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Home , Edgar Morin, Ernst von Glasersfeld, George Klir, Hans Blohm, Heinz von Foerster, Henri Atlan

A History of Systemic and Cybernetic Thought From to the Teardrop

Fouzi M. Ben-Ali, M.B.A, PhD Assistant Professor of Management, Al Tahadi University April 2007 Working Paper. Copyright and All Rights Reserved by the Author Introduction For students of thinking and information science, the period from the early 1940’s to the late 1970’s stands out as the period when some thirty eminent thinkers and scientists laid down the foundation theories for what we today know as “” and “”. While there is a great deal of literature that covers these two disciplines, the author’s search for a single published paper that briefly describes the background of the major thinkers, as well as their major contributions, yielded no results. There is a need for such a paper to be used as an introduction to students of systems, cybernetics and the information sciences, especially non-Latin speakers whose limited translation or economic resources make it difficult for them to obtain the source papers or journal articles. Even researchers living and working in states where third wave technologies are easily available , there is a need to make them aware of “systemic thinking” and the powerful insights it has given us to examine and understand the fundamental laws that govern all systems, whether the systems are simple or complex ones, natural or artificial, mechanical or living, social or economic. In so doing both students and professionals will gain a broader perspective to examine or model the whether at the level of a cell or at the level of a supranational system such as a multinational organizations. In so doing, they will also gain an awareness of the scientific tools available to them to study and model the underlying variables and mechanisms to some of today’s immensely complex organizational and global problems whether they are climate change, collapsing economies, failed nation-states, terrorism, mass migration, or the destruction of natural and living resources.. While researching the background of many of the great systems and cybernetic thinkers, it became apparent that many of these thinkers were born during the period 1894 and 1934, and by the end of the twentieth century most had passed away. The loss of a great number of the founding fathers and theorists of the field of systems, particularly in the last ten to twenty years, will undoubtedly be felt most by those fortunate to have been their students, and those researchers fortunate to have come across their intellectual contributions. The ‘conversations’ they had with each other and the varied cultural and educational background they came from, will be hard to replicate by a new generation of systemic thinkers. The choice of ‘Teardrop’ in the title of this paper is to act as a metaphor to reflect the emotion at the loss of such great thinkers. It is equally disheartening to see that by the end of the twentieth century that many of their contributions have not been given their just ‘intellectual and economic budget space’. The content of theory being published in many disciplines, especially the social sciences, proceeds with little reference to such eminent researchers as Ross Ashby, and . While today the word “system” is widely used, very few academics are still aware of the system models and concepts developed over the past half century by these eminent thinkers. Few of their ideas have penetrated the social science community circles and there is continued resistance to what is seen as the ‘mechanistic’ approach of cybernetics and the ‘generality’ of systems theory. The European background of many of the theorists (Ashby, Bateson, Beer, Boulding, Checkland, Pask, Atlan, Morin, Prigogine, , , , Paul Watzlawick, and Luhmann) is important to highlight, as well as a special mention of the contribution that the Latin American thinkers, most notably the Chileans Maturana and Varela, had on the corpus of systems knowledge. The early thinkers had to build a common language to scientifically relate their ideas irrespective of their varying disciplines and different cultural backgrounds. They were able to bring new and relevant insights to the new and emerging field of system science. Many of the early European system thinkers immigrated to the prior to the Second World War, and many of them were involved in the British and American efforts during the war. Together with their American-born (Warren McCulloch, and ) counterparts they laid down a corpus of knowledge which we today call “Systems Theory”.

In choosing who to include in the list of the “founding fathers” of the two sciences, the author based the choice on all those listed in the “” list of the most influential theorists in the field of cybernetics, systems theory and related domains. To this list, Rene Thom, the French mathematician was also added by the author for his significant contribution to the body of knowledge on the stability of systems and the relevance of 'catastrophe theory' to today's collapsing money markets and centuries-old industrial manufacturing giants. Eleven of those in the “Principia Cybernetica” list were also found to be past presidents of the International Society for the . Below are listed the surnames

1 of the thirty chosen followed by their educational and research backgrounds. It is clear from the list that the theorists of Systems Theory and Cybernetics came from a varied educational background and represented nearly all major fields of knowledge.

Ashby - Psychiatry, and . Atlan – Biophysics, Human , Cellular Biology and Immunology Bateson – , Social Science, Linguistics Beer – , Operations Research, Management Campbell – Social Psychology, Evolutionary Boulding – Economist, Biology Checkland – Chemistry, Forrester – Electrical Engineering Klir - and Intelligent Systems Luhmann - Maturana – Biology, Philosophy, Medicine McCulloch – Philosophy, Psychology, Medicine Miller – Philosophy, Psychology, Behavioral Science Morin – Philosophy, Sociology Odum – Zoology, Ecology Pask – Biological Computing, , , Linguistics, Psychology Pattee – Industrial Engineering, Theoretical Biology Powers – , Psychology, Astronomy, Computer Systems, Behavioral Science Prigogine – Chemistry, Physics and Chemical Engineering Rosen – Biophysics, Mathematical Biology Thom , Philosophy Shannon – Electrical Engineering, Mathematics Simon – Economics, Psychology, Political Science, Mathematics Varela – Biology, Cognitive Science, Neurophenomenology Von Bertalanffy - Biology Von Glasersfeld – Mathematics, Philosophy, Psychology, Journalism Von Foerster – Physics, Biophysics Von Neumann – Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, Mathematics Watzlawick – Psychiatry, Behavioral Science Wiener – Mathematics, Zoology, Philosophy

2 The Systems Theory Pioneers

Ever since the beginning Homo sapiens had an organic view of nature and science, as well as a holistic approach of the world around him. During the late eighteenth and nineteenth century, driven by such thinkers as Rene Descartes and Francis Bacon, the industrial revolution brought with it an analytical and mechanical approach to science. Such an approach brought about huge technological and scientific gains, but by the twentieth century biologists soon realized that such an approach cannot explain the self renewal process of life. In the 1930’s Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901-1972), an Austrian professor of theoretical biology put forward the idea that there exists a dynamic process in every organic system, that the organism was an organized system and that there were fundamental laws that governed biological systems at all levels of organization (von Bertalanffy, 1928,1933). This organismic theory was the basis for his later work on “General Systems Theory” (von Bertalanffy, 1950, 1951, 1968, 1975, 1981). For von Bertalanffy were open systems that interacted with their environments, and in so doing acquired new properties, resulting in the continual evolution of the living system. Systems theory, as opposed to reductionist theory that reduces an organism or entity to its parts, has its focus on the relationships between the parts and their arrangements which connect them into a whole. This (wholeness) holistic approach or paradigm as he called it was a new vision for science. In his view he was proposing a new perspective, a new approach to scientific study. General Systems Theory’s objective was clear in that it was the science of formulating and deriving principles that are valid for all systems. It moved away from the private universe of the continually generating new disciplines and their sub-disciplines, each unable to converse with the other for lack of a common language. As a methodology General Systems Theory also encompasses Cybernetics, however there exists a fundamental difference. To von Bertalanffy the cybernetic theory of represents a special class of self-regulating systems whose regulative mechanisms are based on pre-determined structures, while dynamical systems show the free interplay of forces. Von Bertalanffy published his initial paper on General Systems Theory paper in 1949 titled “Zu einer allgemeinen Systemlehre”, followed by a second paper in 1950 titled “An Outline of General System Theory” (von Bertalanffy, 1950). In 1968 he developed it to a greater detail in his book titled “General System Theory” (von Bertalanffy, 1968). An outstanding systems theorist was Ross Ashby (1903-1972) who not only contributed to the science of General Systems but also put forward many laws fundamental to the field of cybernetics. He was a pioneer in the study of organization and control of complex systems. Ashby derived an extremely relevant relationship between the “whole” and the “parts”: “The whole is at a state of equilibrium if and only if each part is at state of equilibrium in the conditions provided by other parts”. (Ashby, 1956 P.83)

