism but a factual content). Others seem to believe that systemics is a mushy popular philosophy, rehashed romantic talk about unanalyzable wholes. This opinion too is mistaken, because systemics, unlike holism, analyzes systems, and furthermore it does so with the help of mathematics — a béte noire of all romantics” (1979, p.221).

It should be observed however that systemics uses evermore new mathematical tools of, at least, a partially qualitative character. [François 1997, p. 354]

I observe that most novices find Ackoff’s description of systems thinking easier.  It’s easy to challenge someone who claims to be a systems thinker, but demonstrates analysis before synthesis.  Angyal’s writing — which might be described as (i) part-to-part to (ii) subordinate whole — reflects the idea in a different way.

3. The development of the “systems sciences” historically correlates with the rise of the “social systems sciences” program at the University of Pennsylvania

The label “systems sciences” only has an etymology going back decades, not centuries.  As a former president of the Operations Research Society of America in 1956, Russell Ackoff described his dissatisfaction in the scope of the field in the UK Operational Research Society’s Annual Conference in 1978.  Ackoff saw the need for a new (Social) Systems Science.

In the early 1970s, I persistently argued … with the faculty in OR that I had assembled at the University of Pennsylvania. Despite three years’ effort I was unable to convince them of the need for radical change. A minority of the faculty and I felt this need for change so deeply that we separated from the OR faculty and initiated a new graduate programme in what we called “Social Systems Sciences.” This name was selected for three reasons. First, it was the only one we proposed that no other department of the University objected to, for obvious reasons. Second, we could not conceive of a profession, a discipline or a society using such an awkward name, and we wanted to preclude such use. Finally, it suggests, however vaguely, what we are about. Nevertheless, we would not have changed the name if we could have changed OR.  [Ackoff 1979a, pp 103-104]

There’s humour in ensuring that the phrase “Social Systems Science” was awkward.  Applying the theory to the organization itself, the approach to the Social Systems Sciences program was described in a second article, later in 1979.

The S³ programme is a product of continuous idealized design by Professors Thomas Cowan. Peter Davis, James Emshoff, Hasan Ozbekhan. Thomas Saaty, Wladimir Sachs, Eric Trist, a large number of students and myself. The programme is far from ideal but it is ideal-seeking and subject to continuous experimental modification.

The programme was created to serve three purposes: first, to develop and transmit a body of knowledge that is responsive to the needs of all the stakeholders (including the upper levels of management) of public and private organizations; second, to develop and test new pedagogical procedures; and third, to experiment with and develop participative organizational structures.

The S³ programme addresses itself to four major concerns that I have already dealt with in this presentation. I review them only very briefly here. The first arises out of our belief that organizational and institutional problems are abstractions obtained by analyzing social reality. This reality consists of complex systems of interacting problems which, because they are systems, cannot be decomposed into separately treated problems without loss of their essential properties. Therefore, the programme addresses itself to developing and applying methodology for dealing holistically with systems of problems, messes.

Second, because of the widely recognized accelerating rate of technological and social change, social learning by experience is no longer good enough, and optimal solutions to problems are neither optimal nor remain whatever they are for long. Therefore, the programme examines the design of social systems that can learn and adapt rapidly. and that can cope more effectively with increasing complexity.

Third, because social systems are purposeful and their parts have purposes of their own, often in conflict with those of the systems, it has become increasingly apparent that the ability of such systems to perform effectively depends on their ability to serve better the purposes of their parts and to provide them with an improved quality of life within the system. This gives rise to the third problem about which the programme is concerned: the humanization problem: how to design, plan for and manage social systems so that they better serve the purposes of their parts and do so in such a way as promotes systemic objectives.

Fourth, social systems are parts of larger social and ecological systems. their environments. Each social system affects and is affected by its environment. Social systems are increasingly held responsible for their effects on their environments and on the other systems that share their environments. This gives rise to the fourth problem, viz., the environmentalization problem: how to design and manage systems so that they better serve the larger systems of which they are part and the other parts of these systems, and do so in a way that promotes systemic objectives.

These four concerns are addressed jointly by an interdisciplinary faculty and student body. To avoid turning out graduates from a common mould, there are no prerequisites for entry into the programme other than a reasonable level of intelligence; but there are exit requirements to which l will return in a moment. The large variety of incoming students increases the opportunity they have of learning from each other. To increase this variety even more, each student is required to design his or her own program without being constrained by any required courses. Students can use anything offered anywhere in the University. However. they must defend their designs before the faculty. but their designs can be changed at any time, again with defense.

Consistent with systems thinking, the S³ programme is not made up of an aggregation of independently given and taken courses that leave the difficult task of their synthesis to be performed by the student alone. The principal instruments of education are Learning and Research Cells which are collective efforts at synthesis, not analysis. We find the students quite capable of independently acquiring the information and knowledge that needs to be synthesized. [Ackoff 1979b, pp. 197-198]

The Society for General Systems Research became the International Society for the Systems Sciences in 1988.  Since Ackoff was president of the organization in 1987, the prehistory in Operations Research foreshadows an alternative (if not parallel) path.

This history can be compared to the encyclopedic entry on systems science (in the singular, rather than the plural).  The criticisms of the phrase — in contrast to the concrete organization context in which Ackoff was forming a system — come from perspectives on systems and on science, particularly with “hard sciences” versus “social sciences”.

SYSTEMS SCIENCE

“That field of scientific inquiry whose objects of study are systems” (G. KLIR, 1993, p.27).

The word “science” has evoked a serious resistance among “hard” scientists, because of the very general and abstract meaning of “system”, the supposed object of inquiry.

Still less adequate seems to be the expression “systems ScienceS” (as it appears now in the official name of the “lntemational Society for the Systems Sciences”), evoking a more or less unorganized ragbag of scattered disciplines, and encouraging systemists to seek “a politically correct shelter for their work under the umbrella or orthodox science” (D. Mc NEIL, 1993b).

This has been sensed by quite a number of “system scientists”, as for instance L TRONCALE, who considers this expression as merely “a collective non-specific term” … and a questionable use or the term “science” similar to that found in “social science” (1984, p.45).

KLIR himself adds: “Unfortunately, this definition, which appears reasonable on the surface, only begs the question. To make it operational, and thus useful, we have to establish some broad and generally acceptable characteristics of the concept of a system.”(Ibid). The whole of this KLIR’s paper on the subject is dedicated to a “guided tour” of this difficult task and can be used as an introduction to the subject.

Some interesting statements by KLIR:

“Classical science, which is predominantly oriented to thinghood properties, and systems science, which is predominantly oriented to systemhood properties, are two distinct perspectives from which scientific inquiry can be approached. These perspectives are complementary. Although classical scientific inquiries are almost never devoid of issues involving systemhood properties, these issues are not of primary interest to classical science and have been handled in an opportunistic, ad hoc fashion …. While the systems perspective was not essential when science dealt with simple systems, its significance increases with growing complexity of systems in our current interest’ (p.28-29).

On the role of the computer in relation to “systems sclence”, KLIR states: “The computer has, in fact, a dual role in systems science. In one of the roles, it is a methodological tool for dealing with systems problems. In the other role, it serves as a laboratory for experimenting with systems” (p.38).

(This last aspect is now becoming very significant in the field of artificial life).

KLIR also states that the study of “systemhood” starts with the development of “… a comprehensive conceptual framework by which the whole spectrum of conceivable systems is divided into significant categories. The second step is to study the individual categories of systems and their relationships, and to organize the categories in a coherent whole. The third step is to study systems problems that emerge from the underlying set of organized systems categories. Finally, we address methodological issues regarding the various types of systems problems” (p.38).

“Simplification methods are crucial for dealing with phenomena of organized complexity. Since organized complexity is the prime territory of systems sclence, these methods play a key role…” (p.47).

F. HEYLIGHEN states: ‘Systems science (including cybernetics) is not a traditional discipline concemed with the study of a particular domain, but a meta-discipline, concerned with the domain-independent modelling of general systems (van GIGCH). As such, it does not aim to find the one true representation for a given type of systems (e.g., physical, chemical or biological systems) but to formulate general principles about how different representations or different systems can be constructed so as to be effective in problem solving” (1990a, p.423).

Should there be systems scientists? G. KLIR so believes: “The role of developing and applying the systemhood expertise must he undertaken by a scientist of a different kind, a systems scientist, whose specialization is this very expertlse” (1991, p.23). This seems at the same tlme correct and doubtful. lt is correct because we undoubtedly need people able to undertand, explain and, in many cases, manage complex systems. A systemic formation should be a very general feature or knowledge acquisition. This explains however why the idea could be questioned: If systems science becomes an academic specialty, it could promptly be relegated in some more or less secluded academic cloister and become lost for the millions who really need it.

Systems science is a meta- or trans-discipline (on possibly better, a meta-methodology) for everybody and should not be simply reduced to a discipline status, even when and where it must be teached. In KLIR’s words: “Systems science has also its own methodologies, which I view as a coherent collection of methods for dealing with those types of systems problems that emanate from a particular conceptual tramework. Furthermore, systems science has its own metamethodology. Its purpose is to determine characteristics of individual methods (such as computational complexity, performance, and range or applicabily) and utilize these characteristics for selecting the right method for a given problem in a specific context.

“ln spite of all its science-like charactenstics, l argue … that systems science is not a science in the ordinary sense, but rather a new dimension in science” (1991, p.352).

This has much to see with the future of Systems Science, another subject widely tackled by KLIR (1991, p.185-90). On one hand, concepts, principles, methods and models — i.e. the scientific aspects — should be constantly extended in order to increase complexity understanding for practical and theoretical uses. On the other hand, a general strategy and tactics should be devised to bring systems knowledge to those who could benefit from it — i.e. the sociological and ethical aspects, in terms of the systemists responsability.

According to G. ANDERSEN: “Systems science can be considered as a human evolutionary system with emergent properties — the structure of the components changes over time and new informalion is created out of this process” (1995, pers. comm.). [François 1997, p. 362]

So, approaching systems as a science has impacts on the definition of science — at least the classical definitions of science.  There’s a spirit of not becoming a discipline, yet science traditionally has progressed along disciplinary lines.

4. The systems sciences have heritages in cybernetics and general systems theory

Few would debate that any definition of the systems science would have a heritage in cybernetics.  Cybernetics has a strong history of foundational work from the 1940s. The domain has been self-critical, and evolved from first order to second order.

CYBERNETICS

1) “The field of control and communication in the animal and the machine” (N. WIENER, 1948, p. 19).

N.WIENER’s original view is in fact quite mechanicist and corresponds to what became known as 1st Cybernetics or Cybernetics of the 1st order (The latter, including 2nd Cybernetics).

2) “The study of systems that are open to energy but closed to information and control — systems that are information tight” (W.R. ASHBY, 1956, p.5).

ASHBY’s view is quite close to WIENER’s. “Cybernetics deals with all forms of behavior insofar as they are regular, determinate or reproducible … What cybernetics offers is the framework in which all individual machines may be ordered, related and understood” (p.2).

WIENER’s and in a lesser measure ASHBY’s viewpoint, have aroused considerable resistance in human sciences researchers.

ASHBY himsell however also wrote: “Cybernetics treats, not things, but ways of behaving. It does not ask, “What is this thing?” but “what does it do?”…. It is thus essentially functional and behavioristic… The materiality is irrelevant, and so is the holding or not of the ordinary law of physics” (1956, p.1).

And, moreover: “The truth of cybernetics are not conditional on their being derived from some other branch of science. Cybernetics has its own foundations” (Ibid).

German cybernetlcians, at least until 1970 preferred a quite forrnal view, as may be appreciated in the four following definitions by K. STEINBUCH, H. FRANK, F von CUBE and G. KLAUS:

3) “Science of informational structures in technical and non-technical domains” (basically concerned with data treatment) (STEINBUCH, 1955, p.325).

4) “The theory and technique of systems which transform messages” (FRANK, 1969, p.30).

5) “(the) mathematical and constructive treatment of general structural relations, functions and systems” (ven CUBE, 1967, p 11-16)

6) “The theory of interconnectedness or possible dynamic structural self-regulated systems with their subsystems” (KLAUS, 1965).

The Russian cybernetician V.M. GLUSHKOV proposed in 1956 a quite similar technical concept of cybernetics:

7) “(the general theory of the transformation of information, and … the theory and principles of building various transformers of information” (1966).

GLUSKOV included in his book theories of algorithms, of discrete automata, of self-organizing systems and of mathematical logic. V.G. DROZIN observes that “… its contents overlap somewhat with that of Computer Science as taught in our country” (i.e. U.S.) (1976, p.30).

