From: John Jay Kineman <kin...@colorado.edu>Subject: Re: [SysSciWG] Manifesto for General Systems TransdisciplinarityDate: August 15, 2015 at 9:43:56 AM GMT+5:30To: David Rousseau <david.r...@systemsphilosophy.org>, <syss...@googlegroups.com>Cc: Judith Rosen <judit...@earthlink.net>, Jennifer Wilby <enqui...@gmail.com>Thanks David, I was in the SysSciWG list but I'm not getting the messages now. Maybe because of some account changes with Google? I'll try to re-join.I fully endorse this effort and I hope we can have a focused sub-theme around it in 2016, perhaps combining the interests of several SIGs and WGs. My plan for 2016 is to do normal SIG and Conference calls for papers, although with some prior guidance on conference themes to those writing the calls. Then the presentation of papers will be in thematic categories based on the abstracts submitted. That way, different SIG ideas on a similar topic can be discussed across SIGs, EGs, and WGs. It seems that would be a good setup for the GST topic, which is gaining popularity across SIGs. The idea is to encourage certain conference themes and sub-themes in the Calls, then if the membership responds to those calls we should have a response that is at least aimed at the intended topics. If they don't, then that's just the way it is with the membership, but I think if we write the calls properly people will respond accordingly. In the end, the size of each sub-theme discussion would be determined by the number of actual abstracts submitted on that topic, and the topic categories themselves might change from the Call depending on what's actually submitted. I expect there may be quite a number of contributions on the GST topic. After the meeting each SIG, EG, or WG can do their own integration of what was presented/learned/etc. and decide what follow-up their group will do. There can be a collective report at the conference giving status and provisional outcomes, if any; also any agreements with policy implications (like the need for funding and priority) can be fed into the Congress statement. Then long-term development would depend on the SIGs according to their interest and interpretation.In this way I'm also thinking there is less issue of "ownership" of a topic by a SIG, EG, or WG in the conference itself but maximum ownership and benefit to each group pursuing an aspect or interpretation of the question long-term. As examples, our collective voice at the Conference/Congress can help promote the legitimacy of this discussion, help get funding for specific efforts identified in the SIGs, EGs, and WGs, and also encourage Journals to publish papers on the topic, which many are reluctant to do unless it reinforces the current world view.Regarding the "Manifesto", the word itself initially took me by surprise. Its technical meaning seems appropriate but my first thought was that it is more commonly used in political contexts, so I wondered how that will be perceived generally. Of course there is a political aspect of getting this on the science agenda, and the idea itself is great -- essential. So perhaps it is the right label if it doesn't produce an unnecessary backlash. We need this focus, and approaching it from a general philosophy, aiming toward development of general theory, makes sense to me. Many practicing scientists, especially in the mainstream, disparage philosophy without understanding its rightful role underpinning their own science. By doing so, they are not arguing against philosophy, but against philosophical discussion that might change current philosophy, thus tacitly accepting the status quo.Certainly the general philosophy of science itself has to be examined in this process, along with the systems community reaction to what has been the status quo. It could be that both the commonly received view and the systems community reaction have missed the essence of what is needed; that it is going to talk some work on both sides. Ultimately I think both have to rest on a common foundation.I think you deserve and have our strongest support in this effort, David. Well done, in my opinion.JohnDr. John J. KinemanSenior Research Scientist, CIRESPresident, International Society for the System SciencesOn Aug 14, 2015, at 9:16 PM, David Rousseau <david.r...@systemsphilosophy.org> wrote:Hi John,I don’t know if you are on the SSWG discussion list, but just in case not, here is my posting re the Manifesto for GSTD…Cheers,David
From: syss...@googlegroups.com [mailto:syss...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of David Rousseau
Sent: 13 August 2015 18:26
To: Sys Sci Discussion List
Subject: [SysSciWG] Manifesto for General Systems TransdisciplinarityAt the ISSS 2015 in Berlin, Germany, we launched our "Manifesto for General Systems Transdisciplinarity" (GSTD), which advocates the need for a General Systems Theory (GST*) and an accompanying General Systems Worldview (GSW) (see attached brochure). The need for and value of a GST* and GSW, to SE and more widely, was discussed in the SSWG meeting at IW'15, in the INCOSE webinar 76, and two full-day workshops organised by the SSWG and respectively held at the IS'15 in Seattle (July) and the ISSS 2015 in Berlin (August). The webinar and workshops focused on how Systems Philosophy can support SE by facilitating the development of general scientific theories in the systems domain, and hence the development and establishment of Systems Science as an academic field. Systems Philosophy is not itself a science but rather is a branch of the philosophy of science, and as such it can contribute usefully to the advancement of Systems Science.
The core message of the Manifesto is that Systems Science needs a general theory that can fulfil the role (in the words of Kenneth Boulding) of a unifying “gestalt” for theory building and scientific exploration in the arena of “Systems” just as the theories of Newton, Lyell, Mendeleev, and Darwin did for Mechanics, Geology, Chemistry and Biology. We call for renewed efforts towards establishing such a general theory, as originally envisaged by Ludwig von Bertalanffy, one of the founders of the "general systems movement" and the Society for General Systems Research (today the ISSS). To achieve this general theory will require the input of four distinct groups, namely systems philosophers, systems scientists, and scientists and philosophers more generally. We value these diverse but distinct perspectives, and call on scientists and scholars to help us develop and establish this much-needed theory and the transdiscipline it would enable. We believe that conditions are now favourable for this to be a practical prospect.
The full Manifesto can be read at http://systemology.org/manifesto.html, where you can also sign it to indicate your support. Please join us in this important endeavour.
David Rousseau, Jennifer Wilby, Julie Billingham, Stefan Blachfellner
<Manifesto v8 US Letter size.pdf>--
The SysSciWG wiki is at https://sites.google.com/site/syssciwg/.
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Thanks John, for all this. I like your plan for the integrating the themes across SIGs, I think this has been a frustration at past conferences where papers on related themes were presented in parallel under concurrent SIG sessions, making it difficult for one to fully engage in a thematic interest.
Re the use of the term ‘manifesto’, I hope it will not perceived as somehow politicised. The term (and the device it signifies) has been used in all areas, there is an overview here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifesto . Manifestos have been influential in science and education, e.g. the unfortunate one by J. B. Watson that triggered the Behaviourist movement, and the very clever one that advocated the development of the Agile software development methodology: http://agilemanifesto.org/
Glad to have your support in all this, John!
Best regards,
David
John
From: syss...@googlegroups.com [mailto:syss...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of David Rousseau
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Dear Len,
You misrepresent us when you accuse us of suggesting that we are the first to call for a GST and to indicate ways of attaining it. The second heading in our Manifesto is “A Renewed Vision” exactly because we see our work as rooted in earlier ambitions, which we are trying to revitalise. In the references included in the online version of our Manifesto we include both LvB’s book and Boulding’s ‘Skeleton’ paper, and other historical publications that advocated such work.