He pioneered the concept of a homeostatic machine (Ashby, 1948) and the clear distinction between an ‘object’ (a part of the world in which someone is interested) and a ‘system’. “The system now means, not a thing, but a list of variables….. A system is a set of variables sufficiently isolated to stay constant long enough for us to discuss it” (Ashby, 1956 P.40)

Regulation was a subject which Ashby paid a lot of attention to. Ashby’s Law of Requisite (only variety in R can force down variety due to D; only variety can destroy variety) imposes strict bounds on the achievable behavior of regulators (Ashby 1956, P.207). He also studied both feedback and feed-forward regulations and developed general principles for analyzing and designing regulators. In 1970 in a published paper with (Conant, 1970) he states:

“Every good regulator of a system must be a model of that system”.

Ashby was the author of two influential books, “Design for a Brain” (Ashby, 1952) and “An Introduction to Cybernetics” (Ashby, 1956). From 1959 to 1970 Ashby worked at the Biological Computer Lab, which Heinz von Foerster founded at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Kenneth Boulding (1910-1993) emphasized that human economic and other behavior is embedded in a larger interconnected system. He brought about an evolutionary approach to economics where it is necessary to understand the ecodynamics of the general system. This approach differs from the traditional equilibrium approach of viewing as self-interested rational utility maximizers. His major work in economics first published in 1941 was “Economic Analysis” (Boulding, 1941, 1966). This was followed by a “Reconstruction of Economics” (Boulding,1950) which reflected his new belief that to understand economic reality it was necessary to go beyond the boundaries of economics and study the .

3 Boulding also believed that knowledge is a series of images, revised as new information is received, and is basically organic. The growth of knowledge is anti-entropic and brings order out of what was previously chaos. He addressed ‘subjective knowledge’ in his book the “The Image: Knowledge in Life and Society” (Boulding, 1956). In his book “Three Faces of Power” (Boulding, 1989); he employs the trinity of social organizers as the three categories of power. Contrary to the presumption of deterrence theory, threat power is not effective unless it is reinforced by economic and integrative power.

From 1947 James Miller (1916-2002) was actively engaged in the search for a term to describe all branches from the biological to the social sciences dealing with life, a science which he called “behavioral science”. In 1978 he published his book “Living Systems” (Miller, 1978) which is probably one of the most detailed cross-discipline studies of the functions and behavior of living systems. Covering over 1100 pages and the culmination of some twenty-five years of study it covers the study of systems from the cell to national systems. The first multilevel test derived from Living Systems Theory was research into informational overload:

“As the information input to a single channel of a living system increases (measured in bits per second), the information output similarly increases almost identically at first but gradually falls behind as it approaches a certain output rate, the channel capacity , which cannot be exceeded in the channel. The output then levels off at that rate, and finally, as the information input rate continues to go up, the output decreases gradually towards zero as breakdown or the confusional state occurs under overload.” (Miller, 1960)

With over 3000 scientific articles to support his thesis, Miller shows that over billions of years there has been an evolution of seven levels of progressively more complex systems, each one consisting of input-output systems that process a combination of matter, energy or information in order to survive. Each level has its special characteristic structure and processes. These seven levels are:

“[1] Cells; whose components are nonliving molecules and multi-molecular complexes [2] Organs – whose components are cells aggregated into tissues [3] Organisms – whose components are organs and include multi-cellular and animal life forms [4] Groups – Two or more organisms interacting as systems [5] Organizations – Systems that have two or more echelons in their decision-making structure [6] Societies - Social systems that have all the essential prerequisites for self-maintenance [7] Supranational systems – Composed of two or more societies and have cooperative decision making” (Miller, 1978)

For living systems at all levels to remain alive and continue beyond a single generation they must be capable of performing some nineteen critical processes. These critical components are carried out by their structural units or components:

“[1] Reproducer – gives rise to other systems similar to the one it is in [2] Boundary – holds the components together, protects them from the environment and excludes/permits entry to the system and for those process Matter-Energy: [3] Ingestor – brings matter-energy across the boundary from the environment [4] Distributor – carries inputs from outside the system or between its components [5] Converter – changes certain inputs to the system into forms more useful for internal processes [6] Producer - forms stable associations among matter-energy inputs or outputs from its converter, the materials synthesized being for growth, damage repair or replacement for system components [7] Matter-Energy Storage – Maintains deposits of matter-energy [8] Extruder – Transmits out of the system products or wastes [9] Motor – Moves the system or parts of it in relation to its environment or parts of it [10] Supporter – Maintains proper spatial relationships among components of the system and for those that process Information: [11] Input transducer – sensors that bring markers bearing information into the system and changing them into other matter-energy forms suitable for transmission within [12] Internal Transducer – Sensors which receive markers bearing information about significant alterations in components and changing the into other matter-energy forms suitable for transmission within

4 [13] Channel and net – single or multiple connected routes by which transmissions of information take place in physical space [14] Decoder – Alters the code from the Input/Internal Transducer into private internally understood code [15] Associator - First Teaming Process - Forms the first enduring associations amongst internal system information [16] – Second Teaming Process – stores information for different periods of time [17] Decider – Receives information from all components and transmits outputs to control the entire system [18] Encoder - Alters the private code used internally by its components into public externally understood code [19] – Sensors which receive markers bearing information from internal components and changing them into other matter-energy forms suitable for transmission to the environment” (Miller, 1978)