8) “Discipline which studies regulations and communication in the living beings and the man-built machines” (J. de ROSNAY, 1975, (p.93)

Quite significantly, de ROSNAY uses the word “regulation” in lieu of “control” used by WIENER. As a biologist he is more attuned to the non intentional aspect of regulation. This seems better if one remembers that many biologists, psychologists and sociologists reacted negatively to cybernetic “controls”, that they considered a mechanicist reductionism, apt moreover to induce possible manipulations of human (and animal) behavior.

On the other hand, de ROSNAY adds; “A more philosophical definition, proposed by L. COUFFIGNAL in 1955, views cybernetics as “the art to ensure efficacy in action”. The word “cybernetics” has been reinvented by WIENER in 1948, from the greek word “kubernetes”, which means pilot or steering wheel. One of the very first cybernetic mechanisms of velocity regulation in a steam machine, invented by James WATT and Matthew BOULTON in 1788, was called “governor” … Cybernetics has thus the same root as “government”: the art of managing and leading highly complex systems. (Ibid).

From 1960 on, a less mechanicist view of cybernetics started to emerge, with St. BEER, G. PASK, H. von FOERSTER, M. MARUYAMA, H MATURANA, and other researchers.

According to St. BEER: “… cybernetics studies the flow of information round a system, and the way in which this information is used by the system as a means of controlling itself: it does this for animate and inanimate systems indifferently. For cybernetics is an interdisciplinary science, owing as much to biology as to physics, as much to the study of the brain as to the study of computers, and owing also a great deal to the formal languages of science for providing tools with which the behaviour of all these systems can be objectively described” (1966, p.254).

One wonders if BEER would still in 1996 use the word “objectively”, since it is now generally admitted that scientific knowledge may sometimes be “falsified” (POPPER), and results or a consensual process through conversation (PASK). Of course and notwithstanding, we still can safely postulate the existence of an objective reality and all this does not impair the usefulness of the cybernetics’ models.

Further along BEER adds: “… cybernetics is precisely about organization — for this is the medium through which control is exercised. Therefore cybernetics may also be defined, as it has been by certain Russian writers as the science of effective organization” (lbid., p.425).

ln any case, BEER’s view is not mechanistic “Cybemetics begins where the possibility of algorithmization of the controlled system ends” (Quoted by V.G. DROZIN, 1976, p.28).

According to K KRIFPENDORFF: “In cybernetics, theories tend to rest on four basic pillars: Variety, circularity, process and observation’ (1986, p.20).

As stated by this author, variety is closely related to information, communication and control. Circularity is a necessary result of feedback, and leads to autopoiesis. Process is implied in feedback, communication, regulation and control, and observation is the basic condition for decision making and control.

Historical note: The word cybernetics was used for the first time by PLATO in the sense of “pilot’s craft” or “the art of leading men”. R. VALLEE states that, in 1834, the French physicist AMPERE used it in his “Essai sur la philosophie des sciences” to name the “study of the means of goveming”.

VALLEE adds: “In 1843, TRENTOWSKI did the same with the word kibernetiki in a book on management written in Polish”, and still: “(W.S. McCULLOUGH) liked to put cybernetics under the aegis of DESCARTES who proposed in 1664, an interpretation of cybernetical type, involving feedback, within the framework of his theory of nervous transmission. On the contrary WIENER considered LEIBNIZ as the patron of cybernetics” (1993, p.84).

Other important precursors of cybernetics were the Russian BOGDANOV (1921), the Rumanian ODOBLEJA (1938), as well as W.CANNON (1932). The French biologist P. VENDRYES discovered independently the mechanisms of homeostasis and autonomy (1942).

ln fact, the cybernetic model is implicit in numerous concepts and artefacts, since Antiquity. [François 1997, pp. 90-91]

There are additional encyclopedic entries for Cybernetics (First Order), Cybernetics (First and Second Order) and Cybernetics (Technical).  If cybernetics is one of the systems sciences, we should also see General Systems Theory as part of the systems sciences — although the question of singular and plural can arise at yet another level.

GENERAL SYSTEMS THEORY

A collection of concepts, models and laws referred to the nature and behavior of complex systems.

M. BUNGE observes: “Paradoxically enough, this is not a single theory but a whole set of theories — automata theory, linear systems theory, control theory, network theory, general Lagrangian dynamics, etc. — unifed by a philosophical framework… We shall call systemics this set of theories that focus on the structural characteristics of systems and can therefore cross the largely artificial barriers between disciplines” (1979, p.1)

This compiler agrees with BUNGE and consequently, the term “systemics” is generally used in this dictionary in place of the expression “General Systems Theory”.

G.S.T. tries to respond to the need to research organized complexity and is complementary to the study of organized simplicity (starting with classical mechanics and inorganized complexity (as f. ex. classical statistical physics).

According to V. BLAUBERE, V.N. SADOVSKV and E.G. YUDIN, the main tasks of the General Systems Theory are as follows:

“1. The definition of the “system” concept and all other concepts related to it

2. The classification of systems and the discovery of laws pertaining to systems in general and to special classes of systems.

3. The construction of models (of various degrees of generality) of system behavior (functioning, development).

4. The development of a special formal apparatus (logical and methodological lncluded) for the solution of problems indicated in (1)-(3) and for formulating the general theoretical foundations of special systems concepts such as the theory of control systems, the theory of automata and the theory of information systems” (1977, p.162).

Of course, these very basic tasks should be constantly sustained and validated by the observation and study or the numerous objects that may be conceived and modelized as systems.

The cited authors add the following comment (by M. MESAROVIC, 1954, p.4,5): “General Systems Theory, as a theory of general models must encompass the specific theories concerned with the more restrictive types of models; e g. the theory of linear systems, theory or Markov systems, etc. GST also unifies the theories of different aspects of system behavior such as communication, control, adaptation, learning, self-organization, theory of computing and algorithms, etc.”

“Accordingly, the greatest difficulty in constructing a general systems theory, in MESAROVIC’s view is ”to find the proper level or abstraction” (BLAUBERG et al, p.166).

Possibly, we should work on different levels in order to define in every case the must propely adjusted one. [François 1997, pp. 151-152]

There’s an entry in the encyclopedia just on the history of General Systems Theory, as well as its mathematical aspects.  General Systems Theory can be differentiated from the General Systems of Theory.

The encyclopedia includes a perspective on cybernetics, and its relationship to General Systems Theory.

CYBERNETICS (The scope of)

G. PASK formulated the following opinions about the scope of cybernetics:

“… though I can see the difference between cybernetics, General Systems Theory and Cognitive Information Science, I fail, completely, to see its practical significance unless a very specific piece of work is in mind; and, as a result of that, fail also to get in the least irritated if these terms are misapplied…

“l believe that Cybernetics (and the allied sciences) are peculiarly concerned with well formed analogies, the manipulation of metaphor and the epistemological / psychological / social problems that attend these pursuits.

“… Cybernetic theories comment upon these processes, which are excluded, strictly, from consideration by the run of other sciences, except when viewed from the special perspectives of metaphysics or of metamathematics.

“As a result, all Cybernetics theories are relativistic and some of the more interesting theories are also reflective (becoming “objective” only at specific points, where sharp valued independent measurement is possible). For example, with my psychological hat on, but still retaining a Cybernetic orientation, I insist upon dealing with consciousness, not excluding it (hence, with self·referential and other referential systems).

“… I am prone to regard the use of information measures and statistical accounts as only one (quite useful) way of dealing with the situation. Since such methods are apt to objectify the phenomena, I think they are somewhat overrated. The chief hazard, is the temptation to use appeals to “complexity” as an excuse for not tackling the real issue of “reflexive” theories and their interpretation.

“… Amongst the more important growing points are: a) Theory of reproductive automata… b) The theory of metagames”… c) Fuzzy logics and concurrent computation… d) Categorical algebras… e) Aspects of topology… able to accomodate or represent knowable relations and cultural patterns” (1973, p.5).

As to Artificial Intelligence, in PASK’s opinion: “Perhaps the subject should be called “General Intellect” instead of Artificial Intelligence” (Ibid). As early as 1973, PASK perceived that the process of teaming was of paramount importance and that it was not possible to limit the subject to the clever application of problem solving techniques” (Ibid).

According to F ROBB, general cybernetics includes:

- Conversation theory (G. PASK)

- Autopoiesis (MATURANA and VARELA)

- Deviation amplifying mutual causal processes (M. MARUYAMA) (see also 2nd cybernetics)

- Self-organizing systems (I. PRIGOGINE)

- Self-steering systems

- Meta-system theory (J. van Gigch) which ROBB considers as “much intermingled streams of cybernetic thought” (1989, p. 51).

Of course, none of these concepts and theory can ignore the original basic concepts of feedback, regulation and control. [François 1997, p. 91]

In a parallel entry, there’s an entry from the perspective of General Systems Theory that looks as the association with cybernetics.

GENERAL SYSTEMS THEORY and Cybernetics

As observed quite early by L. von BERTALANFFY, General Systems Theory should not be confused with cybernetics in general. And still less so with WIENERS’s much more limited in scope first cybernetics, strictly related to communication and control. There has however been a growing connection between the two subjects, specially since W.R. ASHBY’s “lntroduction to Cybernetics” (1956) and M MARUYAMA’s “Mutual causality“ as pattem generator (1963).

W. CANNON’s homeostasis (1932) also is basically a cybernetic concept, while understandable only as a systems property. On the other hand, positive feedbacks tend to throw systems out of dynamic equilibrium and, as a result, they escape trom the cybernetic mechanisms of regulation and control. Classical (i.e. 1rst order) cyhernetics could thus be evaluated as the province of the homeostatic systems.

von FOERSTER cybernetics of 2nd order as well as PASK’s cybernetics of cognition and learning and, later on, MATURANA’s autopoiesis, while having their roots in cybernetics, are in fact systemic theories.

G. KLIR, in tum, describes as follows the innovations introduced by G.S.T:

“1. A new way of looking at the world has evolved in which individual phenomena are viewed as inter-related rather than isolated and complexity has become a subiect of interest

“2. Certain concepts, principles and methods have been shown not to depend on the specific nature of the phenomenon involved. These can be applied without any modification, in quite diverse areas of science, engineering, humanities and the arts, thus introducing links between classical disciplines and allowing the concepts, ideas, pnnciples, models and methods developed in different disciplines to be shared.

“3. New possibilities (principles, paradigms, methods) for special disciplines have been discovered by making investigations on the general level” (1969, p.16).

In the first year of G.S.T. (and cybernetics), this was not so obvious. However during the last twenty years, or so, the conceptual “toolbox” has grown apace, specially in the mathematical fleld: Fuzzzy logic, Theory of Catastrophes, Fractals, Percolation theory; but also from other sources: Dissipative structuration, Organizational closure, neural networks, etc… [François 1997, p. 152]

In practice, making distinctions about which concepts belong to cybernetics and which to general systems theory — and vice versa — is counter to the anti-disciplinary nature of both pursuits.  The commonality of ideas across multiple perspectives should be seen as a strength.

5. Systems thinking and the systems sciences manifest as systems approaches

While systems thinking might be described an art, and the systems sciences as having more “scientific” attitude, the communities encouraging development of both tend to mix.  The overall direction could be described as a “systems approach”.

SYSTEMS APPROACH

ln general

J. van GIGCH enumerates many different aspects of the systems approach, which “can be regarded as:

“A methodology of design

A common conceptual framework

A new kind of scientific method

A theory of organizations

Systems management

A method related to systems engineering, operations research, cost effectiveness. etc…

Applied General systems Theory“ (1978, p.34)

van GIGCH completes his overview establishing a taxonomy ot sciences and systems, divided into ”hard” and “soft” systems in physical, life, behavioral and social sciences (p.39).

Logical aspects

BLAUBERG, SAUDOVSKY and YUDIN consider that, from the logical viewpoint,”the development of systems research presupposes:

a) The construction of formal logical systems describing the process of reasoning as applied to certain aspects of the systems approach or special systems theories (e.g. the logic of relations, bio·logics, the logic of reflexive reasoning, etc…)

b) The formulation of the logical apparatus of the general systems theory

c) The metamathematical and metalogical analysis of systems formalisms” (1977, p.125).

Methodological aspects

According to the same authors, the methodological aspects of the systems approach “cover the following tasks:

“a) The explication (including the formal explication) of the basic concepts of the systemic approach, such as system, element, connection, structure, wholeness, part-whole relation, etc…

”b) The classification of systems, including the discussion and comparison of the various approaches to this problem

“c) The identitication and analysis of the specific methods of systems research — the systemic (integral) representation of a system object, the investigation of a system together with its environment, the isomorphy of systems concepts and laws, systems analysis and synthesis, etc…

“d) The methods for constructing the theoretical knowledge of systems — both in the case of special systems concepts and in formulating a general systems theory (1977, p.125).