It is true that we did not give a detailed review of past efforts in this direction in our workshop or manifesto, but the purpose of both were to create a renewed vision and renewed hope for the future, not to assess the lack of past progress in detail. We are of course aware of the history of GSR, and did highlight it by including in the background reading for the workshops the 2010 paper by Drack (ref below). That gives a pretty good but very concise summary and assessment of the historical development of General Systems Research (GSR); except for the fact that it does not mention any work by you, apparently because your papers are not included in the academic indexes of databases of peer-reviewed journals for the period they surveyed (1970-2006). A more detailed overview of the development of GSR is already published in the set of three long papers by Pouvreau and Drack which I sent you before our first workshop six weeks ago (refs below). These three papers are a very good detailed reference (177 pages!), but once again your contribution is not adequately recognised, and between them they mention only one of your papers (the 1978 one on Linkage Propositions). Given these published histories there was no need, in our view, to dwell much on these historical details in the workshop. We did include mention of George Klir because we felt it important to highlight his service to GSR via his editorship for more than 40 years of the International Journal of General Systems. We also mentioned you, to try and redress the lack of mention of your work in the Drack/Pouvreau papers (you have probably more than 40 relevant papers that have fallen through the academic filters). We also mentioned you because we think your work is a highly relevant and valuable contribution to one of the three main ways in which a disciplinary field can be unified under a general model/theory, and in this area your work is in our view more relevant and significant than anyone else’s work to date by a very long chalk. We discussed this in the workshop sessions and will do it again in the series of papers on this subject which we will be submitting to peer-reviewed journals in the next few weeks.
In our presentations in the workshop and in the keynote at ISSS 2015 we focused on presenting and defending views that a GST* could exist in principle, that it would be fruitful, what form it might take, that there are realistic strategies for discovering/developing it, and that the philosophical and scientific context is now favourable for this. We think that these arguments will be helpful in generating new momentum in GSR, and we are hopeful that they will in their way help to advance the field, despite not representing the approach you would have preferred us to take.
David
· Drack, M., & Schwarz, G. (2010). Recent Developments in General System Theory. Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 27(6), 601–610.
· Drack, M., & Pouvreau, D. (2015). On the history of Ludwig von Bertalanffy’s ‘General Systemology’, and on its relationship to cybernetics – part III: convergences and divergences. International Journal of General Systems, 44(5), 523-571.
· Pouvreau, D. (2014). On the history of Ludwig von Bertalanffy’s ‘general systemology’, and on its relationship to cybernetics - Part II: Contexts and developments of the systemological hermeneutics instigated by von Bertalanffy. International Journal of General Systems, 43(2), 172–245.
· Pouvreau, D., & Drack, M. (2007). On the history of Ludwig von Bertalanffy’s ‘General Systemology’, and on its relationship to cybernetics, Part 1. International Journal of General Systems, 36(3), 281–337.
Dear Len,You misrepresent us when you accuse us of suggesting that we are the first to call for a GST and to indicate ways of attaining it. The second heading in our Manifesto is “A Renewed Vision” exactly because we see our work as rooted in earlier ambitions, which we are trying to revitalise. In the references included in the online version of our Manifesto we include both LvB’s book and Boulding’s ‘Skeleton’ paper, and other historical publications that advocated such work.It is true that we did not give a detailed review of past efforts in this direction in our workshop or manifesto, but the purpose of both were to create a renewed vision and renewed hope for the future, not to assess the lack of past progress in detail. We are of course aware of the history of GSR, and did highlight it by including in the background reading for the workshops the 2010 paper by Drack (ref below). That gives a pretty good but very concise summary and assessment of the historical development of General Systems Research (GSR); except for the fact that it does not mention any work by you, apparently because your papers are not included in the academic indexes of databases of peer-reviewed journals for the period they surveyed (1970-2006). A more detailed overview of the development of GSR is already published in the set of three long papers by Pouvreau and Drack which I sent you before our first workshop six weeks ago (refs below). These three papers are a very good detailed reference (177 pages!), but once again your contribution is not adequately recognised, and between them they mention only one of your papers (the 1978 one on Linkage Propositions). Given these published histories there was no need, in our view, to dwell much on these historical details in the workshop. We did include mention of George Klir because we felt it important to highlight his service to GSR via his editorship for more than 40 years of the International Journal of General Systems. We also mentioned you, to try and redress the lack of mention of your work in the Drack/Pouvreau papers (you have probably more than 40 relevant papers that have fallen through the academic filters). We also mentioned you because we think your work is a highly relevant and valuable contribution to one of the three main ways in which a disciplinary field can be unified under a general model/theory, and in this area your work is in our view more relevant and significant than anyone else’s work to date by a very long chalk. We discussed this in the workshop sessions and will do it again in the series of papers on this subject which we will be submitting to peer-reviewed journals in the next few weeks.In our presentations in the workshop and in the keynote at ISSS 2015 we focused on presenting and defending views that a GST* could exist in principle, that it would be fruitful, what form it might take, that there are realistic strategies for discovering/developing it, and that the philosophical and scientific context is now favourable for this. We think that these arguments will be helpful in generating new momentum in GSR, and we are hopeful that they will in their way help to advance the field, despite not representing the approach you would have preferred us to take.David· Drack, M., & Schwarz, G. (2010). Recent Developments in General System Theory. Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 27(6), 601–610.· Drack, M., & Pouvreau, D. (2015). On the history of Ludwig von Bertalanffy’s ‘General Systemology’, and on its relationship to cybernetics – part III: convergences and divergences. International Journal of General Systems, 44(5), 523-571.
· Pouvreau, D. (2014). On the history of Ludwig von Bertalanffy’s ‘general systemology’, and on its relationship to cybernetics - Part II: Contexts and developments of the systemological hermeneutics instigated by von Bertalanffy.International Journal of General Systems, 43(2), 172–245.
Dear Len,You misrepresent us when you accuse us of suggesting that we are the first to call for a GST and to indicate ways of attaining it. The second heading in our Manifesto is “A Renewed Vision” exactly because we see our work as rooted in earlier ambitions, which we are trying to revitalise. In the references included in the online version of our Manifesto we include both LvB’s book and Boulding’s ‘Skeleton’ paper, and other historical publications that advocated such work.It is true that we did not give a detailed review of past efforts in this direction in our workshop or manifesto, but the purpose of both were to create a renewed vision and renewed hope for the future, not to assess the lack of past progress in detail. We are of course aware of the history of GSR, and did highlight it by including in the background reading for the workshops the 2010 paper by Drack (ref below). That gives a pretty good but very concise summary and assessment of the historical development of General Systems Research (GSR); except for the fact that it does not mention any work by you, apparently because your papers are not included in the academic indexes of databases of peer-reviewed journals for the period they surveyed (1970-2006). A more detailed overview of the development of GSR is already published in the set of three long papers by Pouvreau and Drack which I sent you before our first workshop six weeks ago (refs below). These three papers are a very good detailed reference (177 pages!), but once again your contribution is not adequately recognised, and between them they mention only one of your papers (the 1978 one on Linkage Propositions). Given these published histories there was no need, in our view, to dwell much on these historical details in the workshop. We did include mention of George Klir because we felt it important to highlight his service to GSR via his editorship for more than 40 years of the International Journal of General Systems. We also mentioned you, to try and redress the lack of mention of your work in the Drack/Pouvreau papers (you have probably more than 40 relevant papers that have fallen through the academic filters). We also mentioned you because we think your work is a highly relevant and valuable contribution to one of the three main ways in which a disciplinary field can be unified under a general model/theory, and in this area your work is in our view more relevant and significant than anyone else’s work to date by a very long chalk. We discussed this in the workshop sessions and will do it again in the series of papers on this subject which we will be submitting to peer-reviewed journals in the next few weeks.In our presentations in the workshop and in the keynote at ISSS 2015 we focused on presenting and defending views that a GST* could exist in principle, that it would be fruitful, what form it might take, that there are realistic strategies for discovering/developing it, and that the philosophical and scientific context is now favourable for this. We think that these arguments will be helpful in generating new momentum in GSR, and we are hopeful that they will in their way help to advance the field, despite not representing the approach you would have preferred us to take.David· Drack, M., & Schwarz, G. (2010). Recent Developments in General System Theory. Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 27(6), 601–610.· Drack, M., & Pouvreau, D. (2015). On the history of Ludwig von Bertalanffy’s ‘General Systemology’, and on its relationship to cybernetics – part III: convergences and divergences. International Journal of General Systems, 44(5), 523-571.
