The Foundation of Chinese Systems Thinking

THE FOUNDATION OF CHINESE SYSTEMS THINKING Hans Kuijper Abstract The fast developments of (complex) systems thinking cannot be understood without taking the cultural-philosophical context into consideration. In this article, an attempt is made to explain the foundation of thriving Chinese systems thinking, because China seems to fully understand the significance and importance of thinking (and engineering) systemically. The conclusion of the paper is two-pronged: (a) the Chinese have been system thinkers (or pattern seekers) from the very beginning of their turbulent history and (B) Western system thinkers, who disagree with each other on many fronts, could, nay should learn something from ancient China, particularly from that amazing, almost forgotten classical book called: the Yìjīng. Whoever wants to know the fruits should never lose eye of the tree bearing them. In other words, the developments of systems thinking cannot be understood without taking their cultural context into consideration. This holds also for the development of both Western and Chinese systems thinking. As the Chinese culture basically differs from the Western one, accounts of the nature, variety and history of system thinking in China and the West can thus not be the same. Even Xuesen Qian (1911-2009), father of the “metasynthesis” system approach,i and Jifa Gu (1935), originator of the “wuli-shili-renli (WSR)” system approach,ii did respectively does not seem to be fully aware of the cultural ground of their intellectual products. In this article, I attempt to explain the cultural-philosophical foundation of Chinese systems thinking, because China seems to fully understand the significance of systems science. The conclusion will be that (a) the Chinese have been systems thinkers from the very outset and (b) Western systems thinkers could learn something from them. Dào (道) In contrast to the ancient Greek, who inhabited a mountainous peninsula with many inlets and were consequently bound to be a seafaring people out for trade, the ancient Chinese were peasants living in a fertile region around the middle reaches of the Yellow River, far away from the sea. For their existence, they were heavily dependent not only on each other but first and foremost on their knowledge of nature (particularly the seasons). In such a society, individualism had little chance to develop, and attunement to nature was a conditio sine qua non. Everything and everybody were conceived of as hanging together with the Umwelt and the Mitwelt. Harmony, balance was considered to be of primary importance. Today also, every Chinese is imbued with the idea of the “unity of heaven and man” (tiān rén hé yī).iii This is probably the main reason why the concept of Dào is the most fundamental of all Chinese ideas. Jin Yuelin (1895-1984), the famous author of Lùn Dào (on dào, 1940), preferred not to translate the word. So did his student Hao Wang (1921-1995), the celebrated commentator on Kurt Gödel. In the Great Appendix to the Yìjīng, a work generally denigrated by Western scientists but of crucial importance for understanding China, it is written and emphasized: 一陰一陽之謂道 (Yīn and Yáng: that is called de Dào). This is system thinking in a nutshell.iv The word system stems from the Greek word σύστημα (constitution, organised whole, a whole compounded by parts). The words Yīn and Yáng stand for complementary parts, for aspects of the Dào. According to the Chinese, black and white, positive and negative, north and south, east and west, interior and exterior, entrance and exit, input and output, life and death, above and under, high and low, even and uneven, hard and soft, hot and cold, short and long, wet and dry, open and closed, foul and fragrant, empty and full, small and big, day and night, dawn and dusk, light and darkness, demand and supply, debit and credit, space and time, one and many, universal and particular, same and other, necessity and contingency, male and female, part and whole, or individual and community are not antagonistic towards, but complementary to each other, the one going well with, and being involved by, the other. Though clearly distinguishable, ship and harbor, train and station, airplane and airport, electrical connector and power point, right hand and left hand, on and off presuppose, and are dependent on, each other. One hand cannot clap. I takes two to tango, or to kiss. Yīn and Yáng are not hostile against, but implicative of, and closely related to, each other; they are mutually not contradictory but contrary. This bi- conditionality is prevalent in nature and should thus be our guide to living in general and to scientific research in particular. Westerners, who from an early age learned to think binary, have great difficulty with the Chinese bi-conditional way of thought.v Emphasising the importance of the individual,vi they prefer to assign each thing a