As a follow-up to my last question, I offer this claim: Systems science as a framework for understanding is a way to make sense out of the messiest set of wicked problems. Let me explain.
Those who have been reading this blog for a while know that I have been an advocate of systems science as a means to understand the world and all of its bits and pieces. For me, systems science is the epitome of science itself, providing a framework for both reductional analysis and holistic integration. Its language is a meta-language of science and adoption of systems thinking is essential to grasping even those areas of life that are seemingly not under the auspices of ordinary science. The qualitative aspects of systems science can be applied, I claim, to any area of human life, even the humanities.
My claim goes even further in asserting that the brain (human and animal alike) is a system that automatically perceives and conceives systemness in the world; it mirrors representaions of the systems with which it comes in contact. Systemness is not an official word, but it should be. It is the quality of being a system (outlined below). And I hold that our brains quite naturally do the work of organizing our sensory perceptions as well as our conceptions into systems because that is the way the real world is organized. Our brains evolved under selection for the capacity to perceive the world in a systemic way. It automatically sees objects as systems and also sees relationships, especially causal relationships, between objects as components within a larger system. We see things as wholes, but also as parts of a greater whole with the interactions between the components as part of the larger system dynamics. Of course, I also think that the average Human 1.89 brain is limited in the scope and realization of this. Expanded and explicit systems thinking is part of sapience and is not at a global or long time-frame scope in Homo sapiens.
Even so, our brains are automatic system recognizers and systems model builders if things don't get too complex. It is the way we see the world.
If true (and take a minute to try to see the world in any other way to provide a contradiction!) it is surprising that it has taken mankind so long to discover a formal and explicit way to articulate systemness. Of course it is embedded implicitly in our language and our way of interacting with the world — we are ourselves components in the world system. I ask my students to explicate the word 'thing', an exercise they seem to have never been called upon to do, nor thought of themselves, surprising since it is probably the most useful word in the English language (I'm no linguist but I'm guessing there are similar words in other languages). It is a general placeholder for an object or even a thought that has a wholeness quality to it. The world is full of things, both named and un-named, that all have that common quality. And things interact with one another. Things do acts, either in seeming isolation (for a time) or to other things. The boy threw the ball. The ball flew through the air. The ball fell to the ground. The ball hit the ground. The completeness of these acts, in themselves, are perceived as a larger 'thing'. We can even say, "that thing did its thing," without grammatical conflict simply because the one 'thing' is part of a larger 'thing', an action that is part of a system.
The world isn't comprised of disconnected things doing unaffecting things. Though it may be largely stochastic and even chaotic (in the deterministic chaos sense) all things interact with other things. The world is organized in the sense that all things are connected to all other things even if infinitesimally weakly. This is the way the world is.
Given the systemness of the world and the things in the world, wouldn't it be helpful to construct a formal language of systemness that could be used to describe the world, and its parts, in such a way that it helps us discover the organizations we have thus far missed? In other words, knowing a priori that the phenomenon we are observing is part of a system and constitutes a system, even if we don't know all of the constituents or all of the interrelationships, if we know the principles of systemness we can use this general knowledge to discover the particulars in this case. Systems science is our guide to further understanding the phenomenon by telling us what we should be looking for in its workings that we have heretofore missed.
The principles of systems science are the first, first principles!
So what is systemness? Qualitatively a system has a number of properties that can be enumerated and identified in real world 'things'. One of the first properties is that of boundary. Discrete objects usually have clear boundaries, like skin or bark or... you can tell the system from the background or environment. But sometimes the boundary isn't crisp in nature; it can be fuzzy. What is the boundary of a nation? Its borders? What about a language? Regardless of the sometimes problematic nature of boundaries we do manage to either perceive them or construct them (for convenience) in such a way that they allow us to recognize another important property.
Systems have inputs and outputs that perceptibly cross the boundaries. Quite nicely, these inputs and outputs consist of just three fundamental 'stuffs'. These are matter, energy, and messages. The latter are actually conveyed by the flow of matter and energy (think electrons for example) but because they can provide information to the receiving system and because they are so smallish compared with mass flows, they get special consideration. I should add that messages sent to other systems allow for an extremely efficient way to have a causal impact on the receiver. One day I will devote a whole blog (or several) to the nature of messages and their special role in systems interactions.
Inputs and outputs of stuff over time constitute the behavior of the system. One can start to get very quantitative about this, but for now I won't. Suffice it to say that inflows and outflows can be measured and correlated from outside, allowing the observer to make some predictions about how the system will behave under other regimens of inflows, that is what outputs it produces given certain inputs. This is often referred to as 'black box' analysis. You can see what the system is doing from the outside, but you might not be able to say how it is doing it.