· Pouvreau, D. (2014). On the history of Ludwig von Bertalanffy’s ‘general systemology’, and on its relationship to cybernetics - Part II: Contexts and developments of the systemological hermeneutics instigated by von Bertalanffy.International Journal of General Systems, 43(2), 172–245.
Janet,
Fair enough! There have been many GST*-conducive developments in the last while, only a small part of which is due to the current GSTD team. We are writing up a set of papers on this which we’ll be submitting soon, so for now I’ll only identify these developments rather than give full explanations. Details about his was covered to some extent in our presentation at IW’15 and formed the basis of the SSWG workshops we did at IS’15 and ISSS 2015. In no particular order, here are some the reasons for thinking GST has a better chance now than at any previous time:
1. In the early days, GST was pursued by few researchers, who were working as individuals and mostly doing it in their spare time. Now there is a big upsurge of interest in GST, as witnessed by the presence of dedicated symposia, discussion groups and special journal issues and the re-issue of classic texts. As importantly, we are starting to see people with different backgrounds working together as teams rather than as individuals (e.g. the GSTD team and Len’s SPT team), and some researchers are able to focus on general systems research as part of their day job. This is a big shift from how the task has been approached historically.
2. Until recently, there were very few practical ideas about how to go about discovering GST*. The GSTD team developed one based on the synergy between GST* and the GS Worldview, and this is already yielding results we’ll be submitting for publication before the end of the year. Three further practical-looking strategies came out of the IS’15 and ISSS 2015 workshops, namely ideas about how to work back from the Systemics, distil systems principles by generalizing fundamental disciplinary principles, and leveraging design principles used in engineering.
3. For a long time, sentiments in academia have been against the feasibility and even the desirability of developing a GST*. In the GSTD work we have shown that the philosophical presuppositions behind the vision for a GST* encompasses a range of moderate realisms about the possibility of knowledge, the nature of the natural world, the power of science, the unity of knowledge, the objective existence of concrete systems, and so on. These positions had low credibility in latter half of the last century, which was dominated (especially in the social sciences) by other kinds of philosophical positions such as Behaviourism, Constructivism and Postmodernism, which made work towards GST* academically suspect, cutting of funds and researcher interest. These opposing philosophical views are now in strong decline, and Critical Realism and variants of it are rapidly rising in credibility and sophistication. Moreover, Metaphysics, which has been suppressed in academia for nearly a century is firmly back on the academic agenda, and this year will see the founding of a Society for the Metaphysics of Science. Many of the questions being asked in the metaphysics of science community bear directly on the systems paradigm and the concerns of the founders of the general systems movement.
4. In the early days, only a handful of philosophers engaged strongly with the emerging systems paradigm (maybe six). Mario Bunge did do substantial work on systems, but he did not then or now believe that a GST* can be developed. However over the last 15 years there has been a strong upsurge in philosophical interest in systems, and there are now many dozens of philosophers of science working on systems concepts, in multiple communities typically outside the historically active interest groups. Interestingly, many of these philosophers studied and worked in engineering before they became philosophers of science. This creates a GST-favourable potential which we have not previously had in the philosophy of science.
5. Until recently, the term “GST” was used for very many different meanings. The GSTD team has been able to sort this out, creating a basis for better organised and more productive work on all the aspects of GST, especially what we call GST*, the theory that encompasses the principles behind the evolution and expression of systemic structures and behaviours.
6. Until recently, the best idea about what GST* might look like was the sketch in Boulding’s 1956 paper “GST – The Skeleton of Science”. However, based on the work of Julie Billingham over the last few years we now have a more detailed and clearer metaphor to guide us. We can now see that GST* would be a set of interlocking models and theories that provide a general architecture of a system, principles for instantiating elemental system archetypes, a ‘gestalt’ that reflects the patterns of properties of the archetypes, and principles for combining the archetypes to form complex concrete systems. This is in the process of being written up for publication.
7. Until recently, it was unclear on what basis the systems field could be unified. The GSTD team have identified three routes to unification that represent different kinds of general models/theories, namely models about structures, about processes and about mechanisms. This enables us to relate the work of different researchers to each other in a constructive way, making it more likely that we can draw effectively on the structure and process aspects as we work towards a general theory about the systemic mechanisms that modulate the systemic processes to produce the systemic structures we find in nature.
8. Until recently, we had no very clear examples of what general systems principles might look like. We had only three candidates: there are no closed systems in nature (Bertalanffy), all viable complex systems are organized as near-decomposable hierarchies (Simon) and the law of requisite variety (Ackoff). None of these have so far been formulated in a way that would make then stand up as general systems principles, but it looks feasible to do so for at least the first two. I have discovered two clear general systems principles, which I’m busy writing up for publication. Based on the example they set I can see how to develop the abovementioned candidates, and I see potential for four more in ideas published by Bunge, Bertalanffy and others. Once we have a good handful of published general systems principles to work with, general systems research will have wind in its sails.
9. Much of the work done towards aspects of GST by Len Troncale over the last 40 years is unknown and inaccessible to many who would work on a GST. That might change in the next year or so, as Len is working on a book bringing it all together and up to date.
10. Until recently, there was little funding for general systems research and little hope of getting more. Now things are beginning to look up, with fundraising being planned by the Bertalanffy Centre in Europe, and the NSF is inviting proposals for work to strengthen the theoretical foundations of SE. The NSF will fund work towards GST if we can show its practical relevance for SE. I think once there are published general systems principles we will be in a position to develop fundable proposals for improving GST in the interests of SE.
11. I have funding in the Centre for Systems Philosophy for a three-year project to develop methodologies that use bits of general systems theory and a simplified version of the general systems worldview to support exploratory science. I am beginning to see a potential for adapting these investigative methodologies to develop methodologies that support design and engineering. If this can be done the potential of GST* to support design and engineering will attract good funding and researchers to help improve GST* (this is a different opportunity from the one in #10).
12. There is a historical lack of clarity and consistency about the notion of “system”, with different communities using different concepts driven by their local concerns, e.g. emergent wholeness (biology), human values (sociology) or emergent functionality (engineering). It is a problem for the vision of a GST* if the “S” in there does not have a stable meaning. Last month, the ISSS initiated a project to develop a “Systems Science Literacy” guide. This will have a positive impact for GST studies because this project will have to figure out a representative meaning for “system” before it can say what “systems science” is and why we should study systems.
I’ll stop here, to not temp fate by listing 13 reasons for my optimism!
