Thoughts
Robert Chris
I mentioned recently that I was reshelving my library. I've now got to all my climate change and philosophy books that were so important in my PhD research. I couldn't resist the temptation to flick through some of the pages. I've found some pieces that I'd like to share with you all. I'll just send one at a time.
This first is from Heinz von Foerester in a piece titled 'The Curious Behaviour of Complex Systems: Lessons from Biology'.from 1977. His comments predate widespread concerns about climate change. He writes:
It is becoming increasingly clear that the critical problems of today are societal. These problems arise from the tremendous complexity of modern society. However, the conceptual problem-solving apparatus that Western culture has developed is incapable not only of solving the societal problems, but even of perceiving these problems. The blind spot which does not allow us to perceive the complex societal problems has two roots. One is the traditional reductionist approach to problem solving; the other is the traditional explanatory paradigm of causation. Both of these are now under assault.
The traditional reductionist approach destroys the problem it wants to explain. In this approach, if you have a large complex problem and you don't understand it, you chop it into pieces. If you do not understand these pieces, you chop again. You continue chopping until the pieces are small enough and simple enough to understand. Thus reductionism always leads to success, but the result is that you know everything about nothing. On the other hand, if you take the approach of holism, considering larger and larger systems, you eventually know nothing about everything. But if neither way is to be recommended, what then must we do? We must not chop, we must learn how to see. The point I am trying to make is that we do not know how to see. This is because of another preoccupation of Western culture - namely, the explanatory paradigm of causation.
Causation is inoperative particularly in explaining the behaviour of social systems. This is because the law that supposedly transforms the past cause into the present effect is itself changed by the very effect it produces.
He then discusses issues about 'seeing' and provides a little example of how the problem is not so much that 'we do not see', but rather that we aren't even aware that we don't. He provides two rows of numbers to illustrate how we 'see' the property of 'order'. Here they are:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
8 5 4 9 1 7 6 3 2
What do you see? Well, the first one is pretty obvious, but is there any 'order' to the second. I'll leave you to ponder that. If the second row is ordered, what order is it? Are you looking for an order merely because I've suggested there might be one? Or is it just a random order? What do you see? Is this a trick question?
RobertC