ALBERT EINSTEIN
"A human being is part of the Whole...He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest...a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is, in itself, a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security". [11]
"My friend, all theory is gray, and the Golden tree of life is green." Goethe
It is time we, especially we in the systems movement, stop fighting amongst ourselves. It is time we unify our principles in the true Bertalanffy tradition, not as disparate and competitive systems, but as aspects of one whole. A house divided against itself will collapse, and history is not kind to fallen theories. We are, above all, if we believe our own precepts, a whole, a meaningful family, if you will, and what we do to others we do onto ourselves. To separate "us from them" is to separate everything. "Separate" is not a operational systemic term. It is time to become the whole that we already are.
FRITJOF CAPRA
"In contrast to the mechanistic Cartesian view of the world, the world-view emerging from modern physics can be characterized by words like organic, holistic, and ecological. It might also be called a systems view, in the sense of general systems theory. The universe is no longer seen as a machine, made up of a multitude of objects, but has to be pictured as one indivisible dynamic whole whose parts are essentially interrelated and can be understood only as patterns of a cosmic process". [6]
The subject of a General Principle, a.k.a. General Systems Theory, is at the root of ISSS's work. Yet little has been done at this most general level. Most systemicists have accepted Bertalanffy's minimal definition - elements, relations and wholes - going on from there to derive their particular system; for example, as Anderson & Carter (1984) write, "Systems models of various kinds are used in many fields besides sociology, so a social system can be thought of as a special case of a more general system model."(1).
But some others go on to create an entire new general system of their own, which they attain by particularizing the general definition somewhat, in effect creating a "sister" GST. For example, the Principia Cybernetica Project within ISSS itself holds, "...that in our time, the age of information, it is systems science and cybernetics, as the general sciences of organization and communication, that can provide the basis for contemporary philosophy." (ISSS Bulletin, 1994, Winter, pp52.)
The former derivative process results in the same thing being said but in different ways. The latter inventive process, unfortunately, is populated by many who would modify the general system by introducing "something new." This "invention," often contains incorrect assumptions subsequently leading to errors making it difficult if not impossible to understand and use their systems. ISSS has hundreds of such "theories" on record.
Clearly, if in fact there is a General System "out there" our task would be not to "invent" unique conceptual theories, but to describe what we have discovered the best we can. And if in fact there is a general system, it is "necessary" that it can be explained in myriad of ways, yet all will be using the same principle. A General System requires a General Principle. Do we find such a "thing" just about anywhere we look?
ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD
"While each scientific theory selects out and abstracts from the world's complexity a peculiar set of relations, philosophy cannot favor any particular region of human enterprise. Through conceptual experimentation it must construct a consistency that can accommodate all dimensions of experience, whether they belong to physics, physiology, psychology, biology, ethics, etc.." (-)
General System Theory, as a science, was formulated by Ludwig von Bertalanffy at the end of the second world war. It was he who formalized the general concepts of General Systems into the science of Systems. While modern systems has a produced a wealth of system, Bertalanffy's premise still holds. What is new is a new emphasis, not so much on "things" anymore, as it is on their relationships, the "patterns," and then, on the whole.
Bertalanffy was not the first, however, to see the patterns of nature, nor was he even the first to see a general pattern. Systems design was discussed by Lao Tzu as early as the 6th Century B.C. The earliest system, the Chinese Yin/Yang is five thousand years old. Now, as we approach the 21st Century, there are hundreds of "systems" under study conceived of either independently or as a result of Bertalanffy's work. The major problem Bertalanffy spoke of long ago, nevertheless, still remains to this day. He said then,
LUDWIG VON BERTALANFFY
"Our civilization seems to be suffering a second curse of Babel: Just as the human race builds a tower of knowledge that reaches to the heavens, we are stricken by a malady in which we find ourselves attempting to communicate with each other in countless tongues of scientific specialization... The only goal of science appeared to be analytical, i.e., the splitting up of reality into ever smaller units and the isolation of individual causal trains...We may state as characteristic of modern science that this scheme of isolable units acting in one-way causality has proven to be insufficient. Hence the appearance, in all fields of science, of notions like wholeness, holistic, organismic, gestalt, etc., which all signify that, in the last resort, we must think in terms of systems of elements in mutual interaction..." [8]
It is suggested here, as it has been in numerous other studies that the crisis science and humankind are facing in general is much more profound than the difficulty experienced trying to understand different languages. It's not what is written in the language, but the language itself that is problematic. Things are what they do, not what we call them, unless one believes that what we call them is all they do...