David
Joe,
Systems Philosophy is a branch of the philosophy of science. From its founding its core intent was to explicate the meaning of the scientific results of the systems scientists, and develop and articulate a worldview that is grounded in the findings of the diverse sciences but informed by the structure and principles of what we now call GST*. The term “philosophy” in “systems philosophy” has two meanings beyond designating a branch of the disciplinary field of philosophy. First it refers to doing philosophy about systems (e.g. clarifying concepts etc), and second to being a philosophy in the sense of a worldview, in this case a worldview informed by (general) systems theory. In the GSTD framework we refer to this latter meaning by the term “General Systems Worldview” (GSW) rather than “the systems philosophy”, so as to try to avoid this ambiguity.
Re systems ontology, there are two aspects, one relating to GST* (which is part of science) and the other relating to the GSW (which is part of philosophy). In regard to GST* general systems researchers are looking for universal patterns and principles that would allow the systemic aspects of particular kinds of systems to be analysed in a consistent way. In regard to GSW, systems philosophers are looking into the particular foundational findings of the specialised sciences and interpreting them as instantiations of the patterns and principles in GST*, and try to construct a worldview that includes a cosmology, a broad description of our best scientific understanding of the nature, organisation, history and potential of the universe. Of course there are many rival scientific conceptions that might individually qualify as a “best” understanding, so part of this process is to try and select between these rivals on the basis of the need for the ‘big picture’ being developed to be internally coherent, consistent, elegant etc. For systems philosophers consistency with GST* is one of the ‘virtue criteria’ but there are many others that are part of standard philosophy of science. An interesting upshot of this approach is that it enables the development of a very compact cosmology (I’m working on this as a reference for the methodology for exploratory science that I’m developing).
Hi John, thank you for this. Yes, you are right to point out your work, and the potential of Rosen’s, for the development of a GSTD. There were many more items I could have listed in my “optimism list” but I thought 12 were enough for a start!
I think the Rosen modelling relationship is very important, although it possibly did not originate with him. There is something very like it discussed in Peter’s Caws’s incoming presidential address to the ISSS back in 1966, nearly 20 years before Rosen’s book. Peter illustrates his argument by using arguments given by Galileo for his approach. Introducing Peter’s pre-vision of the Rosen relationship, he says: “Each theoretical system confronts the physical system of which it is the theory, and this confrontation is not a bad image of the human activity we call science.” Cool, yes?
Anyway, I think Rosen’s framing of this relationship is particularly elegant, and of course he developed important philosophical implications from it, e.g. his argument that the modelling relationship belongs to neither the phenomenal nor the formal domain, so its existence is evidence that the idea of reducing all explanations to Physics is hopeless.
I am using Rosen’s modelling relationship in my own research too, for example to extend the AKG model for the purposes of exploratory science methodologies, where the quality of the consilience between phenomenology and theory is exactly what is in question.
I am also very interested in the work that you are doing with Judith in using Rosen theory in conjunction with Aristotle’s four causes to develop Holon Theory. I agree with you about the importance of Aristotle’s idea of the four causes, and I am also working on reviving interest in this, as part of a project with Mario Bunge, with whom I am working on a new model of systems centred on the concept of emergence. I think in the light of Mario’s model of a system Aristotle can be seen to have conflated two kinds of causes, so actually there are five (I think you have said something similar, for different reasons). Mario will probably not buy into “final cause”, but like you I think we cannot escape having to deal with what Aristotle was grasping for. In this project I’m a bit stuck at the moment, due to questions about the systemic nature of the polar types when it comes to the spectrum of systems (the spectrum given Mario’s model of what is a system): are fundamental particles (at the one end, if there are such things) and the universe (at the other end of the spectrum) systems? Mario is very clear (universe, yes, ultimate particles, no), but I keep changing my mind on both counts. I’m beginning to think there is a fundamental problem with the substance-oriented approach to framing questions about the systemness of the phenomenal world. Maybe a process view is more appropriate? Anyway, this is good fun to work on, and I am hopeful that by mid next year we’ll have a theory to compare (or better, integrate) with yours. The good news for General Systems Research is that there are multiple new theories being developed right now that have the potential to make a fundamental difference to how we think about the category “systems”. This represents a key shift from how things have stood for the last 40-odd years.
David
Stephen,
Thanks for this. To clarify, the search for a GST* (a scientific endeavour) is not a search for a grand narrative, but rather merely a search for a theory under which the systemic aspects of the specialised disciplines can be understood in a consistent way.
However, Systems Philosophy (a philosophical endeavour) is looking for a worldview informed by GST*, and this includes a cosmology which is something like a ‘grand narrative’, although this has to be understood in a rather modest way. I am aware that it is no longer thought to be the case, in mainstream philosophy of science, that there can be “bridging laws” between the specialised disciplines, so we are at best looking for some sort of consilience of knowledge rather that some sort of grand unification grounded in physics or mathematics or consciousness or something else. More pertinently, we have to acknowledge that even though the universe may be a unity we only encounter limited patches of it, and this in a sort of accidental way, and that this contingency together with the limitations of our science, intelligence and cognitive apparatus means that we are unlikely to be able to ever weave a coherent unified worldview out of our patchy investigations. But even so, for those of us who are epistemic realists and broad naturalists and believe in the unity of the universe it remains an ideal to work towards some kind of consilience between our fragmentary theories, even though we acknowledge our substantial limitations in pursuing this ambition.
In the light of these uncertainties and difficulties I am an advocate of an eclectic approach, and would wish to take multiple views into account, and not be completely constrained by e.g. the limits of the philosophy of science. I think that the philosophy of SE and the philosophy of technology provide independent valuable insights, as you very rightly also point out. It was for this reason that we included the papers by Pennock and Wade (philosophy of engineering) and Mitcham (philosophy of technology) in the pre-reading material for the workshop. That said I would like to learn much more about both these areas, so thank you very much for your guiding comments and the reference. This may be important in the future of the GSTD team’s research, as ideas came out of the workshops (both in Seattle and Berlin) about how to use the principles of successful design in IT and in engineering to try and discover principles for a GST*. Also, as I pointed out in another post to the SSWG discussion group, I am beginning to see a way to transition my analytic project to a synthetic one, so the shift from a science to design/engineering perspective is very relevant for me.
With warm regards,
David
From: Stephen Cook [mailto:stephe...@adelaide.edu.au]
Sent: 20 August 2015 07:26
To: david.r...@systemsphilosophy.org
Cc: j.w...@hull.ac.uk
Subject: RE: Manifesto for General Systems Transdisciplinarity
David
I enjoyed your tutorial at the INCOSE IS and made a number of points to Jennifer that I will repeat in case they have not found their way to you.
Firstly, are we really striving to derive a GST* or as Checkland would call it a framework of ideas? My interpretation of the quest for GST* is equivalent to the search for a Grand Narrative; not seen by many as being a useful pursuit. In the sciences there are many theories that hold currency simultaneously and in areas like management science it is well recognised that there is not, and perhaps will never be, an overall theory of management. Useful sets of theories, knowledge, information and data can, however, be bundled into a coherent framework of ideas.
Checkland posits that for each area of concern (A) there are recognised methodologies (M) that can be applied each of which draws on its associated Framework of ideas (F). The question then becomes to what extent can these frameworks be combined into a single framework? Some would argue that this is not a sound proposition because each comes from a particular tradition eg, functionalist, interpretive, critical, etc. Such people favour multi-methodological approaches that draw on more than one of these traditions.