J. SUTHERLAND, from another viewpoint on methodology, proposed what he called he syncretic approach, “… to insure that the systems models we use comprehend to the fullest extent possible both qualitative and quantitative constructs” (Quoted from J.D. WHITE, 1977, p.68).

As to the basic nature and limits of the systemic approach, J.C. LUGAN writes: “The systemic approach consists in isolating a number of elements n. emphasizing certain types of relations that would give a degree of autonomy to the system in relation to a more extensive set N of elements.

“This global character of systemic modelization should not be understood as aiming at exhaustivity. To begin with only those properties considered as essential from the modelizer’s viewpoint are taken in account. The model can be enriched … (but will never be complete). ln other words, systemic modelization should tend to be an evolutive process, conscious of its limits between a kind of exhaustive perfectionism and an excessively reducing simplification (1993, p.24).

Psycho-sociological aspects

E. HERRSCHER writes: “The point can be made that the systems approach comprises both rational and non-rational elements. Particularly since soft systems thinking took the lead from the hard system approach, many social, political and psychological issues became more relevant, weakening the rational part of the rational/non-rational mix or, at least introducing (in the words of C FRANÇOIS) a psychical and sociological rationality, complementary to the hard systems approach. Few social scientists would object, but some quantitative or closed-model-oriented scientists might” (1995).

The systemic psycho-sociological rationality aspects are of different kinds:

1) The systemic inner and relational workings of societies, autopoiesis, conflict, hierarchies, interactions with the environment, networks, processes, side effects, stigmergy, subsystems, etc…

2) The ways these inner social workings translate into attitudes, situations and issues: values, norms, ideologies, prejudices, power relations, etc…

3) The ways the modelizer understand (or not) his/ her observer role and choices when modeling some social system, and perhaps his/her relationship with members of the latter who required the intervention. [François 1997, p. 357]

At this point, I think that I’ll give the descriptions on systems thinking, systems sciences and cybernetics a rest.  Compiling the encyclopedia was a life’s work for Charles François. I’m happy to have it as a resource upon which I can lean.

References

• Ackoff, Russell L. 1979a. “The Future of Operational Research is Past.” Journal of the Operational Research Society 30 (2): 93-104. doi:10.1057/jors.1979.22. http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/jors.1979.22.
• Ackoff, Russell L. 1979b. “Resurrecting the Future of Operational Research.” Journal of the Operational Research Society 30 (3): 189-199. doi:10.1057/jors.1979.41. http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/jors.1979.41.
• Ackoff, Russell L. 1981. Creating the Corporate Future: Plan or Be Planned For. New York: John Wiley and Sons. http://books.google.com/books?id=8EEO2L4cApsC.
• François, Charles. 1997. International encyclopedia of systems and cybernetics. Munich: K. G. Saur.

Over in Finland, Gary Metcalf has just started teaching a systems thinking class in the Creative Sustainability program at Aalto University.  Speaking with him yesterday, he described a situation similar to that which I experienced last year:  graduate students intrigued by systems ideas, yet slightly overwhelmed with the shift in perspective; and an appreciation that an intensive class taught over eight days is a lot of territory to cover.  The scheduling of two courses — one in the fall, and one in the spring — fortunately allows some time for intuitions to naturally develop in reflection, between the two weeks of formal classes.  Learning is not a linear activity.

Students — who take these systems thinking courses as a requirement, not an elective — may wonder how these courses came to be.  I served as content creator for two new courses on systems thinking at Aalto University in October 2010 and in February 2011.  The ISSS Hull 2011 meeting provided me with an opportunity to summarize the context and thinking that went into developing the two systems thinking courses de novo for Aalto University.  This article — “Systems Thinking Courses in the Master’s Programme on Creative Sustainability at Aalto University: Reflections on Design and Delivery of the 2010-2011 Sessions” — is available on the Coevolving Commons, and published in the Proceedings of the 55th Annual Meeting of the ISSS.  At ISSS Hull 2011, the outline was presented as a map.

Some people will be interested in the course content per se.  The artifacts for CS0004 in October 2010 and CS0005 in February 2011 continue to be available as open courseware accessible over the Internet.  (Gary has now taken responsibility to evolve that content).  As I wrote descriptions about the course journey, the article itself surfaced systemic perspectives.  In order to describe CS0004 (in section 4) and CS0005 (in section 5), the preconditions of the context (in section 2) and an implicit design approach (in section 3) came to the fore.  The five sections of the resulting article are:

• 1. Introduction:  Systems thinking courses without a legacy were designed and delivered for a new master’s program without a legacy.
• 2. Context: By spring 2010, courses on systems thinking had been slotted for the Creative Sustainability program
• 3. Design: Two intensive courses were constructed to minimal critical specifications
• 4. Sustainability Communities emphasis:  The October 2010 section oriented towards learning in an era of postnormal science and dialogue
• 5. Planners and Designers emphasis: The February 2011 section oriented towards method frameworks for redesigning complex socio-ecological systems
• 6. Future prospects:  Courses in Finland will incrementally evolve, with replicability to other contexts an open question

In writing the paper as an act of reflective practice, I came to appreciate my predisposition towards action learning in the tradition of Eric Trist more sharply.  I came to this knowledge through many years of discussions with David L. Hawk since 1998.  While I now live in Toronto, I unfortunately just missed the early 1980s period when Eric Trist was at the Action Learning Resources Group at York University, contemporaneously with Rafael Ramirez, Gareth Morgan and David Morley.

I see the students starting up their learning with postings on the Systems Community of Inquiry.  My curiosity on their progress is leading me to engage in the shared thinking, at a distance.

References

David Ing, “Systems Thinking Courses in the Master’s Programme on Creative Sustainability at Aalto University: Reflections on Design and Delivery of the 2010-2011 Sessions”, Proceedings of the 55th Annual Meeting of the International Society for the Systems Sciences, Hull, UK, July 17-22 2011.  http://coevolving.com/commons/201107-systems-thinking-creative-sustainability

Where might systems engineers and systems scientists productively collaborate?  The idea is simple; responses require some deliberation.

A novice might refer to the Wikipedia description of systems engineering (that doesn’t refer to the systems sciences), and the Wikipedia description of systems science (that sees systems engineering as an application).  A professional might  refer to “What is Systems Engineering” as a consensus by the INCOSE fellows, and the origins and purposes of the ISSS describing the evolution from the Society for General Systems Research and roots in American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Members of INCOSE and the ISSS are collaborating on the Systems Science Working Group wiki, complemented by an associated discussion group.  This open electronic space is independent of both the incose.org and isss.org domains, supporting an opportunity for wider participation.

A White Paper on Systems Science / Systems Engineering Synergies was led by Gary Metcalf, with a first draft released on June 9.  This was complemented by a slide presentation at the INCOSE International Symposium 2011 in Denver on June 20. and a workshop at ISSS Hull 2011 on July 20.

Version 1.1. of the white paper was posted on the SysSciWG wiki on September 26, with a welcome for more comments.

How do systems — systems sciences, systems thinking, systems practice — fit into the way that individuals and social groups behave?  The connections between the development of general systems theory and interdisciplinary work stretches back into the mid-20th century.  In the Science of Synthesis, Debora Hammond traced the history of researchers bridging over disciplinary boundaries.

Early in the fall of 1954, four of the distinguished CASBS [Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences] fellows — Bertalanffy, Boulding, Gerard, and Rapoport — sat together at lunch discussing their mutual interest in theoretical frameworks relevant to the study of different kinds of systems, including physical, technological, biological, social, and symbolic systems. According to Boulding, someone suggested they form a society to foster interdisciplinary research on a general theory of complex systems, and thus the idea for the Society for General Systems Research (SGSR) was born.  [Hammond 2003, p. 9]

Initiated by a grant from the Ford Foundation in 1954, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences continues today, having joined Stanford University in 2008.  The luminaries founding the Society for General Systems Research – Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Kenneth Boulding, Ralph Gerard and Anatol Rapoport — continue to be held in high regard today, in the International Society for the Systems Sciences (as the society was renamed in 1998).

The CASBS ties surfaced during the research leading to the report “John Bowlby – Rediscovering a systems scientist“, authored by Gary Metcalf.  On a visit to the Bowlby archives in the Wellcome Library in London, I served as a research assistant to Gary.  One artifact that we uncovered was the list of CASBS fellows for the 1957-58 years, with blue pen and red pencil markups by Bowlby.  Over 50 years later, many of those fellows have become prominent public figures, famous in a variety of ways.  Here’s my transcription of that original document.  In the case some of the names seem only vaguely familiar, I’ve appended a column on biographical sources as a reference.

<< begin paste >>

Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences

202 Junipero Serra Boulevard, Stanford, California

1957-58 Fellows

(handwritten blue)

8 p.m. Wed – 23rd

(check) SEARS – UL1-1679

(check) TYLER – DA6-3633

<< end paste >>

It’s a mystery as to what the checks, circles and ticks by John Bowlby meant.

Also in the Bowlby archives were some personal letters.  An early letter to Jock Sutherland mentions Gregory Bateson (spouse of ISSS 1972 president Margaret Mead).

30th October, 1957

My dear Jock,  [....]

A main reason for tackling the theory first is the climate of the Center (intellectual climate) and the phase through which it is going.  Inevitably, as is now obvious, the first phase is one of mutual exploration and to converse intelligently with people means reading at least some of their written work.  [....]

The seminars are also part of this process.  Each meets every week or two for a two hour seminar.  I am going to four which means about three afternoon meetings a week.  Much of it is getting each other to present his own work.  In Child Development Ronald Lippitt is presenting and I may follow with the ‘Child’s Tie’.  In Mental Health David Hamburg has presented his stuff on stress and we have had guest artists in Konrad Lorenz and now Gregory Bateson.  In Role Analysis we had an empirical study by Neal Gross of Harvard and now theory from Talcott Parsons.  The seminar which I initiated on Conflict and its Regulation is more problem centred.  Ralf Dahrendorf from Saarbrucken has started the ball rolling and proceedings are lively.  The seminar began over coffee where he and I discovered that we each held the view that conflict is inevitable and ever present and that is the issue is how you cope with it, an outlook not uncommon in London psycho-analytic circles but foreign to many.

A month later, Bowlby mentions David Easton, thesis supervisor of 1996 ISSS president Yong Pil Rhee.

30th November, 1957

My Dear Dugmore,  [...]

I can’t say I have run to any exciting new ideas.  In a way I am reluctant to admit this since I’m not sure whether its a reflection on me or others.  I have enjoyed talks with Frank Beach but I’ve learnt little from him I had not learn from Konrad Lorenz or Robert Hinde.  Similarly on the psycho-analytic front.  Perhaps I will come across more when I start visiting places in the Spring.

The most original work I have run into is by Gregory Bateson and his research group at the local V.A. mental hospital.   They have a very interesting way of conceptualizing and recording social interaction — taking account of gesture, tone of voice as well as verbal contact — and are applying it to the study of parent-child interaction.  At present they are mostly concerned with adult schizophrenic patients and their families, but it could equally be applied to young children.  A book in which Frieda Fromm-Reichman collaborated when she was here a couple of years ago is due to be published shortly and should be interesting.  Incidentally, a member of Bateson’s research unit, Dr. Don Jackson, a young psychiatrist and psycho-analyst, will be in London in May, and R.T.C. might come to invite him to give a staff talk.  Let me know.

The two fellows to whom I  have most warmed personally are David Hamburg and David Easton.  David Hamburg is the young psycho-analyst who is due to take up a senior post at Bethesda in the New Year and whose psychosomatic research appears to be of very high quality.  David Easton is a political scientist from Chicago, though a Canadian and lives near by.  We often walk to and from the Centre together and seem to find much in common.  I know less about his work but his approach to social problems gives me confidence.  [....]

Almost 2 months later, Bowlby is suggesting connections back to Tavistock colleagues including Eric Trist and P.G. Herbst.

18th Jan. 1958

My dear Jock,   [....]

The social atmosphere at the centrer could not be more agreeable.  There are now a score or more of fellows whom I know reasonably well and am on very cordial terms with.  As time passes personalities and their professional competencies stand out in stronger and stronger relief.  In general people seem to be running true to the picture one formed of them early on, though there have been some ups and downs.  Probably the most original mind is Benson GINSBURG, an unimpressive looking little man of 32 from Chicago, whose ideas on genetic basis of behaviour excite me greatly.  I’ll try to tell you more about them sometime.  Meanwhile, he is my selection as the future Nobel Prizewinner of the group.  I hope to get together with him more often after Easter when I plan to start work on stress.