"General Systems theory should be an important means of instigating the transfer of principles from one field to another (so that it would) no longer be necessary to duplicate the discovery of the same principles in different fields." [ 8]
Bertalanffy had a vision, a dream that spoke of a greater problem than just the efficiency of knowledge transferal. His perspective was a humanist perspective, a reconstruction of the individual not as a separate entity in a struggle against the world, but in a resonance with the universe.
'There is this hope, I cannot promise you whether or when it will be realized - that the mechanistic paradigm, with all its implications in science as well as in society and our own private life, will be replaced by an organismic or systems paradigm that will offer new pathways for our presently schizophrenic and self-destructive civilization." [4]
DAVID BOHM
"Indeed, to some extent it has always been necessary and proper for man, in his thinking, to divide things up, if we tried to deal with the whole of reality at once, we would be swamped. However when this mode of thought is applied more broadly to man's notion of himself and the whole world in which he lives, (i.e. in his world-view) then man ceases to regard the resultant divisions as merely useful or convenient and begins to see and experience himself and this world as actually constituted of separately existing fragments. What is needed is a relativistic theory, to give up altogether the notion that the world is constituted of basic objects or building blocks. Rather one has to view the world in terms of universal flux of events and processes." [5]
We in the systems sciences should be greatly concerned that we may be in a micro-Dark Age brought on by a faulty ontological assumption. True systems thinking, if it is to include natural systems, is a radical departure from the old atomistic thinking that has brought science this far. Systemics, insofar as it would be a mirror of reality, is not just about simply organizing separate entities into something we call a whole (as if it were merely a theory of organizations.) Indeed, the most significant difference between the old and the new is that the "old" fundamental concept of separateness i.e., "things," is not a part of systemic ontology (basis of existence). The ontological basis of being, the object, is not the basis of being in systemics. Look at the black and white of this page, then look at what they are doing, that is how different the new system's thinking is from the old. A door not in use is functionally a wall.
Systems thinking's fundamental concept is the connecting relationship - what things are doing to each other. For example computer Bytes are made of Bits in a meaningful relationship. We never see the Bits themselves, nor do we take them for granted. In a sense of Tao, the Bits, the things, are "flow-mates." (20) A thing is a relationship inside out, so to speak; or, better yet, outside in...
The bottom line is that ultimately things, entities, are, internally, relationships. Classical Ontological existence depends on "qualities" such as color. But the qualities are actually emergent properties of the relationship between relational elements being perceived by us as a different "logical type." It is the expressive relationships (Simplexities), which we perceive as a thing (Simplicites). Therefore, the ontological idea of an "entity" as a disconnected isolated concept is not general enough. This suggests that Classical ontology, as the ontology of all Existence, has no actual basis. This idea is not new, "Maya" is one word to historically describe this particular illusion or "misplaced concreteness."
It follows we need a language of relationships, a language that everyone can understand. We propose that such a transdiscliplinary relational-language can be found in the ordinary and simple language. Indeed, there is already an "Ordinary-Language Philosophy." Wittgenstein has spoken of deriving the meaning of a statement from the contextual relationships between the words. Is is really necessary to create words having a precise meaning, and then not understand them? Or is better to use ordinary words in a contextual way (if you want to be consistent with systemic relational principles) and be able to figure them out? Of particular interest to us are the natural relational-terms, like father or son, or daughter, or sister, or acquaintence, which describe a particular relationship. If we need to create words. they could be functional equivalents of these "friendly" words. Family is such a relational term, that not only describes a whole, but implies all that is implied by our personal idea of what a family is. In a general sense, a system is a family. In a more specific case, a system is a family of relationships. In the sense of what is asked by this paper, General System Science is the family of families. This is not to be unexpected - a system of systems which merge into systems will end up as one system.