Finally, on the subject of the philosophy of systems engineering, I would suggest that you don’t start from the history and philosophy of science but rather from the philosophy of engineering or the philosophy of technology. The latter philosophical schools have a different foci from science; engineering values what works and uses this knowledge to advance the discipline. Engineers always conduct design work for products and systems without complete knowledge of why things work, they just know they do. Over time, engineers and others usually seek to provide explanations as to why things work as observed. A simple example is dental implants. It is known that bone tissue not only tolerates titanium but actually integrates with it. This has become the basis of a large industry but why titanium works whereas other metals do not is yet to be understood. Thus we have engineering knowledge on this subject but scant scientific knowledge.
There is a small literature on the philosophy of engineering. A good place to start is the Royal Academy of Engineering: http://www.raeng.org.uk/policy/engineering-ethics/philosophy Engineering draws heavily on design (which is synthetic) so the design literature will also contain some gems. (Science is fundamentally analytic, another reason why the philosophy of science may not be the best starting point.)
I hope this has been helpful.
Professor Stephen Cook, PhD, FIET, FIEAust, INCOSE Fellow
Adjunct Professor
ECIC
The University of Adelaide
Level 5
10 Pulteney St
Adelaide, 5005
Australia
Tel: +61 (0) 41 882 9946
From: David Rousseau [mailto:david.r...@systemsphilosophy.org]
Sent: Friday, 14 August 2015 6:55 PM
To: David Rousseau <david.r...@systemsphilosophy.org>
Subject: Manifesto for General Systems Transdisciplinarity
To: All who registered for the INCOSE SSWG Workshops on “Systems Philosophy and its relevance to Systems Engineering”
On behalf of Jennifer, Julie, Stefan and myself I’d like to thank you all for your participation and inputs at the workshops in Seattle and Berlin. We enjoyed meeting you and learnt much from the experience and from you – thank you! We hope to see you again at follow-on events.
As you will remember, the workshops included a brief mention of our plan to launch a "Manifesto for General Systems Transdisciplinarity" (GSTD) at the ISSS 2015 in Berlin, Germany. We did this as a plenary address on Tuesday 4 August, calling for renewed efforts towards developing a General Systems Theory (GST*) and an accompanying General Systems Worldview (GSW) (see attached brochure).
We spent some time in the workshops discussing the potential value of a GST* and the GSW for Systems Science in general and SE in particular, and we hope that you will support and participate in the called-for efforts towards establishing and leveraging general systems models and theories.
The full Manifesto can be read at http://systemology.org/manifesto.html, where you can also sign it to indicate your support. Please join us in this important endeavour.
David, Jennifer, Julie and Stefan
12. There may be progress in defining what we mean by 'system': ISSS is working on a "System Science Literacy Guide”.
I had a discussion with Peter Tuddenham on this yesterday - I recommend referring to it as "Systems Literacy" - we should want it to be about the natural referent itself, which the science is about.
[A] natural system is a set of qualities, to which definite relations can be imputed. As such, then, a natural system from the outset embodies a mental construct (i.e. a relation established by the mind between percepts) which comprises a hypothesis or model pertaining to the organization of the external world. (Robert Rosen, Anticipatory Systems, 1985)
[A] natural system is a set of qualities, to which definite relations can be imputed. As such, then, a natural system from the outset embodies a mental construct (i.e. a relation established by the mind between percepts) which comprises a hypothesis or model pertaining to the organization of the external world. (Robert Rosen, Anticipatory Systems, 1985)
On Aug 22, 2015, at 5:37 AM, James Martin <mart...@gmail.com> wrote:
Biologists, geologists, physicists, astronomers, and the like, are mostly concerned with natural systems of the 2nd kind. My understanding of Rosen is that he was referring to natural systems of the 1st kind in his depiction of the modeling relation, as seen below. Rosen's formal system per this construct is basically our thoughts about a system that exists in the world (or one that might or could exist).2) systems that occur in the world due to natural forces alone (ie, not man-made)1) systems that exist in the world (as opposed to in the mind)I would like to clarify what I believe Rosen meant when he referred to "natural system":There are two kinds of so-called natural systems:[A] natural system is a set of qualities, to which definite relations can be imputed. As such, then, a natural system from the outset embodies a mental construct (i.e. a relation established by the mind between percepts) which comprises a hypothesis or model pertaining to the organization of the external world. (Robert Rosen, Anticipatory Systems, 1985)
<image.png>
James
An important point to emphasize is this: a natural system is itself a kind of “hypothesis or model” of the external world. At first glance, this might seem to invoke some kind of circularity in the Modeling Relation, in the sense of having the system under study be itself a model; however, the situation is more subtle than this. In particular, we must distinguish between a natural system and a material system. ...The third subtlety relates to realization. Realization is the process of working from a formal system to a natural system. [5d] It is essentially the notion of going from a blueprint to a working material version. When realizing a system, the process does not involve every intimate detail of its material structure. Instead, it is sufficient that the resultant material version embody the criteria from the formal model (the “blueprint”). So, the congruence relation established is only between the elements and relations specified in the formal model and a corresponding certain finite number of observables and relations in the material realization. As noted in the second subtlety, those identified observables and relations are abstractions. Whatever other additional material characteristics the realization might have, to the extent that they do not affect the congruence relation, such additional characteristics are not part of the natural system. Therefore, a natural system is not synonymous with a material system. Instead, a natural system is some subjectively defined subset, or abstraction, of an actual material system.
Len,
I think we can make a useful distinction by being careful with how we apply the terms “natural” and “naturalistic”.
It seems to me intuitive to reserve the term “natural system” for concrete systems we find in nature, and use some other term like “artifactual system” or “engineered system” for concrete systems we make out of nature (and use some other term like “conceptual system” for the abstract systems we conceive of).
Natural and artifactual systems both qualify as naturalistic systems, because their behaviours and properties are in accordance with the laws of nature.
In terms of this framing, to designate something as a “naturalistic system” is to signal something about the kinds of processes it can support, whereas to designate something as a “natural system” or an “artifactual system” is to signal something about the kinds of processes that produced it.
David
As for the Definition of System..... This field is way too fluid and new to simply cite past authorities.....In my integration, natural systems would include those studied by the sciences, especially those that existed stably and sustainably without humans or human thought about them ... But inescapably, humans build real systems too. And humans have natural origins.... we might want to make a distinction, but not necessarily natural or not. Human engineered and sustained entities are still systems.
As for the Definition of System..... This field is way too fluid and new to simply cite past authorities.....In my integration, natural systems would include those studied by the sciences, especially those that existed stably and sustainably without humans or human thought about them ... But inescapably, humans build real systems too. And humans have natural origins.... we might want to make a distinction, but not necessarily natural or not. Human engineered and sustained entities are still systems.