Another whom I like very much and whose work I admire is David EASTON, a political scientist aged 42 also from Chicago.  He is approaching political systems in terms of General Systems Theory and his work might interest Eric and Herbst.  He and his family are close neighbours and we see a lot of them.

A third whom I have probably have note mentioned before is a Berkeley lawyer, Frank NEWMAN.  He has been coming to the Conflict Seminar and reads a paper there next week.  He is interested in law as a socio-political instrument and, to our mutual surprise, we find we have much thinking in common about the Regulation of Conflict.

One of the more entertaining artifacts was a letter from one of the economists (Stigler?), who asked to be excused from a meeting with Bowlby, so that he would be free to play a “laissez-faire” tennis match against Milton Friedman.

Systems theory represents a system of ideas developed over long periods of times within individuals in interactions with others.  Taking an approach of history of science is a good way of understanding the development of such knowledge.

References

Hammond, Debora. 2003. The science of synthesis: exploring the social implications of general systems theory. University Press of Colorado. http://books.google.com/books?id=skSMuZycpTwC.

I’m not an ecologist.  However, my interests in the systems sciences has connected me to the research originating with the Resilience Alliance.  I decided to make time to educate myself in the current research presented at Resilience 2011: The Second International Science and Policy Conference, at Arizona State University in Tempe.

The conference program is available online — including video, slides, and abstracts.

As an additional contribution to learning, I’ve posted digests of the talks that I’ve attended on the Coevolving Commons.  I habitually type notes into my laptop during meetings.  Some people find these digests helpful, to gain a high-level appreciation of content before committing more time to watching a video, or reading an article.  (On the digest pages for plenary talks, I’ve provided links back to speakers’ videos and slides).

Attending a 5-day meeting in person enables a rich immersion of ideas in a domain.  I got to see, up close, some people whose work is worth knowing about, including …

• Buzz Holling, in a panel with Kathleen Sutcliffe and Andrew King on “Resilience in Business“;
• Brian Walker, increasing scientific rigour, introducing “Resilience Propositions on Trial” (in advance of a later panel);
• Garry Peterson, leading a panel on “Social Ecological Regime Shifts and Transformation“;
• Martin Scheffer, providing background history as “Resilience Revisited“;
• Joe Tainter, framing complexity in human societies in “Resources and Societies: Past and Futures“; and
• Elinor Ostrom — a Nobel prize laureate in economics — on “Thinking about the Future: A Social-Ecological Systems Approach to Sustainability“

… plus many other talks over the four days.  (I caught a plane eastbound on the fifth day, so I missed a few plenary talks).

Since I didn’t expect that the resilience science community would necessarily know about the systems sciences, I contributed a talk on “Natural systems, service systems:  Scientific perspectives on redesigning social-ecological systems“.

Learning about a new field can be a challenge.  One approach is to start low on a scale of legitimate peripheral participation, watch for commonalities and patterns to emerge.

I, like many other Torontonians, went on a Jane’s Walk yesterday, an annual event honouring the legacy and ideas of Jane Jacobs.  DY and I joined the Regent Park Revitalized walk, scheduled for 2 hours in length.  With tour leaders from Toronto Community Housing (the legacy property owner), The Daniels Corporation (the developer leading the public-private partnership), and volunteers from the Regent Park community, we spent over 3 hours immersed in experiencing the transition-in-progress of a 28 hectare (69-acre) neighbourhood.

Catching up my reading, I was intrigued by “Jane Jacobs: Honoured in the breach“, an article by Stephen Wickens in the Saturday Globe and Mail.  Jane Jacobs had contacted him in 2005 to acknowledge some fact-finding on the right track, elaborating that “lot sizes and building heights often matter less to density than the land used for driving and parking”.  This people-centered view of city life was typical of Jacobs.  Wickens writes:

While her ideas are cited continually in discussions of urban affairs, their realization is arguably as far off as ever – in part because her followers are finding there are no shortcuts through her complex system of thought. [...]

She had no time for ideology – left, right or whatever – and felt that many who invoke her name “cherry-pick ideas to suit their purposes.”

I was fortunate to meet Jacobs in a session of the ISSS 2000 meeting in Toronto (and was invited to her house for wine and cheese, afterwards).  She was truly a systems thinker, with a system of ideas and view on problematiques (systems of problems) that is both commonsense and complex.

On the Globe and Mail web site is a video clip of Harvard economist Edward Glaeser saying that Jane Jacobs got it wrong.

Edward Glaeser | Jane Jacobs got it wrong | globeandmail.com

Wickens writes:

Harvard economist Edward Glaeser, author of last year’s Triumph of the City, says [Jacob's] central idea that “cities are what real people make of them,” not buildings and infrastructure, “has, by and large, gotten through in the planning community.”

But Mr. Glaeser also argues that for the environment and the economy, urban density must get vertical: “She was too afraid of new buildings, too afraid of height and high density.”

His comments have sparked debate. In a speech in Toronto, New York-based critic Roberta Brandes Gratz called his criticisms an “outrage.” And [John] Sewell says he “has so misinterpreted Jane’s beliefs on density and tall buildings, it’s stunning.”  [...]

Ms. Jacobs, however, felt that gentrification issues proved her right about which areas work: “Until the car became a factor, we built primarily for pedestrians,” she told me in 2004. “Those places are capable of self-regeneration.” Since then, however, costs in “unslummed” neighbourhoods have soared because “we stopped building places worth gentrifying, so demand far and increasingly outstrips supply.”

This idea of self-regeneration was is surfaced by Jane Jacobs in 2001 as self-refueling in Chapter 4 in The Nature of Economies.  Isomorphies between ecologies and economies might have been better developed if James Kay had been able to continue his research, as outlined in notes to an Environment and Resources course circa 2001.

Wickens refreshes our reading of Jacobs:

… page 150 [of The Death and Life of Great American Cities] … lists four conditions for any part of a city to generate “exuberant diversity”:

• that districts have a mix of primary uses;
• that most blocks be short;
• that buildings be of various ages; and
• that the area have sufficient density.

It was indispensable that these areas accommodate various levels of income and commercial rents.

But simply to list the factors without the examples and complicated dynamics found in the book is almost to miss the point.

“If you’ve read to the last chapter,” she told me, “you know cities – their parks, transportation planning, development policy, density ratios … are, like the life sciences, problems of organized complexity. It’s no good wishing it were any other way.”  [editorial paragraphing added]

Organized complexity is a central theme in the systems sciences.  It’s a background driver for my having developed new courses in Systemic Thinking for Sustainable Communities, and for Planners and Designers in the master’s program in Creative Sustainability at Aalto University in Finland.

References

Stephen Wickens, 2011.  Jane Jacobs: Honoured in the breach. Toronto Globe and Mail, May 7, page F4, [at globeandmail.com].

Jane Jacobs, 1961. The death and life of great American cities. Random House of Canada. [at Google Books].

Jane Jacobs, 2001. The Nature of Economies. Toronto: Vintage. [at Google Books].

In February, I returned to Finland to teach the Systemic Thinking for Planners and Designers CS0005 course in the master’s program in Creative Sustainability at Aalto University.  I had previously blogged about teaching and learning from the Systemic Thinking for Sustainable Communities CS0004 course in October.  The February course was again intensive, this time on a Friday-Tuesday-Friday schedule.

All of the course content is available as open source in a directory at http://coevolving.com/aalto/201102-cs0005/ .  Here’s a map outlining the course.

The style of the classes again centered on a list of references from which students could select according to personal interests, supplemented by lectures outlined with context maps.  The course outline was provided as long form text that evolved online during the week.  Written responses from students were most frequently posted on public blogs, with notifications and responses on the Systemicists Forum on the Systems Community of Inquiry, with separate threads for Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, and the final essays.

The first lecture for CS0005 was a quick review of the first topic for CS0004 in October, foundations for a systems approach.  This turned out to be a worthwhile activity, as the students (and my co-instructors!) had mulled over the basic ideas of systems for four months, resulting in more reflection and questions than I was expecting.

This background in the first lecture continued with a discussion of method frameworks.

The distinctions between designing a system and designing a service system were discussed in the context of the Succeeding through Service Innovation report by the University of Cambridge and IBM.  As a concrete example of service definitions, the approach to Defining Programs and Services in the Province of Ontario was outlined as one set of vocabulary and concepts compatible with a systemic approach to public offerings.  As a more general framework to defining methods — as cooperative work, and potentially service design methods — the Open Unified Process from the Eclipse Foundation was outlined.

Since redesigning a system presumes starting from an existing context, the second lecture focused on appreciating the current state.  We stepped through the Soft Systems Methodology, as a summarization of the variety of readings pioneered by Peter Checkland in a social learning style with a 25-year-plus history.

Since human beings can shape their futures, the third lecture then focused on alternative futures that might be possible, through two approaches.  From Russell Ackoff, four orientations to planning (reactive, inactive, preactive and interactive) were discussed, leading to an introduction to formulating the mess and idealized design.  From Steve Haeckel, the premise and principles of the sense-and-respond organization were outlined.  Students were encouraged to access this body of work as readings.

Since feasibility can play a large role in design, the fourth lecture discussed ecological complexity and scale, building on the research of  Timothy F.H. Allen.

Students were encouraged to look into the online references for these ideas, particularly since we discovered that there isn’t a copy of the Supply Side Sustainability book in any library in Finland!  I advised that this work is science in progress, so students might not understand the ideas immediately, with the light turning on some time in the future.

Coming up to the current research (since 2006) amongst ecologists, the fifth lecture outlined Social-Ecological Systems.

The students appreciated the distinctions between sustainability and sustainable development by Gilberto Gallopin, published by United Nations.  The ties between Social Ecological Systems and resilience thinking were surfaced.  I pointed out that the references on Social Ecological Systems are a relatively young (i.e. post-2006), and that I hoped to learn more at the Resilience 2011 meeting in March.

The sixth lecture worked through the basic ideas of coevolution in two species interactions as described by Eugene Odum, and responses to turbulent environments from Emery & Trist.  The current thinking in coevolutionary ecological economics, based on Richard Norgaard’s development betrayed thesis, was outlined.  The list of references bridged some older and new research that might not otherwise be linked naturally.

As a remedial lecture to CS0004 (i.e. amendments to content in October that students would have found helpful), I offered an additional lecture that most of the students voluntarily attended.  The seventh lecture on discourses included conversations for action as described by Flores and Winograd; dialogue in the sense of William Isaacs and Bela H. Banathy, six conversation from Peter Block, and seven elements of negotiation from Roger Fisher.

Throughout the class, we again organized students into two polar cells that would come together as a group in a dialectic.  Since many students were working on a sustainable design concept in a parallel course, we had hoped that they might use that case study in the CS0005 course to increase relevance of the content.  In practice, the timing of the intensive CS0005 course was off, so there may be some considerations for scheduling in future years.

As much as I had been impressed by the progress of the students in October, I was even more impressed in February.  By the end of the lectures on the second day, I had remarked that the students had internalized the content on systems thinking to such depth that they would be comfortable attending a systems sciences meeting.  I encouraged them to contribute papers to the ISSS 2011 meeting at Hull, UK.

How are (or can or should) the systems sciences and systems engineering (be) related?  For the web conference for the INCOSE (International Council on Systems Engineering) Complex Systems Working Group on November 22, 2010, I decided to present a personal perspective on linkages.  The ideas were essentially in two parts, with

• the systems movement as a system of ideas, including …
  • the systems science community as some individuals, some organizations and some publications; and
  • ten frames to guide thinking and discussion about changes in society, economics and technology in the 21st century (based on Ing (2011)); and
• John N. Warfield’s “A Challenge for Systems Engineers: To Evolve towards Systems Science”, published in INCOSE Insight (2007).

The first point reflects my view of the breadth and diversity of the system sciences.  The second point reviewed the some challenges presented by John N. Warfield, who was both a pioneer in the systems engineering community and a luminary in the systems sciences community.  As a guide for the web conference, I provided a context map.

View the full-sized context map or listen to the digital audio recording.

The web conference was recorded, producing a movie that emphasizes key points on the context map.

Download Video: MP4 WebM Ogg HTML5 Video Player by VideoJS

Watch the larger 844x528px video, the original size 720x448px video, or the smaller 480x304px video hosted on coevolving.com. These were converted from the original 844x528px WMV recording.