The Founding Fathers of Cybernetics

The 1940’s saw four eminent scholars lay down the fundamental structure of a new field called Cybernetics. Norbert Wiener, Warren McCulloch, Heinz von Foerster and were the major architects of the field of Cybernetics. Initially the idea of cybernetics came to Norbert Wiener (1894–1964) in the early 1940’s while working on anti-aircraft systems at M.I.T. Out of his work and research came a paper titled "Behavior, Purpose, and which Wiener published with Arturo Rosenblueth and " (Rosenblueth, 1943) The paper defined "purposeful behavior" in both machines and living organisms in terms of information feedback. His thinking in cybernetics inspired the creation of the Teleological Society in 1943. His work with Arturo Rosenblueth at the National Institute of Cardiology in in 1945 clearly shaped some of his ideas about the science. From 1946 to 1956 he was involved in the Josiah Macy Foundation sponsored conferences, whose meetings set out to find solutions to tackle major medical problems at the time. Altogether there were ten . The transactions of the sixth through tenth conferences were published in a series titled "Cybernetics: Circular Causal and Feedback Mechanisms in Biological and Social Systems", by the Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation. Von Foerster was also a conference member. "The Cybernetics Group: Constructing a Social Science for Postwar America" (Heims, 1993), by Steve Joshua Heims, is a notable contribution to the history of the conferences but basically reflecting the social science perception of the conferences. One of the conferences was entitled “Circular Causality and Feedback Mechanisms in Biological and Social Systems, later called Cybernetics, and it was chaired by Warren McCulloch. In addition to the four architects of cybernetics, other notable system thinkers attended. These included both Gregory Bateson and Claude Shannon. The field was already well known to the participants through their interactions with Wiener, but the world only became aware of it following Norbert Wiener’s publication of 1948 book titled “Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine” (Wiener, 1948). The ideas encompassed by cybernetics were not necessarily new, what was new after World War II was the generalization of these ideas into universal principles that applied to all complex self-organizing systems, regardless of physical substrate, organic or mechanical, natural or artificial. Thus they effaced the conceptual distinction between organisms and machines. As these principles were applied within the life and humans sciences, organisms, social groups, psychologies and physiologies were explained according to machine theories of communication. The ideas of self-regulation and the concept of feedback were not new ideas put forward by cyberneticians; they had long been put forward by scholars in the engineering sciences. What was new was the recognition that they were generalized universal principles that applied to all complex self-organizing systems, be they organic or mechanical, natural or artificial systems. Taken from the Greek word “Kubernetis”, the art of the steersman. Steering implies control and direction and Cybernetics involved the theory of regulation. To Wiener the and the automatic machine are fundamentally alike in that they are devices that make decisions on the basis of decisions they made in the past. Fundamental to the theory of regulation is the idea of ‘’ and the transmission of information. The research into the transmission of information was based much on Claude Shannon’s and Wiener’s earlier work on the theory of transmission in the presence of noise (Wiener, 1942).

“Cybernetics considers systems with some kind of closure, systems that act on themselves – something which, from a logical point of view, always leads to paradoxes since you encounter the phenomena of self-reference (von Foerster, Heinz, 1995)

“Cybernetics is the art of creating equilibrium in a world of possibilities and constraints” (Glasersfeld, 1995).

5 “Cybernetics differs from the other sciences because it does no operate and explain by means of causal relations, but by specifying constraints” (Bateson, 1972).

Warren McCulloch (1898-1969) was actively involved in the Josiah Macy Foundation sponsored cybernetic conferences. His classic paper with “A Logical Calculus of ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity” (McCulloch,1943), formalized the brain as a network of neurons viewed as logical processing elements. His concentration of work dealt with the logic of thought and the thinking process, making key contributions to the development of artificial intelligence and inspiring much of the underlying theory of neural networks, automata and computing used in today's programming and communication technologies. His book “The Embodiments of ” (McCulloch,1965) teems with intriguing concepts about the mind-brain that are extremely relevant to today’s research in neural networks. Consisting of some twenty-one essays and lectures he pursues a physiological theory of knowledge looking into “what is a number” to “what’s in the brain that ink may character”.

Heinz von Foerster (1911–2002) developed what he called “a second order notion, the notion that speaks about a notion”, a crucial concept of second order cybernetics and reflexive thinking (reflexive theory is a theory of theory building). His research covered the key role that ‘eigen’ behaviors have in complex behavior, as well as the role of noise in complex systems leading to further organization, the basis of today’s research into ‘stochastic resonance’. The discovery, a hundred fifty years earlier, by Johannes Muller that the neural reaching our cortex from the sensory organs are qualitatively all the same, was also taken up by Foerster to refute empirically the idea that knowledge exists in itself and should be considered as a representation of an independent reality, that the world we live in could be a picture of the world as it might be without us. As Foerster stressed:

“If we ourselves construct our picture of the world, then we are responsible for what we think and do. We can no longer blame a clockwork universe for our fate. The universe does not determine what we do, but only what we cannot do.” (von Foerster,1984 )

In 1958 he founded the ‘Biological Computer Lab’ (BCL) following his one year indoctrination in biology and physiology with, Norbert Wiener’s close friend, Arturo Rosenblueth. At the BCL he was joined for a number of years by three other eminent cyberneticians Umberto Maturana, Ross Ashby and Gordon Pask. His books “Cybernetics of Cybernetics” (von Foerster,1979); ”Observing Systems: selected papers” (von Foerster,1981); and “Principles of Self- Organization” (von Foerster,1962) put forward over forty years of intellectual reflection in the field of cybernetics.

Gregory Bateson (1904-1980) an anthropologist by training, collaborated with (also highly involved in the Macy Conferences and was also Bateson’s wife), in Bali and New Guinea on a number of anthropological studies during the late 1920’s and early 1930’s. He developed a new approach to anthropological research using photography not only for documentation but also for analysis. In the 1940’s , following numerous meetings with Wiener, Foerster, McCulloch and Pask he moved away from traditional anthropology to explore a theoretical synthesis he referred to as “an ecology of mind”. His interest in behavioral morphology involving structures of meaning and communication led him to abandon at an early stage reductionist models of cause and effect. He saw in cybernetics the ability to achieve a more human outlook and a means of changing our philosophy of control. He viewed the Earth’s biosphere as a self-organizing system in which no part can have unilateral control over the whole or any other part (Bateson). He viewed the mind as an ecological system and that introduced ideas, like introduced seeds, can only take root and flourish according to the nature of the system receiving them. He developed 'double bind theory' and looked at parallels between mind and natural evolution. His published works “Form,Substance and Difference” (Bateson, 1972a), “Toward a Theory of Schizophrenia”(Bateson,1956), “Mind and Nature”(Bateson, 1979) ,“Steps to an Ecology of Mind”(Bateson, 1972b)covered psychiatry, genetics and biological evolution,.

Information and Communication Theory

From the early 1940’s there was also matching of a lot of the ideas with electronic devices and core disciplines dealing with information and communication theory. John von Neumann (1903–1957) was an active participant in the multidisciplinary field of study of Cybernetics throughout the 1940’s. Von Neumann’s contribution to Cybernetics was through his study of “automata”. Automata refers to any system that processes information as part of a self regulating system, such as the human nervous system or computer. Von Neumann’s interests in ergodic theory, operator algebras theory, group

6 representations and quantum mechanics led him to become of the pioneers of and logical design. He developed what is known today as the ‘von Neumann stored program computer’, and virtually all digital computers built since 1945 are based on the same architecture that he initially put forward and suggested by Charles Babbage for his analytical engine a century earlier. The computer would be composed of five key components, a control unit, memory, a calculating unit, and input – output units to interact with the human user. His design for a ‘self replicating system’ is equally important. For the system to function it must have two components which are wholly distinct from each other, the machine and its description.

“The description of the machine is symbol, while the machine is matter – but for reproduction to be successful, the description must not only be followed, but must also be duplicated. The description itself thus performs two distinct functions. On the one hand , it has to serve as a program, a kind of algorithm that can be executed during the construction of the offspring. On the other hand, it has to serve as passive data, a description that can be duplicated and given to the offspring.” (von Neumann,1966)

Many years later Watson and Crick confirmed that DNA performed the same two functions. What Von Neumann had proposed, nature had already built the duality function into the structure of the DNA molecule. Von Neumann’s logic of self- reproduction had the same logic now found in cells, although at the time the cellular translation code and the roles of nucleic acids and enzymes were not known to him. His other works involved the development of mathematical strategies, game theory, to the field of economics (von Neumann, 1937), as well as the comparative work of the computer and the brain. He gave as an enlightening comparison between natural and artificial systems.