Hi John — was your email to syssciwg accidentally cutoff? It ended in mid-sentence.Michael
On Aug 23, 2015, at 10:05 PM, John Kineman <jjki...@nexial.org> wrote:
I agree with what Len said, specificallyl:
As for the Definition of System..... This field is way too fluid and new to simply cite past authorities.....In my integration, natural systems would include those studied by the sciences, especially those that existed stably and sustainably without humans or human thought about them ... But inescapably, humans build real systems too. And humans have natural origins.... we might want to make a distinction, but not necessarily natural or not. Human engineered and sustained entities are still systems.But I think also that Rosen's definition of a system that Judith quoted is not at all inconsistent with this sentiment. For reasons of developing relational theory he began with a general description of what 'system' means recognizing foremost the epistemic problem in knowing anything about what actually 'is' in nature.Then also James's wish to find some distinction between human engineered system and natural ones can be accommodated within both views without proposing that these systems are of a different fundamental organization. The relational theory produces a logical structure in which both 'kinds' of realization of a system can be explained by the same fundamental organization of all systems, natural or artificial.Rosen left the synthesis to his followers, but gave tantalizing hints, somewhat like Fermat's last Theorem -- a puzzle that others could solve if they study the work in enough depth. At this point we have a tentative mathematical description in category theory that needs testing and further development. It can easily show the difference between engineered systems and the more random constructions that we call 'natural'. But to see that distinction requires first understanding modeling relations.There were three or four stages in developing the theory of modeling relations. It may be easiest to consider them in the order of the most obvious to the most problematic for modern science to see why Rosen started with biology but reached the conclusion that the theory would "change physics".1. The most obvious case was science itself. The modeling relation describes in great detail why there is an 'epistemic cut' and how it works in both gaining and limiting knowledge. Examples here include everything from machines to life and consciousness, but assuming only one modeling relation and one single-formalism as the basic diagram suggests. It applies to the modern science paradigm that presumed, hoped, pursued, and eventually disproved the idea that one formalism of natural law would be enough. The fact that these relations may not 'commute' perfectly means that at least some of nature is not mechanistic, while we do otherwise see (and make) apparently solid objects and mechanisms as quite prevalent realized systems in the general environment. A hint came from atomic research, which found physical incompleteness at supposedly fundamental levels, requiring more than one formalism. At the same time we discovered that formal systems can't be fundamentally complete either. That requires explanation -- why do there appear to be two kinds of system, one that has a mathematically complete model and one that does not? Does completeness arise from incompleteness, or possibly the other way around?2. Its easiest now to jump to the most obvious case of incompleteness and thus complexity, which is that of internal modeling relations in living systems, cells, organisms, and by their composition, ecosystems. Life itself turns out to be a causal closure within the organism (Rosen's M-R system) and also with the environment (phenotype and genotype). Thus organisms have behavioral and evolutionary models that they encoded themselves, like Maturana and Varela's 'autopoietic' systems. There's no point arguing if these organismic 'models' are 'real' or 'natural'; it is the alternative (that they are only human concepts) that becomes unnecessarily complicated and unworkable; for if they are not internal models then we cannot explain their 'impredicativity' (lack of predication on general causality).3. The first case involving one modeling relation suggested that such a relation cannot be complete (i.e., must have other models). The case of life involved a special organization of multiple modeling relations. Now we can back up to consider the intermediate case between 1 and 2 above, that of 'merely' complex systems (not living). That case requires two or more causally open modeling relations (full causal closure requires five, which is the living case). Here only an open pair of incompatible (mutually irreducible) models whose realizations are in the same material system will suffice. Examples include quantum phenomena (wave-particle 'duality'), dissipative systems (export of entropy implies increase of internal order, i.e., an internal model), and probably cosmology (as yet confounded on the split between relativity and quantum mechanics). Of course this kind of complexity can also appear as an emergent property of living systems, so a familiar example might be husband and wife each trying to manage the same household. Immiscible rule sets make the interaction complex. The most basic case of dual models, that applies to every system, is the model for existence and the model for operation. It seems these two formal domains are not mutually reducible for anything. That suggests that everything is fundamentally complex; hence the question posed above is answered that completeness, or the impression of it, arises from incompleteness, not the other way around.4. Finally we can deal with the most problematic case for modern science, that of mechanisms and apparently 'solid' or 'concrete' -- both terms meaning 'well-defined' -- systems. These are the appearances in nature and human manufacture that seem most 'real' to us (recall Rosen's use of that phrase in the definition Janet quoted). They are now trivially explained as reductions of the complex to the first case, where one complete model seems to exist at our level of interaction. The reduction itself is easily understood as the result of many interactions (like the concept of quantum 'decoherence', a term that is itself stated from the opposite view).
So, now I can use the above theory structure to say what the difference is between engineered and 'natural' systems; and how they can both have the same underlying organization.I know of nothing in Rosen's writings that restricts application of modeling relations to the human case, although the first example given was of science itself. That's basically the epistemic cut but in sufficient detail to see how science became reductionistic. That starting point was not a limitation, but a necessity because the epistemic case is the only one we know directly. We know that we create models. We thus can infer that other systems to too. Then, testing that empirically, we find considerable confirmation of model-based behavior everywhere, even in the previously thought 'concrete' material foundation of particulate, state-based physics, which instead became probabilistic. There is nothing concrete about it now - it dissolves into conscious relations.Then Rosen described the next most obvious case of modeling relations in biology - life is characterized by closure of certain internal models. Life creates and employs natural internal models (Rosen's M-R systems as the most elemental case).Then we can back up to a non-living system that is nevertheless complex. That's an intermediate case between a single modeling relation, as in science, and what turns out to be a closure of five modeling relations in life. Complexity involves two modeling relations involving at least two incompatible formal systems, not necessarily closed to each other except for sharing the same realization. An analogy would be husband and wife both managing the same household, but applying incompatible models., i.e., two incompatible models. Since the models are unknown to each other (not mutually reducible) there is an impredicativity from either side, making the sum complex. Finally, even mechanism can be seen as a modeling relation - a non-complex one. That is, what was previously thought to be the foundation to build up from, defined objects and mechanisms, becomes a special case of the complex, which is general. Its a complete reversal of the paradigm, which is why it is so hard to grasp or promote, why he chose not to try to splash it in the New York Times, and also why he said it would change physics. We can borrow pieces of the work to patch various existing views, but the fact remains that the whole of our thinking has to flip to embrace relational thinking. He said, for example, that the key to the new science is to "objectify the impredicativity" - which is the mis-match between system models. That means to make complexity the natural object of study and treat the material reductions to state and dynamics as the abstractions. Materiality is based on quantitative measures of state, but Rosen wrote: "there can be no greater act of abstraction than the collapsing of a phenomena in N [the natural system] to a single number, the result of a measurement" (Life Itself, pg. 60). In other words, the things we can measure, the observables, previously used to define a natural system, are not what's objective about the natural system. A critical phrase in that definition that Janet provided was "for us". For an observer making models, the natural system must be defined by such abstractions (observables) because that is all we can see of it; but he is saying through mathematical language that the true reality must be considered to be complex relations from which measurements abstract concepts of state on which we then model dynamics. If he says to objectify the impredicativity (and throw away state-based physics), clearly he is saying we must objectify the modeling relation itself as an inferred concept of reality underlying the measurements. We can consider it experienced in the human case as epistemology.That is an internalized modeling relation. More dramatically he said "throw away the physics [as currently pursued] and keep the organization". Modeling relations describe a supervening organization of a system, inherent to all systems. He also wrote: "There is nothing unphysical in the relational strategy".
Read, for example, from: Hiley, B. & Peat, F.D. (2012) Quantum Implications: Essays in Honour of David Bohm, Routledge.(Sorry for the cliff hanger at the end - I don't have this book, just got the preview page in Google Books).