The systems engineers and systems scientists are working towards cooperation, with the intersecting domains and interests continuing to be developed.  We’ll be meeting together again at the INCOSE International Workshop at the end of January.

Since 2008, I’ve been conducting research on service systems and the systems sciences, with my core collaborators Gary Metcalf, Jennifer Wilby and Kyoichi (Jim) Kijima.  As senior members of the International Society for the Systems Sciences, we’ve been working towards a more formal association with the International Council on Systems Engineering, and with the Systems Science Working Group in particular.  Our organizations came together for the first time in the INCOSE International Symposium 2010, in Chicago.

For the International Symposium, our contribution was a panel on our progress in researching service systems and the systems sciences, with position papers and presentation slides discussed in Chicago in July.  After that meeting, a summary of the session was reported in an article published in INCOSE Insight in October.

The publications page on this web site includes links to the:

• July 2010 abstract, outline and presentation slides; and the
• October 2010 article in INCOSE Insight.

Our core group will be continuing our research into 2011, with a two-day co-learning workshop at the International Workshop 2011 in Phoenix, Arizona.  The linkages between the systems sciences and systems engineering should continue to develop.

There’s so much video content available on the web today, with many different styles for sharing.  The variety of considerations can lead one person to favour an approach that isn’t quite right for someone else.  After months of trial-and-error, I’ve compiled a comparison of web movies hosted on (1) my own domain, (2) Community Video on archive.org, (3) blip.tv, (4) Vimeo, and (5) Youtube.  I was motivated to share the experience of the Beat, Breaks & Culture festival at Harbourfront Centre in Toronto on July 11, in which my third son Noah performed in the final battle between Ground Illusionz and The F.A.M.

I’ve summarized my assessments in a table near the bottom of the (long) page.  The essential considerations include:

We’re on the edge of a emerging standard that is well described in the Dive into HTML5 online book.  We may be approaching an era where we can share movies and not have to worry (too much) about obsolescence.  Let’s look at each of the alternatives.

1. HD video content on my own domain and web site

Streaming media is better controlled by servers running RTSP (Real Time Streaming Protocol) rather than the HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) designed for web pages mostly of text.  Under HTTP, however, pseudo-streaming has recently become an option within the reach of do-it-yourself types.

Download Video: MP4 WebM Ogg HTML5 Video Player by VideoJS

Watch the larger 720x400px video or the original size 1280x720px video hosted on coevolving.com.

This pseudo-streaming takes advantage of the open source VideoJS script, either on manually-coded HTML5 pages or with WordPress plugin scripts.  VideoJS builds on the Video For Everybody code that determines an appropriate video format for the player in the browser.

The major motivation for hosting video content on my own domain is to avoid the major web video servers blocked by the Chinese government, as well as by some schools and by some workplace employers.  Since I already manage a number of web domains and have a dedicated IP address, the independent domain is less likely to be associated with appropriate blacklisting, and some remediation options will be possible if blocking does occur.

Smaller videos (e.g. 480x272px and 720x400px) stream well, but full HD content (i.e. 1280x720px) will more practically have to be downloaded for playing.

Managing my own content, I’ve followed the detailed instructions of the Dive Into HTML5 “Video on the Web” article to transcode movie content (with Handbrake, Firefogg, and WinFF), and transfer the files onto directories of my web site.  I prefer open source software to purchasing utilities, although there’s a learning curve that takes time.

2. Community Video at archive.org

The Internet Archive — a not-for-profit organization known for backing up the whole Internet with “The Wayback Machine” — provides free hosting of web movies in the Community Video section at archive.org.

Download Video: MP4 WebM Ogg HTML5 Video Player by VideoJS

Watch the larger 720x400px video or the original size 1280x720px video on archive.org

The multiple video formats are listed on a single page at archive.org .  While the function of archive.org is primarily to distribute content (i.e. uploading and downloading), using the VideoJS code enables streaming similar to that described with self-hosting.

Archive.org, unfortunately, is one of the websites inaccessible from China.  The transcoding and uploading procedures are much the same as for self-hosting, so there merits and demerits of the Internet Archive rest with whether you subscribe or don’t subscribe to their philosophy.

3. Blip.tv

Blip.tv is a New-York based startup that takes care of many of the video format and distribution tasks associated with sharing web video.

This episode appears in various format at on blip.tv , and I have my own show page.

Blip.tv takes care many of the concerns about evolving web standards.  If you can upload H.264 MP4 video, it should be viewable on web browsers.  Online transcoding is a feature, but it failed on my tests so that I transcoded offline and then uploaded the files.  In addition to providing the choice of which video format version to watch, the source files are available for download and tracking with feeds.  Unfortunately, blip.tv is a domain not accessible in China.

4. Vimeo

Vimeo is a New York-based division of IAC/Interactive that seems to be popular for sharing amongst friends and family.

This video is available on Vimeo , and I have a page for my collection.

Vimeo was accessible in China in September, but then became blocked a month later.  Its popularity may be resulting in more filtering in schools (and workplaces).  The Universal Player takes care of video transcoding concerns with Flash, but HTML5 support is now in beta.  The web site is oriented towards streaming, with movie downloading a feature of Vimeo Plus.

5. Youtube

Youtube is the market leader in sharing videos on the web.  It was acquired by Google in 2006.

The page at Youtube has a sidebar of suggestions of alternatives that may be of interest.  I have my own Youtube channel, that includes videos of others that I’ve queued for watching.

The most recognized domain name in video sharing is a prominent target for blocking.  Google is driving many web standards, so HTML5 (not to mention WebM) are currently in beta.  Youtube does not see itself as a downloadable distribution channel, and orients almost exclusively for online web streaming.  The limit to videos of 15 minutes maximum discourages the playing of huge files.

6. How should I share my video?

I’ve enjoyed still photography and audio recording since my high school days, and easily made the transition to digital photography and digital audio recording.  Aside from a primary school project using 8mm film, however, I have generally avoided dealing with motion pictures because they’re way more complicated.

On the web, technologies are still shifting.  The Flash video that is so common on Youtube won’t play on an iPad, as part of a policy decision at Apple.  Further, the XHTML specification for web browsers is giving way to HTML5 video, but a full standard has not yet been adopted by all parties.  This is complicated by licensing of H.264 MPEG-4 protected by patents, Theora Ogg video as open source, and WebM espousing improved performance.  Here’s an aggregate view of all of the considerations described above, point by point.

The casual users are likely to be attracted to Youtube for its popularity.  Vimeo may appeal to community and family users looking for upgradability.  Professional users should like blip.tv for its broader distribution features.  Institutions may be more assured with the potential longevity of the Internet Archive, while do-it-yourself types can pseudo-stream small videos on their own domains.  There is the possibility of uploading content to multiple places, with the ensuing complications.

The rise of video sharing in participatory media means that the audience under 30 years of age is watching content less on television and more on the Internet.  The price of digital video recording continues to fall.  Most people will look for an easy route from camera to web, but the choices can be even more complicated than for digital photography.

Addendum on 2010/12/28:

• On my iPod Touch 3, this web page through the Safari browser:  VideoJS (both from my own domain and from archive.org) shows and plays correctly; Youtube shows and plays correctly; blip.tv and Vimeo shows package icons rather than the posters to the videos.  Through Opera Mini, VideoJS shows the downloadable links only, and the posters to blip.tv, Vimeo and Youtube completely disappear.
• On my Blackberry Bold 9700, this web page through both the Blackberry browser and Opera Mini: VideoJS shows the downloadable links, and the posters to blip.tv, Vimeo and Youtube completely disappear.

Earlier this year, in April, the International Federation for Systems Research hosted its biannual research conversation, this time in Pernegg, Austria.  This meeting was a four-day opportunity to continue developing ideas on the emerging science of service systems begun in July 2009.

The proceedings from the meeting have now been published.  I’ve extracted the chapter for our team as a separate downloadable document.  The report starts with a description of our activities, and an outline of our progress.

The conversation began with self-reflections on personal experiences leading each of the individuals to the systems sciences, acknowledging the influence of those trajectories on their perspectives on service systems.  In recognition of this science of service systems as a potentially a new paradigm, much of the time together was spent in sensemaking about the intersection between ongoing services research and systems sciences perspectives.  This sensemaking led the team to focus the dialogue more on posing the right questions to clarify thinking broadly, as opposed to diving deeply towards solutions that would be tied up as issues within a problematique.

During the conversation, the progress on ideas was recorded on flipcharts.  Nearing the end of our time together, the team cut up the flipcharts with scissors, and collated the discussion threads into five clusters:  (i) philosophy; (ii) science; (iii) models; (iv) education; (v) development.  With service systems as a new domain, the team found all five clusters underdeveloped.  Recognizing that all five clusters are coevolving, the phenomenon of service systems was listed in order from the most concrete (i.e. development) through the most abstract (i.e. philosophy).  Each of the five clusters was then summarized by a meta-question.

• 1. Development: How do we transition from the current paradigm?
• 2. Education: How do we help others learn about service systems?
• 3. Models: How do we understand and decribe service systems?
• 4. Science: What do we know about service systems?
• 5. Philosophy: Why do (or should) we care about services systems?

Each of the meta-questions is described below, with some of the dialogue content associated with the question clusters.

IFSR conversations follow the methods of Béla H. Bánáthy, which means that each participant starting from triggering questions individually develops partial answers and (possibly even more) partial questions.  At Pernegg, we had researchers from four countries (which is even more complicated when we list current places of residency in addition to nationality):

• Gary Metcalf (U.S.)
• Jennifer Wilby (U.K.)
• Allenna Leonard (Canada / U.S.)
• Norimasa Kobayashi (Japan)
• Todd D. Bowers (U.K. / U.S.)
• Janet M. Singer (U.S.)
• David Ing (Canada)

As researchers, we puzzled our way through developing an appreciation for service systems at a foundational level.  To give a deeper sense of the territory that we covered during the conversation, here’s an outline of the final report.

• 1. Development of service systems:  How do we transition from the current paradigm?
  • 1.1 What are the entry points to service systems from where they are?
  • 1.2 Which systems are better suited for “designing with” rather than “designing for”?
  • 1.3 What motivations or incentives encourage the shift to service systems from the legacy state?
  • 1.4 Do we know of concrete examples of the new service systems?
• 2. Education on service systems: How do we help others learn about service systems?
  • 2.1 Through which processes will novices / beginners best learn about service systems?
  • 2.2 How do the systems sciences help in learning about service systems?
  • 2.3 How is the approach to service systems different from prior approaches to education?
• 3. Models of service systems: How do we understand and describe service systems?
  • 3.1 What should the model deal with?  For what purposes to we model service systems?
  • 3.2 How do we reconcile service systems across scientists, engineers and managers?
  • 3.3 In which ways are service system models different from other models of the world we’ve already created?
• 4. Science of service systems: What do we know about service systems?
  • 4.1 What is the scope of a science of service systems?
  • 4.2 Are service systems really new?
  • 4.3 How far are we on advancing a science of service systems?
• 5. Philosophy of service systems: Why do (or should) we care service systems?
  • 5.1 Why would we need a philosophy of service systems?
  • 5.2 What shifts in philosophy might be associated with a service systems approach?
  • 5.3 What is the scope of a philosophy of service systems?
• 6. Continuing inquiry

People looking for simple answers may be disabused of that idea, as this group of researchers didn’t have that end as a goal.  People who are interested in foundational questions may find the downloadable chapter of interest.

[Frank] Oppenheimer had a provocative approach to learning, which can be summarized by saying that …

the best way to learn is to teach, the best way to teach is to keep learning, and that what counts in the end is having had a shared, reflected experience.  (Delacote, 1998)

At the beginning of October, I had blogged about starting the first of two courses in the master’s program in Creative Sustainability at Aalto University.  I’ve been maintaining the content online as open courseware, and have now added an index page.  The context map and the course outline have evolved, and should now have mostly stabilized with the conclusion of the lectures.

The course isn’t quite done yet, as the students have to write research papers.  I took responsibility for the course content, and Aija Staffans and Katri-Liisa Pulkkinen have taken responsibility for guiding the students through the university practicalities and evaluating their learning.