clearly circumscribed place and to grant each person certain rights according to his/her legal obligations. Something is either black or white; grey things (everyday reality!) do not exist. One rides either on the right or left side of the road; riding on the middle of the road (both on the right and left side of it) is, according to them, impossible. Either day or night; there is no place for twilight. The door is either open or closed, but a door aJar is something they cannot conceive of. They do not realize, that switching on the light, one uses both the positive and negative poles of the electric wire. Nor are they aware of it that spring and fall are different parts of one and the same cycle. Westerners adhere to the principle of bivalence stating that every declarative sentence is either true or false. They neglect the obvious fact that ordinary language is not restricted to declarative sentences. A declarative sentence does not ask a question, give an order, or express an emotion. The principle of bivalence is also called the law of the excluded middle; it states that there is no other possibility for declarative statements than being either true or not-true. Tertium non datur. In terms of set theory, set A and set B are either disJoint (e.g. {1, 2, 3} and {4, 5, 6}) or not disjoint (e.g. {1, 2, 3} and {3, 4, 5}). In the latter case, A is partly or wholly a subset of B, or the other way around. For example, set {1, 2, 3} overlaps, or is partly a subset of, set {3, 4, 5}, and set {3, 4, 5} is wholly a subset of set {2, 3, 4, 5}. The Western Way of Thought In the West, a theory is considered an explanation of something (not: anything or everything) when based on repeatedly tested and widely established ideas. Explaining is clarifying, telling clearly something; scientifically explaining is clarifying in a scientific way, that is to say, in having recourse to practice. Modern scientists take their theories to be explanations of only parts of the whole. Seeing some (not: all) things together, they are essentially narrow-minded. Their theories are based on axioms, statements that are assumed or believed to be true. The word axiom comes from ἀξίωμα (what is thought to be worthy). It has an evaluative flavor, in the sense of being subjective rather than objective. Thought or believed to be worthy is not the same as proven to be worthy. Axioms serve as starting point for further reasoning. Axiomatisation is the process of reducing a number of scientific statements to a system of axioms. Multiple theorems are deduces from them. If a scientific theory is an explanatory set of statements, the question arises as to how these statements are established. Basically, there are three possibilities: knowledge by perception, by inference, or by reference. Perception belongs to the domain of direct knowledge; the other possibilities belong to the field of indirect knowledge. Ultimately, knowledge by reference or testimony is based on knowledge gained by perception or inference. If “nihil est in intellectu quod non erat in sensu”, then only one possibility remains. The notion of perception, however, is highly problematic and the literature on the subJect is overwhelming (go to https://philpapers.org/s/perception). In the preface to his trailblazing book Les mots et les choses (Gallimard, 1966), Michel Foucault speaks of “le regard déjà codé” (the encoded eye). In addition, scientists in the field of quantum mechanics have been teaching us that it is impossible to have complete and certain information about the state of a physical system. The foundation of science as practiced in the West is thus shaky on two fronts. This serious allegation is substantiated by the undeniable fact that scientific statements are composed of words, which always refer to something, leaving innumerable other things out of consideration, unnamed. Whereas a scientific theory is an explanatory set of statements about specific phenomena based on repeatedly tested and widely established ideas, a scientific model is a tool to understand these phenomena. This tool, however, is also defective. While scientific theories are sets of fundamentally shaky statements about a part of reality, scientific models, which can be iconic, analogic, or symbolic/mathematical in character, are incomplete representations of it. A scientific model is never the same as what is modelled. It is a human construct, a simplification meant to demonstrate, or stimulate research on, particular features of a phenomenon or group of phenomena. Scientific models are interpretive representations, always afflicted with the human factor and never free of the subject(s) having built the model. Having only some of the properties of what is modeled, they are selective. In model building (modelling), two elements are involved: (a) concepts and (b) the relationships thought to prevail among them.

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