“In other words, natural organisms are constructed to make errors as inconspicuous, as harmless, as possible. Artificial automata are designed to make errors as conspicuous, as disastrous, as possible. The rationale of this difference is not far to seek. Natural organisms are sufficiently well conceived to be able to operate even when malfunctions have set in. They can operate in spite of malfunctions, and their subsequent tendency is to remove these malfunctions. An artificial automaton could certainly be designed so as to be able to operate normally in spite of a limited number of malfunctions in certain limited areas. Any malfunction, however, represents a considerable risk that some generally degenerating process has already set in within the machine.” (von Neumann,1951b P.306)

Von Neumann produced two specially noteworthy books “Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata”(von Neumann, 1951a, 1966) and “Computer and the Brain” ”(von Neumann, 1948).

During the same period a brilliant young mathematician and electrical engineer named Claude Shannon (1916– 2001) wrote his thesis at M.I.T applying the two-value binary algebra and symbolic logic, originally put forward by the 19 th century mathematician George Boole as the logic of thought, to the on and off positions of relay switches on the Differential Equalizer. In his thesis “A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits” (Shannon, 1940) he showed how a logic machine could be built using switching circuits. In so doing he created ‘digital logic’. In 1948 while working at Bell Labs he published “A Mathematical Theory of Communication “(Shannon, 1948), which was the basis for the new science of Information Theory. In this paper he proposed a linear schematic model of a communications system. At the time, communication required sending electromagnetic waves down a wire, and the idea of sending a stream of 0s and 1s, representing words, sounds and pictures was truly revolutionary. Whatever the nature of the information being transmitted, it could be represented in binary form. He used the word ‘bit’ for a binary digit and explained that the maximum effectiveness of communication channels would be achieved only when the source rate of the information carried matched the capacity of that channel, both being measured in bits per second. His idea of adding redundant bits to a message to allow reconstruction of a corrupted message led to the use of error detection and correction codes in data transmission. In his paper “Communication Theory of Secrecy Systems” (Shannon, 1949) he showed that messages could survive any degree of interference if a sufficient number of redundant bits are added lying done a workable method to ensure the integrity of data being transmitted. It is without doubt that Shannon’s work stimulated the technology which led to the information revolution, even though his ideas had to wait for the arrival of integrated circuits in the 1970’s to make possible the commercial exploitation of digital technology. At M.I.T Shannon studied with Wiener. As noted earlier, fundamental to the theory of regulation is the idea of ‘negative feedback’ and the transmission of information. Wiener’s interaction with Shannon at M.I.T clearly affected the basis of thinking behind the formulation of the two sciences (Cybernetics and Information Theory).

In 1949 another computer pioneer studying at M.I.T designed a vastly improved method of storing memory by refining magnetic core memory. He headed the Whirlwind project at the beginning of the 1950’s the “Multi-coordinate digitally information storage device”, the forerunner to day’s Random Access Memory. However by applying his skills to

7 social systems he engineered a novel way to analyze the behavior of systems. Jay Forrester (1918- ) used computer to analyze social systems and predict the implications of different models. The new approach to the study of systems came to be called “systems dynamics”. Systems Dynamics deals with the complexity of systems and how systems change over time. It is a process of modeling that involves interpreting real life systems into computer models, and then seeing how the system behaves under different policies. Jay Forrester applied his approach to the study of urban dynamics, world dynamics and the U.S. Economy. Nearly a half century of research has led to him to conclude:

“It has become clear that complex systems are counterintuitive. That is, they give indications that suggest corrective action which will often be ineffective or even adverse in its results. Very often one finds that the policies that have been adopted for correcting a difficulty are actually intensifying it rather than producing a solution….. Most of our intuitive responses have been developed in the context of what are technically called first-order, negative-feedback loops. Such a simple loop is goal-seeking and has only one important state variable. …The intuitive lesson is that cause and effect are closely related in time and space….But in complex systems cause and effect are often not closely related in either time or space. The structure of a is not a simple feedback loop where one system state dominates the behavior. The complex system has a multiplicity of interacting feedback loops. Its internal rates of flow are controlled by nonlinear relationships. The complex system is of high order, meaning that there are many system states (or levels). It usually contains positive-feedback loops describing growth processes as well as negative goal-seeking loops. In the complex system the cause of a difficulty may lie far back in time from the symptoms, or in a completely different and remote part of the system. In fact, causes are usually found, not in prior events, but in the structure and policies of the system.” (Forrester, 1969)

For those seeking to further their knowledge in the area of Systems Dynamics, Jay Forrester has two books on the subject “Industrial Dynamics” (Forrester, 1961) and “World Dynamics” (Forrester,1971)

George Klir (1932-) worked and conducted research in the very abstract world of uncertainty analysis and modeling since the 1970's. He received his PhD 1964 and is a member of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. He is recognized for contributions to intelligent Systems, Fuzzy Logic and theory, information theory, and General Systems Methodology. A former president of the North American Information Processing Society and the International Fuzzy Systems Association, he sits on many editorial boards for journals devoted to fuzzy systems, uncertainty and intelligence systems. His book "Facets of Systems Science" (Klir, 1991) presents a framework and methodology for characterizing all forms of systems problems and some key problems and an overview of the development of basic ideas and mathematical results regarding measures and principles of uncertainty-based information formalized within the framework of classical set theory, probability theory, fuzzy set theory, possibility theory, and the Dempster-Shafer theory of evidence. The General Systems Problem Solver (GSPS) developed by in his 1985 book "Architecture of Systems Problem Solving" (Klir, 1985) is an inductive modeling methodology and a general systems approach in that all are represented as fuzzy relations, perhaps probabilistic, possibilistic, or neither. General information theoretical measures are then used to measure various forms of structure among variables. Independent variables are distinguished from dependent variables.

Cognition and Radical Constructivism

During the years 1970 to 1973 an eminent Chilean biologist and philosopher (1928- ) played a historical role in bridging Biology and . Together with he invented the concept and theory of “”. Maturana is probably best known for his “Biology of Cognition” which seeks to study how cognitive processes arise from the operation of human beings as living systems. Such a study involves the study of human relations and the epistemology of knowledge. Maturana and Varela put forward the term ‘autopoiesis’ to characterize those systems which maintain their organization throughout a history of environmental perturbation and structural change, and regenerate their components in the course of their operation. It is the process by which an organism continuously reorganizes its own structure. Adaptation consists in regenerating the organism’s structure so that its relationship to the environment remains constant. Autopoiesis differs from autonomy in that autonomous systems, while maintaining their organization, do not necessarily regenerate their own components. Taken from the ancient Greek words ‘auto’ meaning self and ‘poiesis’ meaning creation or production Autopoietic theory is a body of knowledge that studies the dynamics of living systems. At the heart of this work lies the process of autopoiesis and autopoietic machines.