While I have previously instructed at the master’s and doctoral level before, I don’t claim to be the greatest teacher.  I see myself as a researcher who can share content with students, whom may have more or less interest in the topics.  Teaching this first class on Systemic Thinking of Sustainable Communities (with a follow on of Systemic Thinking for Planners and Designers scheduled five months later) has led me to some of my own learning, with overall conclusions that include:

• 01. Sustainability is a topical theme that can be complemented by the systems sciences
• 02. Designing for dialogues about future systems is distinct from designing future systems that will learn
• 03. Open courseware is a foundation, and not a replacement for teaching
• 04. Education on systems thinking from a systems sciences approach should include both theory and method
• 05. Today’s students are comfortable with online materials, social communities and blogging

Having the course materials available on the Internet allowed me — with sufficient warning to students that they should check revision dates on documents — a luxury to revise materials just before the lectures … and following the lectures.  Thus, there are some specific learning on each of the content for each lecture:

• 06. Map 01: Foundations for a systems approach
• 07. Map 02: Boundaries, inquiry, perspectives
• 08. Map 03: Learning categories, postnormal science, ignorance
• 09. Map 04: Dialogue, engagement, intervention
• 10. Map 05: Ecosystems, collapse, resilience
• 11. Map 06: System design frameworks

My reflections are expanded, below.

01. Sustainability is a topical theme that can be complemented by the systems sciences

Some people deep into “systems thinking” have become vocal evangelists that the systems perspective is often missing in policy-making, research and education.  I have a more pragmatic view that the disciplinary sciences are sufficient for most situations in our everyday lives, with the systems sciences bringing greatest value when interdisciplinary (or transdisciplinary) engagement is needed.  The systems approach is a means, not an end.

The domain of sustainability is a mess — more formally, a problematique, or a system or problems.  Allenna Leonard says that when dialogues cross disciplines, the conversations often revert to the lowest common denominator amongst participants — as low as the level of a Grade 6 education.  The systems approach can provide a higher level of language, concepts, theory and method applicable by both the learned and the layman.  While I point out more formal definitions for systems foundations (i.e. whole, part, function, structure, process) to clarify classroom discussion, most people shouldn’t find these ideas too foreign.

In the mess that is sustainability, I’ve attempted to be humble in the scope of my expertise.  I know quite a lot about the systems approach, I’m better than a layman in appreciating the issues of sustainability, and I rely a lot on the research of ecologists who also systemicists (e.g. panarchy from the Resilience Alliance).

02. Designing for dialogues about future systems is distinct from designing future systems that will learn

The decision to have two courses on systems thinking — one focused on communities, and the other focused on planners and designers — had been made well before I arrived on the scene.  This split has turned out to be advantageous to learning, as the orientations can be differentiated.

In contemporary parlance, the community orientation follows the “wisdom of crowds“, whereas the planners’ and designers’ orientation follows the expertise of accomplished and extraordinary people (e.g. “outliers“).  In a systems approach, this parallels (i) one stream emphasizing towards dialogue, conversation and participatory design, and (ii) another stream emphasizing purpose, planning and modeling.  In the real world, both perspectives are simultaneously in practice.  In a teaching situation, recognizing distinctions in the underlying philosophy is educational.

One challenge that we encountered in the classroom was a predisposition towards pursuing a design for an outcome, rather than design of a process (i.e. the way that dialogue and conversation is conducted).  This predisposition was partially attributed to the large number of students from a design (e.g. product design) background, but I think there’s a deeper issue at play.  Our society may have become so results-oriented that any activity that isn’t guaranteed to produce a predefined outcome (e.g. consensus) may be perceived as incomplete or unfocused.  The alternative outcome where parties “agree to disagree” — potentially resulting in two systems coexisting in harmony, rather than a single system with continuing counterproductive conflict — may not be allowed to emerge.

This challenge will likely be the greatest influencer in evolving the next version of the course (probably October 2011).

03. Open courseware is a foundation, and not a replacement for teaching

In the summer preceding the launch of the new course, I browsed through recent issues of systems journals (e.g. Systems Research and Behavioral Sciences, Systemic Practice and Action Research) to create the reading list, supplemented by some of the standard works (often books) that are well-known in the systems community.  This resulted in a list of references that I cautioned Aija and Katri would be implausible for any individual human being to digest.  This list has evolved into the course outline, with directions to the students to pick ideas they like (or choose readings randomly) in the hope that there might be some peer-learning across the class.  Electronic access to journals has made finding articles as simple as following through the DOI link (sometimes!), and a preview on Google Books can give the student a sense of whether a trip to the library will or won’t be worthwhile.

While I’m proficient in creating slideware (e.g. Microsoft Powerpoint, Lotus Symphony Presentations), there’s downsides with linear sequentiality that I don’t find in visual maps.  I’ve recently been creating maps with selected diagrams and text excerpts using the Visual Understanding Environment, which has the advantages of being available as open source and following web standards well.  The network structures depicted on those visual maps help the students to orient themselves on the content, with scrolling the window an alternative to jumping slides.

The class size of 27 students was great for lectures that ran from 45 to 90 minutes in length.  Watching the faces of students, I could see when a point was resonating and when the idea was difficult.  I tried to take questions in the flow of the lecture, and we could have had much more interaction if we had had more time.  One of the teaching decisions that I had to make on the fly was balancing breadth versus depth of content.  The original publications were cited and generally available, so unanswered questions were an invitation for each student to pursue his or her own curiosity for greater detail … again acknowledging that no single individual will be able to know everything.

04. Education on systems thinking from a systems sciences approach should include both theory and method

I see systems thinking as an art that is not necessarily incompatible with the rigour of the sciences of systems.  I find some courses — in a zeal to be “more practical”  — oriented too far towards systems methods (i.e. how-to approach issues from a systems approach) leaving insufficient attention to be paid on systems theory (i.e. models or representations of the world that are generally accepted as true).  While familiarity with specific tools and techniques might be immediately gained, I suspect that students don’t get the appreciation for why one method might be preferred over another (and ways in which those methods might be misused).

I believe that students will respond to theory if the question of “why should I care?” is answered.  Connecting the abstract ideas to practical situations and concrete stories improves relevance and understanding.  The orientation towards science does require that the content reflect the current state of knowledge (e.g. recent journal publications).  Many luminaries in the systems movement have passed on, so while the knowledge that they’ve preserved in their writings and presentations may be respected, I would think that those luminaries would be distressed if the systems sciences ceased to continue to develop.

These statements are made from the perspective of an instructor for a course taught at the master’s level.  Further, my experience with students in Finland has shown that they are not intimidated by assignments of readings from scientific journals, and they value real knowledge.   This seriousness is not necessarily the style in North American pedagogy.  Since there is a wealth of material available online, I suggested to student that they might read an article quickly, and seek alternative publications by that same author if the writing was found to be too difficult.  The vagaries of reviewing processes sometimes make an article more convoluted than would be a presentation directly by that researcher.

05. Today’s students are comfortable with online materials, social communities and blogging

I have a distaste for student assignments that are written solely to be read by an instructor, and no one else.  Thus, I’m an advocate not only of online writing (e.g. blogging), but also venues where the world can access knowledge (i.e. without passwords or private registration).

In the first session with this class, I asked how many students were already writing blogs.  Zero hands went up.  I then asked how many were on Facebook, and all of the hands went up.  We then followed through on plans to have students (i) sign up for their own blogs (e.g. they’re free on wordpress.com, and some students have their own web sites), and (ii) coordinate activity through microblogging on the Systems Community of Inquiry.  The Facebook-wall style of date-oriented posts works — the interface might be busy for people prefer more concise interfaces — and some order has been established with separate forum threads for Day One, Day Two, Day Three, and the Final Research Report.

On the more formal activities of writing, I’ve been informed that these master’s students (particularly the ones from a design background) may not be used to writing articles in an academic style.  Aija and Katri believe that this is a skill that master’s students should develop, so I expect that students may need some coaching on form as well as content.  I’ve relayed my positive experiences with using Zotero as a Firefox plugin to ease some of the issues with getting the correct formatting of references.

Having reflected on course as a whole, I’ll now describe the learning that occurred in preparing each of the lectures.

06. Map 01: Foundations for a systems approach

The first lecture started with basic definitions, from Ackoff and Gharajedaghi.

During the class, the discussion led to my drawing Stewart Brand’s shearing layers (or pacing layers) model on a flipchart.  After the class, I added this content to the map.

07. Map 02: Boundaries, inquiry, perspectives

In the lecture, I referenced Ulrich’s views on boundary judgement, and covered the design of inquiring systems by Mitroff & Linstone as well as Churchman.

As a result of some struggles in the exercises in dilemma groups, I fleshed out Ulrich’s boundary categories to a deeper extent, as well as suggesting that more progress could be made by stepping down to the concrete, in Hayakawa’s abstraction ladder.

08. Map 03: Learning categories, postnormal science, ignorance

The learning categories by Bateson, post-normal science by Ravetz, and map of ignorance by Witte, Kerwin and Witte fit together well, and students got the idea easily.

In the exercise that followed, there were questions about how to design for unknown-unknowns … which meant that the students were thinking.

09. Map 04: Dialogue, engagement, intervention

Walton’s description of Banathy, the language-action perspective from Winograd and Flores, and the ecosystem approach by Waltner-Toews and Kay were in the original reading list.

Just before class, Metcalf’s description of Banathy provided a conside source on generative dialogue and strategic dialogue.  Wilby’s critical review mode filled out the thinking on Total Systems Intervention from Flood.

10. Map 05: Ecosystems, collapse, resilience

Starting with collapse as described by Tainter drove reflection on the negative state that sustainability aims to avoid.  This led naturally to Tim Allen’s work on supply-side sustainability and gain in ecology.  Holling’s work on resilience and panarchy followed naturally on this lecture.

The addition of Elinor Ostrom — as a Nobel Prize laureate — provided additionally legitimacy for the panarchy work extending into political economy.

One addition that I’ll need to make for next year is a better explanation of the economic concepts of marginal benefit and marginal cost, as used by Tim Allen.  I wasn’t expecting to have to give an ECON 100 lecture, but there’s no reason for any of the students in this class to have had studied that content.

11. Map 06: System design frameworks

Opening up a time slot for students to give brief summaries of their class exercises meant that the final lecture could only outline Miller’s Living Systems Theory, Rosen’s Anticipatory Systems, and Beer’s Viable System Model.

This content is actually more appropriate for the designers and planners course than the communities course.  A year from now, perhaps I’ll replace these models with concrete approaches to facilitating conversations.

I’m looking forward to the second course in February, when I’ll cover the perspective of planners and designers, and learn some more about teaching systems.

References

Delacote, Goéry. 1998. Putting Science in the Hands of the Public. Science 280, no. 5372 (June 26): 2054-2055. doi:10.1126/science.280.5372.2054. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.280.5372.2054.

At Aalto University — the institution resulting from the merger of the former Helsinki University of Technology, Helsinki School of Economics, and University of Art and Design Helsinki — there’s a new master’s program in Creative Sustainability.  I’m here to launch a pair of new courses:  Systemic Thinking of Sustainable Communities (CS0004) in October 2010, and Systemic Thinking for Planners and Designers (CS0005) scheduled for February 2011.

The design and delivery of this course has been in the agile Finnish style.  I’ve been working with Aija Staffans and Katri-Liisa Pulkkinen in transforming the reading list into a learning style suitable for a class of 24 to 30 students.

As an alternative to creating content in the traditional Powerpoint style, I’ve been putting content directly on the web.  Visual maps help to reduce confusion.  Here’s a map outlining the course.

The details are available in a course outline in long form text.  (This continues to evolve over the duration of the class).

The first lecture is on Foundations for a systems approach.

The second lecture is on Perspectives and diversity.

The students will be encouraged to join the Systems Community of Inquiry, where access and visibility will be extended from this classroom in Helsinki to the larger world of systems thinkers.  The style of education is open and fluid, appropriate for bringing new people into the systems movement.

In appreciating the systems sciences, it can be important to appreciate distinctions around the producer-product relation and coproducers.  A system — which is conceptually bounded by observer(s) defining a boundary — does not exist independently of its environment.  A system may draw on inputs or resources in its environment.  Changes in the environment may be associated with reactions, responses or proactive reformation (i.e. changes in structure(s)) or transformation (i.e. changes in structure(s) and function(s)).

The most rigourous description of these distinctions is in Ackoff and Emery (1972), but this is a derivation of Ackoff’s original dissertation, and relatively difficult to read.  I happened across a more readable, and helpful summary in Ackoff (1981).