<Screen Shot 2015-08-23 at 2.15.43 PM.png>
Is it modeling relations all the way? Since the modeling relation is a fundamental picture of 'knowing', in humans and nature, it is impossible to 'know' an exception. The only way there could be an exception is if a natural system could exist without any models .. but now recall the definition in which 'natural system' involves knowledge, thus models. It does not work to say these are only human models - all models are about something that has models. In describing the relational process of science, he was showing that we are really bringing human models (built on percepts) into congruence with natural models (built on observables). Its a masterful piece of reasoning that leaves no logical alternative to saying that all systems have natural models.and models are natural, even human ones. Living systems are more, however, in that they are characterized by closure of multiple models. I've demonstrated that following Rosen's logic these turn out to be five: two inside the organism itself (Metabolism and Repair exactly as he described M-R systems), and three shared with the environment (Replication, Behavior, and Selection - yielding phenotype and genotype).It appears to be the rule rather than the exception. But we still haven't made it mathematical. Not yet a technical analysis that can be applied. That's where the second hint comes in - category theory entailments. I'll leave that, because Rosen didn't put the two together - these are the ingredients that I tried to assemble into a synthesis in 2011. Suffice to say that I'm convinced it can be done (maybe is started) and that the result is a mathematical description of a generic system, or rather a new way of analyzing systems in terms of whole systems.This was where Rosen began with Rashevsky to develop Relational Biology, which led full circle to the idea that it actually gives a new view of the physics -- that it is the special case organizationally (i.e., a reduction) not the general one. Hopefully you can see the magnitude of this conclusion, and the reason he did not try to splash it on the front page of the New York Times.However, I also sympathize with James' sentiment that there must be some distinction between engineered systems and those that seem to develop out of supposed 'natural' laws; i.e., not obviously involving mental intent or design. But the distinction is not what modeling relations describe and what they don't. A theory based on modeling relations actually allows us to explain the difference.As you can see in Level 4 above, modeling relations do not necessarily imply complexity. It could be a fully commuting mechanism where the model, i.e., formal mathematical description that we call a model, is a 'largest model' - in other words it is complete in and of itself. I also think of it as a singular model (unlike in quantum theory where we need two incompatible models, wave and particle). What makes it complex, then, is when there is no largest model - the models are incomplete. Theoretically, then even wave and particle wouldn't do the trick, the combination of those models is also incomplete. But even if wave and particle models could exhaust the territory, it would still mean there is no one single complete largest model because the wave and particle models can't be combined in a single formalism - they are based on different assumptions about nature - different formal causes. While people may look for a synthesis that captures both, Rosen complexity would say there isn't one - there will always be some 'semantic residue'; something that the meaning of a wave and the meaning of a particle does not quite get.But beside from that further complexity, which can be left for a deeper analysis, the most basic proximal picture of complexity is a modeling relation with two models. That is two modeling relations that apply to the same system. And the most generic two models of anything are its behavior in the world, and its existence in the world. I suppose one could make a case that particle define local existence and waves describe non-local potential for existence (interference patterns, double paths, etc.). In any case, it is obvious that organisms have two internally generated models, one for their ecological behavior and another for their existence, or reproduction. Much of their life is about getting their behavior to support their existence as a system; i.e, their system identity. And in natural living systems these two models run simultaneously so both can change to come into congruence. Evolution may be rapid or slow, seeking this balance or having found it.Now the case of an engineered system. The last thing the design engineer wants is something that modifies its existence and behavior. The engineer and market decides its existence/design and modifies that according to market success, but we don't what the engineered system to do it by itself. If your car changes into a toaster while you are driving, you would be very disappointed. So a goal of engineering something is to separate its operation from its design. But of course even with a completely physical machine we can't do that completely; all systems will re-design themselves to some degree, which is why there is always a "mean time before failure". But if we include the designer and factory, in fact it does behave like an evolving species. Many companies even take individual failed products back to analyze the failure and correct it - a kind of artificial selection.In ecology, the boundary is very blurry now. It used to be preserved, but no longer with the idea of "niche defining phenotypes" (Odling-Smee), which is now recognized. In other words, many organisms (if not all to some extent) engineer their environment. A bird or gorilla nest may differ in sophistication from the Stanley hotel, but with regard to purpose they are more alike than different. There are also organisms that 'borrow' artifacts (e.g., hermit crabs). And there are humans who live very close to the land. So, where's the boundary?From what I can tell reading Rosen, he was very keenly aware of the epistemic problem - that we only know our own experience and there is no direct knowledge of an outside world (also Descartes point in his discourse on method). The modeling relation expresses that idea. What we directly experience are the percepts in our own experiential apparatus. However, I don't think he meant to equivocate on the existence of an outside world. The point in understanding science is what we can know (epistemology), but
--
James,
If I understand Rosen correctly he thought of “natural systems” as the systemic models we create when studying nature, so on his view there are “abstract natural systems” such as you refer to. I disagree with him on that (see below), but I acknowledge that this is a bit of a philosophical minefield. David Lewis in 1986 outlined five different ways of making the distinction between abstract and concrete particulars, and the debate is still ongoing amongst what Len calls “philosophers and other devils” :D
Here’s my take. Many ‘abstracta’ can be considered to be “real” (exist objectively, hence part of Nature), e.g. numbers, functions, sets, propositions, relations, but we cannot ascribe causal powers to them without conflating them with the ‘concreta’ e.g. space-time, material substances and events. I think that talking about “laws governing the behaviour of planets” or “feedback loops ensuring stability” are pragmatic ways of speaking that should not be interpreted as implying that laws and models have causal powers in addition to the causal powers of the substances whose behaviours we characterise using such laws and models.
In line with the Rosennean modelling relationship (which I do like), I think that what we call “laws of nature” are abstractions we create in order to codify the “constant conjunctions” we observe in our experiences of natural phenomena. Likewise, systemic mechanisms are abstractions we create in order to try and understand/predict the behaviour of complex material structures.
However, as a moderate scientific realist I think that the successes of our best theories, and the congruence between these theories, give us grounds for believing in the real existence of the ontological entities our best theories postulate – so we can come to have knowledge of the world as it is “in itself”, Kant and Hume notwithstanding. But the appearance of abstracted “laws of nature” and systemic mechanisms in our best theories only entail that there is a concrete world of substances with inherent causal powers, and that this concrete world really is organised in an inherently systemic way. It does not mean that our abstracted laws and models are part of the objective reality we are trying to study and understand, or that they can interact with the concrete world or with each other (for all that it is sometimes convenient to speak that way). But it does mean that if we do our work well, the logical coherence of our models will match the causal integrity of the concrete world. Our rational balancing act across this Rosennean bridge is also a systemic process. This emphasises the importance of systems literacy: knowledge of the nature of systems helps us not only to build good theories and to understand the nature of world but also to assess the quality of the match between our theories and the real world.
The "percepts" - what we can perceive - are the effects produced by natural processes. The effects are observable, and our observations allow us to infer the existence of the natural ("real-world") processes that produce the effects we can observe. So the evidence for the existence of systems in the real world is not the observation of "things" that we would label as "systems", but the observation of effects produced by processes that cannot be ascribed to single real-world "things" acting alone. So what we can perceive in nature is not "systems" but "systemic behaviour".