8 “An autopoietic machine is a machine organized as a network of processes of production of components that produces the components which through their interactions and transformations continuously regenerate and realize the network of processes that produced them and constitute it as a concrete entity in the space in which they exist by specifying the topological domain of its realization as such a network” (Maturana, 1970)

For Maturana the behavior of a system is something ascribed to it by the observer as it interacts with the environment. Thus the behavior of a system is not something contained within the system but something ascribed to it by the observer as it interacts with the environment. The cognizing living system is informationally closed in a homeostatic loop with its environment. To Maturana social systems are realized primarily in linguistic activity where the function of language is to orient the organism within its cognitive domain, and all linguistic activity takes place in the ‘praxis’ of living. We human beings find ourselves as living systems immersed in it. He outlined six types of conversations which can be distinguished in human interactions:

[1] Conversations of coordinations of present and future actions [2] Conversations of complaint and apology for unkept agreements [3] Conversations of desires and expectations [4] Conversations of command and obedience [5] Conversations of characterizations, attributions and valuing (acceptance, rejection, acceptance, rejection) [6] Conversations of complaint for unfulfilled expectations (Maturama, 1988 )

According to Maturana, the cognizing organism is informationally closed. This insight, which Maturana expresses by saying, that all cognitive domains arise exclusively as the result of operations of distinction which are made by the organism itself. Languaging, for Maturana, does not mean conveying news or any kind of "information", but refers to a social activity that arises from a coordination of actions that have been tuned by mutual adaptation. Maturana, Heinz von Foerster and Glasersfeld discard the notion of a "storage" in which impressions, experiences, actions, relations, etc., could be deposited and preserved.. Maturana makes it clear that in his model all acting and behavior of an organism is fully determined by the organism's structure and organization; hence it requires no reflection.

Francisco Varela (1946-2001) is the youngest of all the eminent Cyberneticians and System Theorists listed here. He followed in the steps of his mentor Maturana in the study of biology and cognitive processes. His 1979 book ‘Principles of Biological Autonomy’ (Varela, 1979) ranks alongside ‘Autopoiesis and Cognition’ (Maturana & Varela, 1980) as a classic on the subject of biology and cognition. The book merges the themes of autonomy and their informational abilities into the theme of a system possessing an identity and interacting with its environment. ‘The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Experience’ (Maturana & Varela, 1987) was further work with Maturana in laying down the groundwork for understanding autopoiesis, and explaining how each system has its own absolute right to its own reality. Following his work with Maturana on autopoiesis he spent most of his latter days on brain research. From 1986 to 2001 he was based at the Institute of Neurosciences and at the Research Center for Applied Epistemology in where he pursued two main lines of research; experimental studies using multiple electrode recordings and mathematical analysis of large-scale neuronal integration during cognitive processes; and philosophical and empirical studies of the ‘Neurophenomenology’ of human consciousness (Varela,1996). Neurophenomenology deals with subjective experience and brain evidence with first-person methodologies. In his words it implies:

“gathering a research community armed with new pragmatic tools for the development of a science of consciousness”….A fundamental aspect of this training is that it must be done in the context of a disciplined approach to the intersubjective validation of conscious experience” (Varela & Shear, 1999)

Maturana and Varela also defined communication as behavior coordination, where communication comes about when human interaction leads to working on a common goal or task. Maturana was also one of the founders of Radical Constructivism, an epistemology built on empirical findings of Neurobiology.

Ernst von Glasersfeld (1917- ), an Austrian by birth, studied mathematics at Zürich University and at the University of . In 1947 he moved to Italy and began working with Silvio Ceccato. He was greatly influenced by the works of Ceccato and Piaget. Since 1959 he has worked continuously in research at university and where he developed his

9 model of Radical Constructivism. Radical constructivism maintains that the operations by means of which we assemble our experiential world can be explored, and that an awareness of this operating can help us do it differently. For constructivists, all communication and all understanding are a matter of interpretive construction on the part of the experiencing subject. Radical constructivism is radical because it breaks with convention and develops a theory of knowledge in which knowledge does not reflect an "objective" ontological reality, but exclusively an ordering and organization of a world constituted by our experience. The radical constructivist has relinquished "metaphysical realism" once and for all, and finds himself in full agreement with Piaget, who says: "Intelligence organizes the world by organizing itself"

Radical constructivism, thus, is radical because it breaks with convention and develops a theory of knowledge in which knowledge does not reflect an “objective” ontological reality, but exclusively an ordering and organization of a world constituted by our experience. (Von Glasersfeld, 1981)

“It will be obvious that radical constructivism itself must not be interpreted as a picture or description of any absolute reality but as a possible model of knowing and the acquisition of knowledge in cognitive organisms that are capable of constructing for themselves, on the basis of their own experience, a more or less reliable world” (Von Glasersfeld, 1981)

It was Piaget (1896-1980) who first used the term ‘Constructivism’ and created for the first time a relationship between knowledge and reality. His work went against the established idea in philosophy of knowledge being a static entity and something out there to be discovered, but rather that human systems generate their own knowledge. Von Glasersfeld took this further in showing how meaning is built up from experience and how we understand and construct our knowledge of the world around us through continual negotiation with the external world. His two books ‘Construction of Knowledge’ (Von Glasersfeld, 1987) and ‘Radical Constructivism: A way of Knowing & Learning’ (Von Glasersfeld, 1995) trace the history of constructivism from Vico to Piaget and put forward the model of Radical Constructivism.

Human Interaction, Communication and Conversations

Paul Watzlawick (1921-2007) , a psychiatrist by academic training, is one of the leading theoreticians in Communication Theory and Constructivism. In his book the “Pragmatics of Human Communication: A Study of Interactional patterns, Pathologies, and Paradoxes” (Watzlawick,1967) where he uses and further develops Gregory Bateson’s concepts into interpersonal relationships. He stresses the relevance of cybernetics, information and communication theory to the theory of interpersonal communications. For Watzlawick interaction:

“can be considered as a system, and the general theory of systems gives insight into the nature of Interactional systems. General Systems Theory is not only a theory of biological, economic, or engineering systems. Despite their widely varying subject matter, these theories of particular systems have so many common conceptions that a more general theory has evolved which structures the similarities into formal isomorphies…. ‘The isomorphy we have mentioned is a consequence of the fact that in certain aspects, corresponding abstractions and conceptual models can be applied to different phenomena. It is only in view of these aspects that system laws will apply.’ (Watzlawick,1967)

He continues by showing Feedback and Circularity as a model for interaction:

“Since the advent of cybernetics and the ‘discovery ‘ of feedback, it has been seen that circular and highly complex relatedness is a markedly different but no less scientific phenomena than simpler and more orthodox casual notions. Feedback and circularity is the appropriate causal model for a theory of Interactional systems” (Watzlawick,1967)

Working as a senior researcher at the Mental Health Institute in the Palo Alto California, Watzlawick developed a different approach to communication theory, based on human level face-to-face interactions. Five axioms, which describe the ‘tenative calculus of human communication’, were developed:

Axiom 1: One cannot not communicate. Anything we do sends out a message inclusive of the way we walk, talk, dress etc Axiom 2: Human beings communicate both digitally and analogically. Language as digital communication and refers to things by name, while nonverbal communication is analogical (tone of voice, facial expression, touch etc)