The Machine Age’s commitment to cause and effect was the source of many dilemmas, including the one involving free will. At the turn of the century the American philosopher E. A. Singer, Jr., showed that science had, in effect, been cheating.  It was using two different relationships but calling both cause and effect.  He pointed out, for example, that acorns do not cause oaks because they are not sufficient, even though they are necessary, for oaks.  An acorn thrown into the ocean, or planted in the desert or an Arctic ice cap does not yield an oak.  To call the relationship between an acorn and an oak ‘probabilistic’ or ‘non deterministic causality,’ as many scientists did, was cheating because it is not possible to have a probability other than 1.0 associated with a cause; a cause completely determines its effect.  Therefore, Singer chose to call this relationship ‘producer-product’ and to differentiate it from cause-effect. [pp. 224-225]

Singer went on to ask what the universe would look like if producer-product is applied to it rather than cause-effect.  One might think of Singer‘s question in this way: an orange, when sliced vertically, yields a cross-sectional view that is very different from the view revealed when it is sliced horizontally.  Yet both are views of the same thing. The more views we have of a thing, the better we can understand it.  Singer argued similarly about the universe.

As Singer and Ackoff and Emery have shown, the view of the universe revealed by viewing it in terms of producer-product is quite different from that yielded by viewing it in terms of cause-effect.  Because a producer is only necessary and not sufficient for its product, it cannot provide a complete explanation of it.  There are always other necessary conditions, coproducers of its product. For example, moisture is a coproducer of an oak along with an acorn.  These other necessary conditions taken collectively constitute the acorn’s environment.  Therefore, the use of the producer-product relationship requires the environment to explain everything whereas use of cause-effect requires the environment to explain nothing.  Science based on the producer-product relationship is environment-full, not environment-free.

A law based on the producer-product relationship must specify the environment(s) under which it applies.  No such law can apply in every environment, because if it did no environmental conditions would be necessary.  Thus there are no universal laws in this view of the universe.  For example, we have learned more recently that the law that everything that goes up must come down is not universally true.  (Unfortunately, some things that we have put up with the intention that they do not come down, nevertheless have done so.)  Environmentally relative laws can use probabilistic concepts in a consistent and meaningful way.  In an environment in which all the necessary coproducing conditions are not specified hence may or may not be present — it is not only meaningful but it is useful to speak of the probability of production. For example, we can determine the probability of an acorn producing an oak in a specified environment in which some of the relevant properties are not known. Therefore, the probability determined is the probability that the unspecified but necessary environmental conditions are present.  [p. 225]

To get further clarification, I referred back to Singer (1959) (which was edited posthumously by C. West Churchman, Ackoff’s doctoral supervisor and colleague).  More than two decades earlier, the ideas were explained in Singer’s Chapter 18, “The Producer-Product Relation”.  Part of the challenge was to understand “biocentric sciences” — which would include human social systems — in a way that is different from physics.

If the physicist’s argument for indeterminism is historically episodic and humanly limited in the public competent to debate it, not so the biologist’s, or to come at once to the general case, the “biocentric scientist’s”.  “The general case,” we say, for we recall a previous chapter to have subsumed under the generic term “biocentric sciences” a number of special studies of which biology was one.  Denotatively, these sciences are concerned with all that makes up the domain of life, its organs, instruments, social groupings.  Connotatively, they are concerned with no bodies which the physical leaves unobserved, but they recognize in the objects of their study properties the physicist disregards; namely, the properties called functional.  Now, the attribution of functional properties to the components of the biocentric world is world-old and world-wide; and the recognition of certain difficulties in the way of adjusting objects possessing functional properties to any kind of mechanical imagery is as ancient as human reflection on matters of common experience.  Of these difficulties, the principal ones may be noted in an anticipatory way, at least to the extent of giving name to certain traditional worries.  [p. 273]

First, functional properties seem to be as “inherent” in the subjects possessing them as are those structural properties, configuration, volume, velocity, mass taken by the physicist to be invariant with variation of environment.  Yet no account need be taken of these inherent properties, as data required for the physicist’s predictions and explanations — in short, for his adjustment of observational data to a mechanical imagery between whose momentary distributions a cause-effect relation exists.  How, then, adjust such observations of natural objects as recognize in some of these objects functional properties, to an imagery that has as yet no way of distinguishing the representation of an object that does from the representation of one that does not possess functional attributes?  [pp. 273-274]

In the second place, the constituents of a biocentric world seem to be subject to no such completely determining laws as are the points of a mechanical image, but what “norms” they do conform to allow them a certain indetermination, illustrated in the “spontaneity” of life in general, the “freedom” of man in particular. How can things exhibiting spontaneity of action, freedom of behaviour, be embodied in the details of a natural system that can be adjusted point by point to an image whose constituent points are completely devoid of functional attributes, and completely determined by law as to their changes of position and attribute?

Thus we come to a rough picture of the quandary in which the mind of the historic past has found itself entangled.  Without function and freedom, how give meaning to life?  With function and freedom, how conform life to mechanism?  Without mechanism, how relate cause and effect?  Without cause and effect, how understand anything?  Throughout a long past, the mind has tried numerous devices by which to resolve its perplexities.  None has received the sanction of any preponderance of thinkers; none shows evidence of growing in favor more conspicuously than its rivals.  It is left for each who sees the difficult to seek his own way of extricating himself.  [p. 274]

This leads to making the distinction between cause-effect and producer-product.

… the present study proposes to distinguish two relational terms ordinarily used quite interchangeably; the one a cause-effect; the other a producer-product relation.  [p. 275]

To begin with an example of the latter relationship, used in a sense our analysis intends to preserve — imagine the inheritor to an old estate points to a sizable oak, remarking that his oak was said to be the outgrowth of an acorn planted by his grandfather a hundred years ago.  With what conditions of mechanical imagery would his statement have to conform, if it was to be accepted as true?  That is, in what kind of mechanical image of the natural system of which this oak forms part, would one find two details, one, the image of that acorn, the other, of this oak, such that, of the two objects imaged, the first was to be recognized as a producer of the second; the second, a product of the first? [pp. 275-276]

Evidently, in a mechanical image of any “sufficiently closed” natural system in which a present oak and a past acorn had their respective places, the acorn would be represented in some detail of a point-distribution imaging that natural system as it was a hundred years ago; the oak, in some detail of distribution imaging the system as it is today.  Of these two distributions, the first would be cause of the second, the second, effect of the first.  Now, if between an acorn and an oak so imaged, a producer-product relation is to be recognized, two requirements will have to be met; under the determining law of any mechanical imagery to which that natural system is adjustable, the presence of that acorn image in the cause will have to be (i) a necessary; but (ii) an insufficient condition to the presence of that oak-image in the effect.  Thus, the grandson speaking in our example would be the first to agree that his statement could not be true, if either of two other statements were false; the first asserting that had his ancestor not placed an acorn in the indicated then-and-there, no oak would have stood in the indicated here-and-now, the second asserting that though his ancestor had placed an acorn at the time and place indicated, there might still have been no oak where the present one now stands. We are not asking, for the moment, what evidence the speaker would have to gather to confirm his belief that both these statements were true; but only, what evidence would have to establish, if his original statement was to be accepted.  [pp. 276-277]

We ask, then, what formal conditions would this mechanical image of a given natural system have to fulfil, if the acorn-image in the cause and the oak-image in the effect were to represent two natural objects, of which the existence of the first was a necessary but insufficient condition in the existence of the second?  To arrive at an answer, the present study follows a procedure which might be called, the method of virtual replacements (reminiscent of the principle of virtual displacements familiar to the literature of analytical mechanics).  A simple symbolism lets us follow the application of this method more accurately and more graphically than would an account couched entirely in verbal phrase.  Presenting the problem and its solution in terms of the acorn-oak illustration already before us, it will be easy to generalize the method and its result to apply to any two objects of which the first is shown to be the producer of the second.  [p. 277]

I’ll skip over the formalistic language, for a summary some pages later.

In terms of formal properties thus defined

the cause-effect relation is	the producer-product relation is
reflexive	non-reflexive
asymmetric	asymmetric
transitive	transitive
the relations cause-effect and effect-cause are mutually reciprocal	the relations producer-product and product-producer are mutually reciprocal

So classified, the two relations are seen to share all formal properties, save one:  cause-effect is; producer-product is not a reflexive relation.  [p. 289]

The language above can be unpacked so that:

• the cause-effect relation is reflexive, i.e. cause is necessary and sufficient (if and only if) to the effect; yet
• the producer-product relation is non-reflexive, i.e. producer is necessary but not sufficient to the product.

In the context of systems theory, the system and its environment can be coproducers of an output (and an outcome).  In drawing a system boundary, we don’t need to include every coproducing element inside … and probably shouldn’t try, as we could miss an element necessary to a product.

This ties in to a prior blog post where I had written (as point 4) that “An offering can be either an output of coproduction, or input into coproduction”, referring to (Ramírez and Wallin 2000).

References

Ackoff, Russell Lincoln, and Frederick Edmund Emery. 1972. On purposeful systems. Aldine-Atherton. [preview at Google Books]

Ackoff, Russell L. 1981. Creating the Corporate Future: Plan or Be Planned For. New York: John Wiley and Sons.  [preview at Google Books]

Singer, Edgar Arthur. 1959. Experience and reflection. Ed. C. West Churchman. University of Pennsylvania Press.  [preview at Google Books]

I’ve received news about an Aalto University course on  ”Socio-Technical Systems Paradigm: History and Further Developments” [see pdf], led by Frans M. van Eijnatten (Eindhoven University of Technology) and Mari Kira (Academy Research Fellow at sustain.tkk.fi), scheduled  for September 27-28 in Espoo, Finland.

The course is associated with the Sustain Research Program that “focuses on creating sustainable work in contemporary working life”.  I also noticed a book on Creating sustainable work systems:  developing social sustainability, edited by Peter Docherty, Mari Kira and Abraham B. Shani (Taylor & Francis 2008) [preview at Google Books].

We would seem to be at the leading edge of research with this topic.  Since I’m active in the systems community, I was intrigued by a reference to an article in 2008 article in Systems Research and Behavioral Science by Mari Kira, and Frans M. van Eijnatten, “Socially sustainable work organizations: A chaordic systems approach”.

This 2008 article has led to a yet-to-be-printed (in 2010) SRBS research note by Merrelyn Emery, “Refutation of Kira & van Eijnatten’s critique of the Emery’s open systems theory” [available in early release].  She points out that the Emery variant of Open Systems Theory (OST) comes with a history of divergence in Social-Technical Systems (STS) thinking.  Emery cites continuing work with OST in a 2007 chapter by Emery and DeGuerre “Evolution of Open Systems Theory” [preview at Google Books in The change handbook:
the definitive resource on today's best methods for engaging whole systems, (Peggy Holman, Tom Devane, Steven Cady, editors)].

The Emery refutation is followed by a yet-to-be-printed (in 2010) SRBS research note by Mari Kira and Frans M. van Eijnatten, “Socially sustainable work organizations and systems thinking” [available in early release].  The coauthors thanked Emery for her criticism, and clarified some aspects of the original paper.

The foundations cited for research into sustainable work leads back to articles in a 2004 The Learning Organization special issue on “Chaordic systems thinking for learning organizations, guest edited by Frans M. van Eijnatten and Goran D. Putnik.

The research debate amongst these authors reflects evolution in the systems sciences from the heritage of the Tavistock Institute (circa 1941-1989) with Fred Emery and Eric Trist, and the newer interest in chaos and order by Dee Hock (circa 1991-2001) in the chaordic perspective with chaordic initiatives.

On a brief look at the articles, I’m interested in digging into them.  If I’m going to do the reading, I should seriously think about registering for the course.  (I was planning to be in Finland around that time, already).  Some alternatives that will require fewer air miles include web movies of lectures by Frans Eijnatten at videolectures.net.

P.S.  I hadn’t seen The Learning Organization journal before.  While I was there, I noticed a 2007 special issue on “The relevance of systems thinking and systems dynamics“.  The first article is by an acquaintance in the Ackoff community, Jamshid Gharajedaghi, with an article on “Systems thinking: a case for second-order-learning”.  Jamshid had helped me (both in his writing, and over the telephone) by clarifying some basic concepts when I was climbing the systems learning curve in 1998 with Steve Haeckel and the Adaptive Enterprise / Sense and Respond research.  Jamshid’s 2007 article seems to be a finalization of a draft that appeared on the Ackoff Center Weblog in 2004.

Earlier this year during the Russell Ackoff memorial, I reconnected with some members of the systems community in Philadelphia.  This event was taken as an opportunity to reinvigorate the systems community, in honour of Russ.  With his colleagues and former students scattered around the world, an Internet-based presence seemed appropriate.

We’ve now formally launched SysCOI.com — the Systems Community of Inquiry.  It is intended as open, worldwide network of individuals interested in systems thinking, the systems sciences and/or systems practice.