The idea of a General System is not necessarily new. If we discard our cultural and spiritual affinities, the concept of a General System can be traced back five thousand years to when the Chinese Yin/Yang was first conceived. Since that time, many writers, East and West, have spoken of a General System, although most if not all of their systems have been stated in the cultural specific language of the author. It is this necessary particularity that limits and confines the system to his culture and subsequently eliminates the generality. We call it the problem of "Misplaced Generality."
The elements of a General Systems View can also be found in the early philosophical writings of the Greeks. That is if we reinterprete them as such. We are going to apply the principles of contextual relations and general systems principles to our first philosophies and see what comes up. It is well worth returning to that early beginning stage, where the axiom "start straight" would apply.
It is rumored that Thales was the first to predict an eclipse on the 28th of May, 585 B.C.. And in fact it did occur. Because there was no distinction between what was philosophy and what was science at that early time, it can be said Thales conducted the first experiment and thus would be the father of science, and May 28th, 585 B.C. would be the birthday. Isaac Asimov also held this view.
Around 585 B.C. Thales of Miletus formulated Western civilization's first philosophy in an attempt to break from the mythical gods of Homer and Hesiod. His rational explanation was the first to replace the magical creation of the Cosmos by the various gods. His idea was simple: the world was constructed of a kind of "stuff", a single thing that made up the world, much like WATER made up the oceans.
But knowledge was not meant to stop evolving and soon afterwards Thales' student, Anaximander, took issue with Thales's model of stuff, water, suggesting that there also was an infinite quality, the Boundless, which was then further modified by Anaximenes to include a specificness about it, much like AIR.
FIRE, "FOR EXAMPLE"
Heraclitus then surmised that Change was an important part of the total picture, a movement from one thing to another much like FIRE consumes and creates new forms of matter. He also spoke of them as the opposites, "What is in opposition, is in concert."
A fifth Ionian philosopher, Empedocles, decided that all of these concepts should be integrated into a whole to include the many not unlike the EARTH integrates all forms of matter. Furthermore, these forces were modulated by the forces of love and hate. Hence the concept of Water, Air, Fire, and Earth was born.
Very little of what Thales actually wrote has been found. What we do have is a verbal account given us by Aristotle. Aristotle's interpretation, however, leads one to believe the four elements actually existed as things, that water, air, fire and earth were actual elements which everything was made of. He also added a fifth celestial sphere, presumably to make it original.
Unfortunately, Aristotle's atomistic treatment of the Ionian philosopher's System as "four elements" -- Water, Air, Fire and Earth missed the point. His approach of four distinct things resulted in a stagnant "elemental" age that lasted more than 1500 years as science sought, instead, to make gold. Secretly of course. Unprofitably, at end...
But what if water was merely an example of Thales "Stuff?" And what if air also was an example of the Boundless? And what if fire was an example of Change rather than the accepted version that everything was fire? And what if earth was an example of what happens when you put all these Together? We would have a Greek General Systems Theory that would rival any we have today, at least of the general sort.
Indeed, if we interpret these elements in this relational manner, we find that we have two primary elements, water and air, which combine like fire combines, the whole of which is one, like the earth. Certainly this idea is not different from our own general system principles. Could they have gotten it right to begin with? There is evidence that such a scenario could have existed.
So far we have discussed the material nature of the world. They story didn't end there. The idea of "mind" arose in Greek thought soon after the material. It was easy to imagine that such a thing existed. Protagoras reasoned that "man is the measure," while Anaxagoras believed in "mind or Nous." Socretes declined to comment on the material nature of the universe, instead used Nous and man to develop the concept of the "Soul" which existed inside of man. At the same time, Gorgias concluded that everything was relative and literally gave up. Aristotle adopted the material, but saw it as entity, not system.
Similarly, Plato's exclusion of the material in his Idealistic perspective stunted the evolution of knowledge of that complementarity of mind/matter, resulting in a illusory Cartesian division of reality. A dualism that has persisted to this very day. And so the stage was set - unity was stated in the dualistic terms - mind and body. This chasm would express itself throughout the ages as the conflict between Idealism and Materialism.