10 Axiom 3: Communication = Content + Relationship. When we talk, we interchange messages and also establish relationships Axiom 4: The nature of a relationship depends on how both parties punctuate the communication sequence. Reframing, changing the entire meaning or viewpoint in relation to a situation. Negotiation is the basis and control is the focus. Axiom 5: All communication is either symmetrical or complementary. Symmetrical is based on equal power, while complementary is based on differences in power. (Watzlawick,1967)

Gordon Pask (1928-1996), a British Cybernetician, is probably best known for his development of Conversation Theory, a reflexive theory (which is a theory of theory building). His work contributed to the creation of second-order cybernetics along side Maturana, von Foerster and Bateson. His research spanned biological computing, artificial intelligence, cognitive science and psychology. His focus was in understanding how an organism learns from its environment and relates to other organisms through language. Pask’s learning environment was one that looped from the human, through the environment, back through the human and around again. Learning stems from the consensual agreement of interacting actors in a given environment. He realized that intelligence resides in interaction, not inside the head of the human being or in the computer and believed that artificial intelligence could not achieve its goal of reproducing intelligence. For cybernetics, Pask’s Conversation Theory provided it with its prescriptive power for modeling learning and agreement. He differentiated between communication and ‘conversations’, communication was exchanging messages containing what is already known, while conversation was a generative activity that gives identity to participants and leads to what is new (Pask,1975). Conversation theory is a constructivist relativist theory based in the understanding that each student must accept responsibility for his own learning, that his understanding is uniquely his, and that such understandings are communicable and learnable through conversation. Learning occurs through conversations about a subject matter which serve to make knowledge explicit. Conversations can be conducted at different levels:

Natural language level: general discussion Object Language level: discussing the subject matter Metalanguage level: talking about learning/language

To learn a subject matter, the student needs to learn the relationship among the concepts, and explicit explanation of the subject matter facilitates understanding. The critical method of learning is ‘teachback’ in which one person teaches another what they have learned. His books “Conversation Theory: Applications in Education and Epistemology”(Pask,1976),“Cybernetics of Human Learning and Performance” (Pask,1975), “Conversation, cognition and learning: A cybernetic theory and methodology” (Pask,1975), “An approach to cybernetics”(Pask,1961), and “A predictive model for self organizing systems”(Pask,1960a,1960b) not only reflect his own scholarship in the area of learning and conversations, but his own belief that Cybernetics was one of the three or four great insights of the twentieth century.

Niklas Luhmann (1927-1998) a German social theorist studied law in Freiburg, and worked for ten years as an administrative lawyer in Hanover. In 1962 he received a scholarship to Harvard and spent a year with . In 1968, he was appointed professor of sociology at the University of Bielefeld, where he worked until his retirement. His research work at the university concentrated on the theory of modern society and which culminated in his publication “The Society of Society”(Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft) (Luhmann,1997). Luhmann has best understood the centrality of the concept of meaning to social theory and has most extensively worked out the notion's implications “Social systems are self-referential systems based on meaningful communication. They use communication to constitute and interconnect the events (actions) which build up the systems. In this sense they are "autopoietic" systems. They exist only by reproducing the events which serve as components of the system. They consist therefore as events, i.e. actions, which they themselves reproduce and they exist only as long as this is possible. This, of course, presupposes a highly complex environment. The environment of social systems includes other social systems, (the environment of a family includes for example other families, the , the , the medical system, and so on). Therefore communications between social systems is possible; and this means that social systems have to be observing systems, being able to use, for internal and external communication, a distinction between themselves and their environment, perceiving other systems within their environment.”(Luhmann,1982) He put forward a theory of social life based on communication. He saw social systems as systems of communication, and the social system is defined by a boundary between itself and its environment. Communication within the system operates by selecting only a limited amount of all information available outside. This process is also called

11 "reduction of complexity”. Each system has its own clear identity that is constantly reproduced in its communication and depends on what is considered meaningful and what is not. If a system loses its viability it ceases to exist as a system and dissolves back into the environment it emerged from. Luhmann saw social systems as autopoietically closed. “Basing itself on this form of differentiation, modern society has become a completely new type of system, building up an unprecedented degree of complexity. The boundaries of its subsystems can no longer be integrated by common territorial frontiers. Only the political subsystem continues to use such frontiers because segmentation into "states" appears to be the best way to optimize its own function. But other systems like science or economy spread over the globe. It therefore has become impossible to limit society as a whole by territorial boundaries. The only meaningful boundary is the boundary of communicative behavior, i.e. the differences between meaningful communication and other processes. Neither the different ways of reproducing capital nor the degrees of development in different countries give convincing grounds for distinguishing different societies.”(Luhmann,1982)

Order, Complexity, Hierarchy and Control

The son of a Russian chemical engineer who left following the revolution, (1917-2003) received his graduate degrees in chemistry from the University Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium. In 1967 he moved to University of Texas at Austin where he was to later setup the Prigogine Center for Studies in Statistical Mechanics and Complex Systems. Prigogine greatly enhanced the understanding of ‘irreversible processes’ (1940’s, 1950’s) especially in systems that are from equilibrium, and applied thermodynamics to the study of irreversible processes in living and mechanical systems. His work on dissipative structures (1960’s), to describe open systems in which an exchange of matter and energy occurs between a system and its environment, and nonequilibrium thermodynamics led to the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1977. The concentration of his studies focused on understanding the role of time and contributed greatly to the analysis of dynamical processes in complex systems. The field of thermodynamics focuses on the behavior of energy flow in natural systems. A number of physical laws have been established. The first law of thermodynamics is often called the Law of Conservation of Energy. This law suggests that energy can be transferred from one system to another in many forms. However, it can not be created nor destroyed . Thus, the total amount of energy available in the Universe is constant. Heat can never pass spontaneously from a colder to a hotter body. As a result of this fact, natural processes that involve energy transfer must have one direction, and all natural processes are irreversible. The second law of thermodynamics predicts that the entropy of an always increases with time. Entropy is the measure of the disorder or randomness of energy and matter in a system. The third law of thermodynamics states that if all the thermal motion of molecules (kinetic energy) could be removed, a state called absolute zero would occur. In his book “Order out of Chaos” (Prigogine,1984) he describes how matter regains order from chaos, how it reorganizes itself. For Prigogine system boundaries break down in the face of a changing environment in such a way as to abandon the old order, renewing and strengthening them. Thus through the action of these ‘dissipative structures’ new order arises out of chaos. Such breakdowns are actually a very necessary part of the process by which systems adapt their structures in response to the changing environment. Thus entropy points not to the collapse of the system but to its continuous attempts of adaptation to life. The key element in such an adaptation is the redefinition of the system’s rules, an altering of its basis of functioning, a change in its system identity. From the study of thermodynamics of irreversible processes, to the intemporal world of dynamics, to self-organization in non-equilibrium systems, to the temporal world of entropy Prigogine produced a number of notable books (Prigogine,1961, 1977, 1988, 1997) which continue to give new meaning to the realities of the global economic recession and chaos triggered by the housing mortgage crisis of 2008 .