Inquiry is “an activity which produces knowledge” (Churchman, 1971).  The shared foundations and perspective in systems suggests more than a community of interest, but less than a community of practice (Wenger, 1999).  The interactions as a community aim to (i) foster interactions contributing knowledge and wisdom to the online world, and (ii) cultivate social relationships between systemicists.

The web interface follows an activity stream style of interaction, as has become popular with Facebook.  In the interest of completely open communications,  content posted on SysCOI.com is visible anywhere the Internet is accessible, and actively crawled by search engines.  There is no ambiguity about privacy with this online community: all communications are public.  The feature of choosing your “friends” on this web site enables following a smaller set of contributors, as the size of the social network increases.  Discussions with longer-running threads can be organized with groups and forums provided on the site.

Pre-announcement of the new web site occurred in April at the Systems Research Conversation at Pernegg, sponsored by the IFSR.  Later that same month, a meeting Honoring and Transcending Russ Ackoff in Washington D.C. allowed the startup team to convene in person.  In July, attendees at the INCOSE International Symposium and at the ISSS Annual Meeting in Waterloo were invited to join.  The June release of WordPress 3 provided a stable foundation on which Buddypress social networking extensions could be finalized.  The group e-mail subscription plugin enables registered members to choose from immediate, daily or weekly notifications.  Streams can be followed at http://twitter.com/syscoi and http://friendfeed.com/syscoi.

Systemicists interested in collaborating openly on the Internet are welcomed to register.  With the basics in places, the web team is continuing to work towards adding more functionality to these foundations.

An article on NPR about the Quest to Learn program in New York City led by Katie Salen cites systems thinking as one of the foundations for 21st century literacy. I found this article on a lead from Erika von Hoyer on the Systems Community of Inquiry via her Twitter feed.

The learning model at Quest to Learn says: “Games and other forms of digital media serve another useful purpose at Quest: they serve to model the complexity and promise of ‘systems.’ Understanding and accounting for this complexity is a fundamental literacy of the 21st century”.   Reading the CV of Katie Salen, I notice that she was working on the Spaceship Earth Game at the Buckminister Fuller Institute in 2005.

This led to finding an interview about the three-year study on “Grinding New Lenses: A Design Project to Support a Systems View of the World” conducted by Kylie Pepper and Melissa Gresalfi at Indiana University.  The funding by the MacArthur Foundation seems to be part of the research on assessing learning with new media as part of the 21st century assessment project.

In a panel at the Digital Media & Learning conference, Valerie Shute says “What attributes of the students are important for success in the 21st century? Systems thinking, collaborating, resource-management skills”.  This is related to worked examples and evidence-centered design.

This direction on systems thinking in middle school is compatible with the proposed design for K-12 education on Smarter Planet Service Systems proposed by Jim Spohrer.  The content is similar; the game based media could be more fun than education from an industrial era mindset.

In the Toronto area, we have had a legacy of many systems scientists as residents.  Although many Meetup attendees were familiar with Anatol Rapoport in association with the prisoner’s dilemma, they did not know that had had been a professor at the University of Toronto since 1970, and resided in the city until his passing in 2007.

One systems scientist who knew him well is Helmut (Ken) Burkhardt, professor emeritus of physics at Ryerson University.  We were delighted when Ken agreed to speak on “Anatol Rapoport, Abridged“.  As a bonus, Ken coordinated the meeting so that Anatol’s wife Gwen and son Tony could join in the discussion.

For those who were unable to attend the February 18 meetup, Ken agreed to allow me to post the notes from his talk on this blog.

<< begin paste >>

Anatol Rapoport as I Remember Him

Helmut (Ken) Burkhardt

Anatol’s biography as given in the Wikipedia is pretty good, therefore, I will report on what cannot be read in the Wikipedia, my personal impressions of Anatol as

• Concert Pianist,
• Systems Science pioneer,
• Peace Researcher, and
• Ethicist.

Anatol the Pianist

I heard Anatol play the piano very forcefully in a public concert at the Hart House of the University of Toronto.  It reminded me of a story told about Beethoven, who played so forcefully that pianos would break.  I was afraid for the piano at the Hart House would not survive Anatol’s concert.  It did.

At one of the Canadian Section of ISSS conferences, Anatol declined to play piano for the group because the instrument we had on site did not meet his standards of quality.

Later I heard Anatol give a piano concert at the Banquet of the ISSS Annual General Meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, 1998.  Anatol was 87 years of age at the time.  It was a beautiful setting in a high-rise penthouse, with view all around over the city.  Anatol played a few pieces beautifully, but then in the middle of another one he stood up, and said “sorry, I cannot continue, my strength was failing”.

When Anatol was well over 90 years old, and his mental faculties began to wane, I still remember him playing the piano beautifully at his home.  Gwen may tell us more about that.

Anatol the Systems Scientist

In developing systems research, Anatol emphasized the analogy to physics.  I totally agree with that.  Systems science and all the branches of science must recognize the limits to their freedom of choice set by the physical sciences, and today I would add the limitations set by the ecological sciences.  These are the vital primary sciences that determine what is possible, and set the imperatives for individual, social, economic and political action.

Unfortunately, social scientists including politicians are often not knowledgeable of physics and ecology, and have a tendency to design systems and policies outside of the allowable physical and ecological limits, and are therefore prone to fail; by ignoring the scientific limits solutions become the problems.  One international civil society organisation that promotes this physical framework for policy is the ‘Natural Step’ society that originated in Sweden  http://www.thenaturalstep.org/en/canada/about-us .

Anatol’s pioneering contribution to societal system science was in Game Theory.  One of the most insightful and also popular stories is the Prisoners’ Dilemma.  In an example, two individual prisoners A and B are tied together through their circumstances to form a little mafia system within the state system.  It turns out that in the interests of the prisoner system are opposite to the interest of the state system.  Furthermore, the interest of the individual members of the mafia system can be contrary to the interest of the mafia system.   Thus, there are many different values to be considered, and rational decision of the individual, can cause damage to the mafia systems, which represents the interest common to both prisoners.

I took the following example from the website that Anthony has set up for his father’s published and unpublished works: www.anatolrapoport.net .  The judge has proof of the prisoners’ possession of stolen goods, which justifies a prison term of 1 year for each prisoner.  Pursuing the interests of the state system, he would like the prisoners to confess to burglary, which would justify a 5 year prison term.  Therefore he designs the four scenarios: if no one confesses to burglary, then each prisoner is sentenced to one year in prison.  The judge offers a plea bargain if only one of them confesses to burglary, he goes free and the other one gets a five year sentence. If both confess, they get for being honest only 3 years prison term each.

Before listing the rational options of the prisoners, I would like to represent the example in terms of the mafia ethic of the prisoners.  In this context a ‘ratter’, according to the dictionary, is a slang expression for a person who deserts his/her associates, not a dog that catches rats. Confessing has a positive value for the state ethic, but for the mafia ethic it is ratting, which has a negative value.  The reason for this value inversion will become clear later, when I apply the prisoners’ dilemma to climate change; here the nations are prisoners of the globe, and the national interests are often opposite to the global interests.

Each prisoner has two options, which are to rat, or not to rat.

What are the consequences for them personally and for the prisoner mafia?

If they rat, they might go free, or get 3 years prison term, on average they have to expect 1.5 years prison.

If they do not rat, they will get one year in prison, or might get a 5 year prison term, on average they have to expect 3 years in prison.  Therefore, the individual prisoner’s rational decision for the prisoners is to rat.

However, this meaningful, rational decision for each individual is the worst case scenario for the mafia collective; namely 6 person years in prison, while the when both do not rat, the mafia gets away with only 2 person years of prison time.

I suppose because of this benefit for the collective, trust in your associates has been praised a virtue since Ancient Greek times, as beautifully described in a ballad by Friedrich von Schiller in 1799.  Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Bürgschaft )  has the following synopsis of the story: The ballad is set in Ancient Greek polis of Syracuse. After a failed attempt by Moerus to kill the tyrant Dionysius, he is sentenced to death. However, he is granted a delay in order to consign his sister to her designated husband. Moerus’ friend remains with Dionysius to guarantee Moerus’ return. To the astonishment of Dionysius, after many obstacles, Moerus returns to save his friend. Ashamed by this deed, Dionysius admits the moral value of fidelity and asks to be considered as a friend in their midst.

The rationality of the individual and of the system decisions changes with the conditions.  If the crime the prisoners confess to leads to a penalty of life long prison, of even death, then the expectation changes.

If they both don’t rat, each spends one year in prison.  The alternative is to go free or risk a lifelong prison term, which is worse than one year in prison.  If  both rat, then both get sentenced to life in prison.  In this situation the rational decision for the individual is not to rat, which at the same time benefits the collective.

Let me now apply Anatol’s prisoner dilemma to last December’s climate change discussion in Copenhagen.  Assume the two global coal burning giants of the world, China and the USA think they each will lose a trillion Dollars by no longer burning coal.  However, when one of them continues burning coal they will lose nothing, if the other stops burning coal, which will result in a 5 trillion dollar disadvantage.  If both continue burning coal, the environmental damage will amount to each of them losing 3 trillion Dollars.

Not knowing for sure, what the other nation will do, it is rational for each nation to continue burning coal, because they expect 0 or 3 trillion dollar losses, while if they do not continue burning coal, they must expect 1 or 5 Trillion dollar losses.  However, the global economy will have most losses in this situation, namely of 6 trillion dollars, compared with 2 trillion in if they both were to stop burning coal.

Again, the rationality of the individual nation’s decision will depend on the circumstances.  If we trust the predictions of the International Panel on Climate Change, that the consequence of continued burning of coal and oil is the catastrophic collapse of the ecosystem and with it the global collapse of human civilization, then the individual nation’s rational decision must be to stop burning coal.

In these scenarios described by mainstream climate change scientists the nations must chose between 1 trillion dollars economic loss, and no economic loss but risking global chaos.  Obviously, the rational choice of nations is not to continue burning coal, which coincides with the global interests in the science based decision making.

The Peace Researcher

In the early 1980th, when I joined Science for Peace, they were asking for proposals for research projects.  I stepped forward and proposed research on appropriateness of weapon.  My idea was that the right kind of weapons are survival tools, and inappropriate weapons such as nuclear weapons are suicidal.  Eric Fawcett, the founding president of Science for Peace arranged a lunch with me an Anatol to discuss this peace research proposal.  Anatol’s decision was swift and firm.  No!  All weapons are inappropriate.  To this day, I disagree with this judgement.  When I meet a hostile grizzly bear in the wild, I would rather have bear spray, or even a gun with me, because my strength is no match to theirs.

There are other opinions on peace, which I share with Anatol.  Many, including the Buddhists claim that peace comes from within us, it is made by individuals attitudes.  By contrast, Anatol maintains that individual psychology need not be changed to achieve peace; it is the military industrial complex, the whole war system that must change. I think I have proof that Anatol’s view is correct.

I live with millions in Toronto at an acceptable level of peace.  I only know a few of them personally, but most of the strangers are peaceful enough as they are.   The few who are disturbing the peace are removed by police from the social system.  All functioning states are characterized by such internal peace.  The United Europe, with all the difficulties has extended peace beyond the national level to the continent.  In my view it is just another step to global peace through the adoption of an appropriate global political structure, without changing the psyche of humans.

Anatol the Ethicist

The traditional ethics lists four values: the True, the Beautiful (the Pleasurable according to Anatol), and the Good.  This ethical system I found not really helpful, because it does not define the Good.

I learned from Anatol to differentiate between primary values, and instrumental values.  In contemplating the difference I concluded that only the primary values are universally valid, not only for humans, but for all life forms.  The instrumental values are relative to cultural and environmental conditions.

On this basis I have formulate a science, not philosophy based ethics; it has only two primary, universal values, namely one’s own life, and the life of one’s offspring.  All other values are instrumental for achieving the primary values.  While this is basically a very simple ethical system, it has ‘brutal’ consequences, and in practice it becomes very complicated when considering all the value conflicts arising between the individual and the community, the short term and the long term, the local and the global.

Conversation at the Meetup

The conversation at the meetup with rich.  Although I’ve discussed prisoner’s dilemma in the past, the “mafia” view somehow eluded me.  From the description of Anatol Rapoport’s perspective, the story moves from the usual arena in economics to the sphere of morals and ethics.

One of the surprises from the meeting was the history provided by Gwen Rapoport .  She was already well developed in her career at the founding of the new field of industrial relations at the University of Chicago, in the era of Robert Hutchins — a great advocate of interdisciplinary studies — when she met Anatol.

For those interested in reading more about the life and work of Anatol Rapoport, Tony has launched a new site at anatolrapoport.net .  There’s a more complete article on Prisoner’s Dilemma over there.