On Aug 24, 2015, at 2:21 PM, Lenard Troncale <lrtro...@cpp.edu> wrote:
Jack
Your question re process. I view process as something that happens. By deferring association between process and object we defer the argument about identifying the system. By associating process in the material world with observable effect, we make the link between the material world and our observation and interpretation of it. I view a system as a set of interacting parts exhibiting emergent properties, properties not attributable to any of the individual parts acting alone. So if the observed properties are not attributable to any one object, they must be due to interactions between multiple objects - hence, due to a system. So we can deduce that the 'system' needs to exist to explain the observation, even if we can't as yet identify it, or the configuration needed to instanciate it.
Hillary
Hillary,
Thank you very much for this very clear exposition, and your general guidance about ‘pressure points’ for this discussion.
Your clarification of Rosen’s categories, together with your later post linking the Rosenian categories to Ken Lloyd’s, provide a very helpful map for navigating these concepts. I think the conceptual categories are very useful but the naming less so, and this speaks directly to your point that we have to get closer to stakeholder language. Of course we have to figure out clear concepts first, before we can work out accessible ways of speaking about them, but we should start at soon as possible. One way is to try and stay as close as possible to widely accepted meanings, and to try and avoid developing new technical terms, especially by embracing unusual meanings for established terms. In this sense I find Rosen’s terms not very helpful, and I think we should be prepared to revise them. If we want to allow for the possibilities that there are systems in nature and systems in our mental world it seems odd to call the systems in our mental world “natural systems” and then have to cast around for a term to refer to the systems in nature. Calling them “material systems” provides a theoretical solution but the price is very high, since it is out of alignment with the vast body of philosophical literature in which the material world is synonymous with the natural world. It would be much more intuitive to call the systems in nature “natural systems” and the systems in our minds “conceptual systems”. Rosen is sometimes misinterpreted in this intuitive way, see e.g. the description in John Barrow’s 1998 book “Impossibility: the Limits of Science and the Science of Limits”, p. 194, where he draws the modelling relation as spanning between (objective) phenomena in nature and mathematised theories about them.
Your discussion about processes is very opportune. I concur with the sentiment expressed in the claim “a system is a process” but David Blockley’s phrasing is infelicitous here. It would be better to say something like “a system is inherently dynamic”, or “all concrete properties are conditioned by systemic processes”. That way we include a focus on change in our analysis, we do not imply that we are providing a whole or a fragment of a definition, and we don’t conflate the useful categories “system” and “process”. As an aside, when Ervin Laszlo wrote “Introduction to Systems Philosophy” he claimed that SysPhil is the next step in a philosophical progression that has Whiteheadean Process Philosophy as its predecessor (p.12). I think he was right in this, although this idea is yet to be developed properly.
With warm regards,
The perhaps most powerful argument for process philosophy is its wide descriptive or explanatory scope. If we admit that the basic entities of our world are processes, we can generate better philosophical descriptions of all the kinds of entities and relationships we are committed to when we reason about our world in common sense and in science: from quantum entanglement to consciousness, from computation to feelings, from things to institutions, from organisms to societies, from traffic jams to climate change, from spacetime to beauty. Moreover, results in cognitive science, some philosophers have claimed, show that we need a process metaphysics in order to develop a naturalist theory of the mind and of normativity. These arguments form the background for the processist criticism of the focus on substance in Western philosophy.The bias towards substances seems to be rooted partly in the cognitive dispositions of speakers of Indo-European languages, and partly in theoretical habituation, as the traditional prioritization of static entities (substances, objects, states of affairs, static structures) at the beginning of Western metaphysics built on itself. In contrast, process philosophy shows fewer affinities to any particular language group and can allude to a rich tradition of reflection in many of the great schools of Eastern thought. Thus contemporary process philosophy not only holds out the promise of an integrated metaphysics that can join our common sense and scientific images of the world. It is also of interest as a platform upon which to build an intercultural philosophy and to facilitate interdisciplinary research on global knowledge representation by means of an ontological framework that is no longer parochially Western. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/process-philosophy/
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Len,
That is indeed an awe-inspiring story.In honor of 'that time of giants living their natural lives in networks' (as you eloquently put it) I am sharing a sketch of mine from 2012 showing some of the connection I had noted.
<Pragmatic Roots Singer 12-0904.jpg>
Janet, brilliant! Thank you! J J
I like Len’s response too, but he’s being too timid. Your diagram includes (if I counted correctly) 36 names, 81 arrows and 13 “traditions”. A paragraph on each would add up to a book, but what a fantastic contribution to our field that would be! Please, will you do it?? Forget consensus with me and Kent (or anyone), give us all a baseline asap!
David
From: syss...@googlegroups.com [mailto:syss...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Lenard Troncale
Sent: 26 August 2015 16:24
To: syss...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [SysSciWG] Definition or Types of System
Janet,
On Aug 26, 2015, at 9:59 AM, joseph simpson <jjs...@gmail.com> wrote:
Nice...
On Tue, Aug 25, 2015 at 10:34 PM, Janet Singer <janetm...@gmail.com> wrote:
Len,
That is indeed an awe-inspiring story.In honor of 'that time of giants living their natural lives in networks' (as you eloquently put it) I am sharing a sketch of mine from 2012 showing some of the connection I had noted.
<Pragmatic Roots Singer 12-0904.jpg>
On Aug 26, 2015, at 9:51 AM, Lenard Troncale <lrtro...@cpp.edu> wrote:David, All:
I have rarely been characterized as timid, David. Thank you. Another advantage of this book "baseline" would be that it could and should be built upon and its existence promotes and enables building upon.
For example, Hierarchy is represented by many more than Allen. There are nice published summaries by Wilson, Wilby, Salthe, Simon, Pattee, Miller, Bonner, Eldredge, Odum, Mesarovic, Weiss and more that are at least as penetrating and detailed (book length) as Allen. I myself have 27 products on Hierarchies. Existence of the baseline allows stable addition of extensions that need to be known. Also there are many more than 13 "traditions." In any case, what exists already -- the at-a-glance summary graphic you have produced -- is very useful.
Len
On Aug 26, 2015, at 9:35 AM, Richard Emerson <reme...@gmail.com> wrote:JanetI agree with Len and David, short expositions of the each of the entities would be a great book for introducing systems science, guiding the study of it and suggesting further research in it.Your diagram is also a great framework for developing questions to ask. A thought provoker. I think you could keep an army of PHD students busy for years, and not only busy but productive in both understanding the development of the field and pushing the boundary. For example, what other systems science concepts could be included.BrilliantDick
On Aug 25, 2015, at 10:34 PM, Janet Singer <janetm...@gmail.com> wrote:
Len,
That is indeed an awe-inspiring story.In honor of 'that time of giants living their natural lives in networks' (as you eloquently put it) I am sharing a sketch of mine from 2012 showing some of the connection I had noted.
<Pragmatic Roots Singer 12-0904.jpg>
John
There is a large overlap in usage between functions and processes, and they are often virtually synonymous, with some cases where one word definitely fits better than the other.
I'll let Jack answer on configurations, it's his term.
Given that the point of the previous conversation was to identify whether systems could exist in the material world independent of human thought, it needs a bit of thought and care to work out where plans and policies - and planning and policy making - fit in. But in principle all the elements you mention have to fit somewhere. If intentions are a form of process, what is the effect or output created by intentions? Aah - but - Do intentions exist in the material world or only in human thought? Does human thought happen in the material world? Does it matter?
Hillary
John
Nice...
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The interesting follow on question is whether there is a minimum definition of 'system' that is transferrable across contexts, and whether and to what extent any richer and fuller definitions are context specific.
Hillary