Henri Atlan (1931-) received his doctorate from the in 1973 and is a professor of Biophysics, Bioinformation and Biocomplexity. His work concentrated on the workings of self-organization in networks and cells. He is probably best known for his theory of complexity and self-organization, as well as important contributions to information theory. Atlan noted the ambiguous role played by noise in the relationship of sender and receiver. Noise stands outside this relationship. It is the backdrop against which the communication happens and cannot be properly eliminated from the relationship. It is always there. But the value of noise is vastly different according to one's position. For the speaker, noise will always be an obstruction – it gets in the way and must be overcome. But for the receiver, noise need not play this role. It may have its own informational value when interposed with the signal. Atlan (1972) uses the ideas of ambiguity and redundancy to generate a theory of the development and decay of complexity, which he views as a theory of self- organization. In this theory, the presence of noise plays a role that is not solely destructive but can in fact be creative, in that, by increasing ambiguity, noise can increase the information content of a system in a way that is equivalent to increasing

12 variety and complexity. Both Heinz von Foerster and later developed a line of thinking that states organisms find not only information but also noise on their menu, and they make information from noise. Out of perturbations that threaten to destabilize organisms, to modify their structure and possibly undo their organization, they produce new and more complex forms of organization. They can do so, Atlan argues, because they are multilevel systems." Henri Atlan, describes the matter this way:

"However, what is less trivial is the relationship between the transformation from separation to reunion which takes place between two levels and the of new properties in the more general level as compared to the more elementary one. You find it when you go from atoms to molecules, from molecules to cells, from cells to organisms, and so on. For example, when you go from atoms to molecules new properties of matter are revealed, the existence of chemical affinities, or, more generally, the chemical properties of matter, which are new compared to the physical properties of atoms. The same thing happens in going from molecules to cells: something new emerges, the cybernetic and organizational properties of cellular organization, or the biological properties of cells, which are new compared to the chemical properties of molecules." (Atlan,1987)

In an article that aims ‘to place the immune system into an informational framework he states:

“The affinity between neurobiology and the information sciences seems natural to both parties because the central nervous system is clearly in the information business. The central nervous system receives a wide spectrum of energies (electromagnetic, sound, pressure, gravitational, etc) and transforms these inputs into information useful to the survival of the organism.”(Atlan & Cohen,1998)

He continues:

“Another deficiency of Shannon’s theory is that it neglects the creation of new information. Self –organizing systems like the brain and the immune system create new information and do not merely transmit or preserve existing information…….. The generation of new information is viewed as a creative process driven by noise. According to this theory, two conditions must be fulfilled if random noise is to generate useful diversity without disorganizing the system. The system must have a hierarchical, multilevel organization so that a decrease in the information transmitted in a channel at one level can actually produce an increase in the content of information at a more global level of the system. The system must feature redundancy. Redundancy refers to the existence in the system of multiple copies of the same or similar information. “(Atlan & Cohen,1998)

Atlan’s extensive research work is carefully laid out in two of his many books, “L’Organisation biologique et la theorie de l’information - The biological organization and information theory” (Atlan, 1972) and “Entre le crystal et la fume – Between the crystal and the smoke ”(Atlan,1979).

Robert Rosen (1934-1998) was a former student of the Physicist and theoretical biologist Nicholas Rashevsky who introduced him to the field of Mathematical Biology. His research efforts were concentrated in trying to answer the question “What is Life”, in his view the basic question that biology should seek to answer. To Rosen it was not the atoms and molecules that are at the core of reality, but rather the relations between them and between them and processes which are at the core. He saw function as being distinct from structure, and it is spread over the parts of the system. “the functional components are the ontological embodiment of the non-fragmentable aspect of the system’s organization” (Rosen,1978). For a system to evolve to become an organism it must achieve three functions, metabolism, repair and replication. A machine needs a builder for it cannot effect its own construction, and the fabrication of a complex system is different from the fabrication of a machine. Rosen’s differentiation of simple and complex systems is highly enlightening.

“A system is simple if all its models are simulable. A system that is not simple, and that accordingly must have a nonsimulable model, is complex” (Rosen,1998)

“If a system surprises us, or does something we have not predicted, or responds in a way we have not anticipated; if it makes errors; if it exhibits emergence of unexpected novelties of behavior, we also say that the system is complex. In short, complex systems are those that behave counter-intuitively.” (Rosen,1985)

13 “This approach to complexity is novel in several ways. For one thing, it requires that complexity is not an intrinsic property of a system nor of a system description. Rather, it arises from the number of ways in which we are able to interact with the system”. (Rosen,1985)

Rosen strongly believed that the present axioms of science limit our understanding and explanation of our universe and was powerful critic of the reductionist approach to the mind-body problem, and in two books “Life itself” (Rosen,1991) and “Essays on Life Itself” (Rosen,1998) he proceeded to lay the groundwork for relational biology based on functional organization and to investigate the limits of mechanistic systems.

Howard Pattee (1926-) ,, a theoretical biologist is best known for his theory of hierarchies. It was his concern with the nature of molecular control and complexity that led to his work on hierarchy and complex systems theory. Hierarchy Theory is rooted in the works of , Herbert Simon and Ilya Prigogine, it focuses on levels of organization and issues of scale. Howard Pattee also identified that as a system becomes elaborately hierarchical its behavior becomes simple. With the emergence of intermediate levels the lowest level entities become more constrained to be far from equilibrium thus losing degrees of freedom and giving rise to a constant behavior. He helped establish the Biophysics program at Stanford as well as the Center for Theoretical Biology at SUNY Buffalo along with Robert Rosen and Ludwig von Bertalanffy. Pattee was inspired by John von Neumann’s observation” that replication in real existing cells requires both dynamical fabrication and non-dynamical constraints”(von Neumann,1966).

His idea of the “epistemic cut”, distinguishing the observable activities of the material world from a living system’s observations, and his general concept of ‘Semantic Closure”:

“the relation between two primitive constraints, the generalized measurement-type constraints that map complex patterns to simple actions and the generalized linguistic-type constraints that control the sequential construction of the measurement constraints. The relation is semantically closed by the necessity for the linguistic instructions to be read by a set of measuring devices to produce the specified actions or meaning.” (Pattee 1985)

Pattee saw living systems as inherently engaged in measuring processes. The message he puts forward:

“is that life and the evolution of complex systems is based on the semantic closure of semiotic and dynamic controls….. ..” he continues to state

"To understand life as we know it, especially the continuous evolution of stable complex forms, it has proven essential to distinguish two complementary types of control models. One type, a semiotic model exerting upward control from a local isolated memory, and the other type, a dynamic model exerting downward control from a global network of coherent, interactive components. The semiotic model explains how control can be inherited and provides a remarkably efficient search process for discovering adaptive and emergent structures. The dynamic model suggests how the many components constructed under semiotic control can be integrated in the course of development and coordinated into emergent functions”… Neither model has much explanatory value without the other… The origin of life requires the coupling of both self-organizing processes.” (Pattee, 2000).