Systems have internal structure (components) and dynamics (interrelations) that require considerable work to explicate. You basically have to take the system apart or do 'white box' analysis unless its boundary is transparent (glass fishes!) This generally means destroying the system, which hopefully isn't the only one of its kind. This kind of analysis has been the stock and trade of normal science, the kind most people learn about in school. It is particularly difficult when you find components are, themselves, sub-systems, or systems in their own right. Then you have to keep dissecting until you get down to some fundamental level where you already have a model, like the molecular level in biology. This is the form that people call reductionist, although the philosophical form of reductionism posits that everything can be explained from that reduced systems state. Analysis should not be confused with reductionism. When physicists state that they are looking for the grand unified theory (GUT) or theory of everything (TOE) they don't mean to say they are looking for some fundamental theory that could be used to reconstruct everything at higher levels of organization in the universe. They mean that they have found the natural stopping place for reductionist analysis. You don't have to dissect any more. [I'm waiting for someone to work on the Theory of Everything Essential That's Hot, or TEETH, to go with the TOE and GUT.]
Systems form these natural hierarchies of organization and complexity. The latter is just a measure of how many kinds of components and how many kinds of interrelationships the components can have with one another. The more the merrier. Biology, and its complexity, has been the hotbed of discovery of systemness. Life is now understood to be based on a hierarchy of increasing complexity from atoms up to organisms and beyond to ecosystems. You can't really understand any level in the hierarchy without understanding the whole. And even then you need to understand its (the biosphere's) relationship with the rest of the planet. We are just, unfortunately, discovering this essential quality of systemness. Everything in a complex, dynamic system, is connected. The butterfly effect is generally in effect.
Possibly the most important system (or subsystem of the world) that we seem to have the least knowledge of at present is the human social system. Actually that is the social system of social sub-subsystems of social brains. Once, before the world got flattened, we could basically see boundaries around cultures of the world and we could study other cultures as objects. But with a McDonalds on nearly every city square throughout the world the boundaries are getting harder to perceive. Today it is very meaningful to talk about the global community of mankind as one system that is significantly impacting every other system on earth, atmosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere, and lithosphere. And, in not understanding the noosphere (the gossamer thin film of minds), we are in danger of having an impact that could preclude the further evolution of organization on this tiny blue, green, and white ball.
Biology is an excellent example where systems science is having a great impact on how science is done. In fact there is now a whole field devoted to studying systems biology. The principles of systems science (only some of which I've mentioned here) are used to guide the analysis and modeling (another form of white box analysis) of biological phenomena. Already this approach has yielded tremendous results. The human genome project and all of genomic science has developed by applying systems theory (e.g. network theory applied to genetic and epigenetic control of development). Breakthroughs in understanding, not mere cataloging of phenomena, are coming on a nearly daily basis. The same can be said for neuroscience and understanding of what is going on in the brain.
But the biggest payoff of elevating systems science to a preeminent position in the science pantheon is in education where we could, if we just realized it and had the will to do it, provide every child with the fundamental tools for making their own sense of the world. Learning the explicit form of systems science is far more natural than learning to read or do arithmetic! That is because it is what the brain does naturally anyway. All education need be is a refining and bringing out the systems thinking we all do already. Subject content will follow and serve as examples of systemness rather than be presented as stuff you have to learn just because it might come in handy someday. Systems science is something everybody can use in all aspects of life. Seeing the systemness in new things prepares one to categorize and understand the particulars of a single subject.
Given a solid basis in systems science (qualitative) a young mind will be better prepared to investigate the factual and quantitative aspects of the world. Rather than trying to teach every person to be a scientist or be a mathematician — the way we are currently trying to force every mind into a single mold — and thus turning a vast majority off on either topic, we should be helping each young person learn how to use systems thinking to master whatever topic they find interesting in itself. Learning math or science is much easier when you have the right motivation, such as you are trying to understand why some phenomenon works the way it does. Math and science can be brought into the lessons on an as needed basis as students explore the world and discover a need to have a particular bit of knowledge or a particular quantitative tool to further their investigations. Teachers become sensitive guides that can bring to bear the specific pointers to needed tools at the right time.
Of course, we may never see such a world with such a graceful form of education. Not with Human 1.89 in charge. Educational reform of the kind I envision is all but impossible with the sparseness of wisdom now had by our species. Maybe Human 2.0 would manage it. I dream it, but, alas, I will never know it.
i want to ask a question. the question is that is there anything in this universe which is not a system??
Posted by: wajih kazmi | October 08, 2008 at 03:06 PM