William (Bill) T.Powers (1926-) is best known for his work in . His interest in the field probably began at the U.S. Navy’s electronic school where he serviced servo systems during WWII. After the war he completed an undergraduate degree in Physics, followed by graduate school in Psychology at Northwestern University. In the early 1950’s he worked as a medical physicist in followed by a number of years as Chief Systems Engineer in the Department of Astronomy at Northwestern University. In 1865 noted that we strive to maintain in life a state of equilibrium. It was Walter Cannon in 1932 that coined the term ‘homeostatis’ from the Greek word meaning to remain the same, but it was Arturo Rosenblueth and Norbert Wiener who established a clear link between animate behavior and that of feedback control systems. It was Powers who fully appreciated the implications of Wiener’s “Cybernetics Control Theory” to the field of behavior. Dismissing the paradigm that the environment controls our behavior, he brought forward new thinking to the psychological theory of animal and human behavior. Powers put forward that we vary our behavior to control perceived environmental consequences of those behaviors, and the control system actually originates within us. The common belief at the time (and continues today

14 amongst most life scientists) was that ‘behavior is caused by events outside an organism acting on a mechanism that merely responds to the events’. He notes the paradigm shift that occurred in the 1930’s: “There have been two paradigms in the behavioral sciences since 1600 AD. One was the idea that events impinging on organisms make them behave as they do. The other, which was invented in the 1930’s, is control theory. We are going to explore the second of these paradigms. Control theory explains how organisms control what happens to them. This means all organisms from the amoeba to Humankind. It explains why one organism can’t control another without physical violence. It explains why people deprived of any major part of their ability to control soon become dysfunctional, lose interest in life, pine away , and die. It explains why it is so hard for groups of people to work together even on something they all agree is important. It explains what a goal is, how goals relate to behavior, how behavior affects perceptions, how perceptions define the reality in which we live and move and have our being. Control theory is the first scientific theory that can handle all these phenomena within a single testable concept of how living systems work.” (Forsell 1991) He explains the effect of an environmental disturbance on a system: “When a disturbance occurs a control system acts automatically to oppose the incipient change in the controlled variable. But if opposition is not recognized (it’s not always obvious) the observer will inevitably be led to see the cause of the disturbance as a stimulus and the action opposing its effects as a response to the stimulus. Furthermore, this opposition results in stabilizing some aspect of the environment or organism-environment relationship. That stabilization conceals the role of the stabilized variable in behavior; the better the control, the lower will be the correlation between the controlled variable and the actions that stabilize it. The variable under control is the one that is actually being sensed, but the logic of control makes it seem that the disturbance is the sensory stimulus” (Powers, 1990) Thus control can now be defined as the process by which the system maintains the controlled variable(s) near a reference condition by varying the actions to oppose the effects the disturbances are having on the system ( by moving the controlled variable(s) away from the reference condition). His 1960 paper “A General Feedback Theory of Human Behavior “ (Powers,1960) , and in his book “ Behavior : The Control of Perception” (Powers,1973) he put forward his “Perceptual Control Theory” (PCT). PCT explains how systems control what happens to them, and seeks to give a logical and scientific explanation for the system’s actions in light of its objectives. It is “a theory of behavior, a model of how a human being must be internally organized to accomplish this process called controlling “.

Evolutionary Philosophy and Social Science Methodology

Donald T. Campbell (1917-1996) received his undergraduate and doctorate degree from Berkley in social psychology and served serving in the Naval Reserve during World War II. He was the founder of the field of evolutionary epistemology and social science methodology. Best known for his concepts of ‘blind variation’, ‘downward causation’ and ‘selective retention’ in which he emphasizes how initially blind trials could develop into an intelligent search, how higher level systems constrain their parts, and that knowledge initially can only be developed by trial-and-error. Dr. Campbell called the statistics-based approach he invented ‘quasi-experimentation’ to replicate the effects of the truly randomized scientific studies that are all but impossible in the world of human interactions. His interest was in the study of knowledge, how it is acquired, recognized, evaluated, refined and communicated. He had identified fundamental flaws in the way social scientists were approaching research and argued that many approaches were required to design reliable research projects. He wrote with Donald W. Fiske a frequently cited paper in the social sciences "Convergent and Discriminant Validation by the Multitrait-Multimethod Matrix." (Campbell,1959), which was then followed in 1979 with "'Quasi-Experimentation: Design and Analysis Issues for Field Settings."(Campbell,1979) . In honor of Dr Campbell a book has been written focusing on his four major areas of work: blind variation, selection, and retention; multilevel coevolution; process level analysis and modeling; and epistemology and methodology (Baum et al,1999).

Edgar Morin (1921- ) is a French philosopher and sociologist. He studied sociology, economics and philosophy and holds degrees in history, geography and in law. He is a member of the French National Committee for Scientific Research, the co-director of the centre of interdisciplinary studies (at the School of Higher Studies in Social Sciences from 1973 to 1989, and in 1987 was awarded the Charles Veillon prize. is one of 's leading contemporary philosophers and his large body of work is characterized by a concern for knowledge that is capable of understanding the complexity of reality, of observing the singular while placing it within the whole. For Morin, when a system finds itself saturated with problems it can no longer resolve, it has two possibilities: either general regression or a change of system. He has conducted research into contemporary sociology (Morin,1998), as well as sought to understand anthropo-social complexity by incorporating the biological dimension and the imaginary dimension (Morin, 1951,1956, 1973). He has set out a diagnostic analysis and an ethic for the fundamental problems of our age (Morin,1965,1981,1987,1993,1997a,2001)and has worked on a method that seeks to reform our way of thinking in his work on complex thought in "La Complexité

15 Humaine" (Morin, 1994). Morin goes on to say that it is not enough to value the links between experiences, disciplines, creativity and ideas. One has to develop methods, strategies and practices that will transform those links into real connections. His view on learning is best clarified in the following an interview with the French foreign ministry magazine "Label France" (Morin,1997b). “In the 17 th century, the philosopher Pascal already understood how everything is linked, realizing that "all things aid and are aided, cause and are caused" he even had an understanding of retroaction, which was admirable for his time, "and everything being linked by an invisible link that binds the parts most distant from one another, I hold it to be impossible to know the parts without knowing the whole just as it is impossible to know the whole without knowing the parts". That is the crux of the matter, the direction of learning in which education ought to be heading. But, unfortunately, we have followed the model of Descartes, his contemporary, who for his part advocated breaking down reality and problems into constituent parts. And yet, the whole produces qualities that are not extant in the individual parts. The whole is never just the sum of its parts but always something more. “

Natural and Ecological Modelling

Howard Thomas Odum (1924-2002) earned his undergraduate degree in zoology at the University of North Carolina in 1947 and his Ph.D. in zoology at Yale in 1950. He was interested in the emerging field of ecology at the systems level. In their first book, “Fundamentals of Ecology”(1953), the Odum brothers (Howard and Eugene) , adopted the term "". The Odums invented the subject of ecology and the large-scale study of . Before the Odum brothers, the ecology of a specific organism had been studied on a more limited scale and within individual sub-disciplines of biology, rather than as a discipline in itself. They put forward a new discipline that examined the relationships among various elements of an ecosystem. The discipline was as a result of the convergence of ecology and cybernetics during the 1940s and 1950s. It defined a new space where humankind could be understood as a species enmeshed within networks of ecological relations. Both Odum brothers worked on the first applications of in the early 1950s with their study of the coral reefs near Eniwetok Atoll in the south Pacific, the site of U.S. nuclear weapons testing in 1948 One of Howard Odum’s important contributions is the concept of "Emergy" - sometimes briefly defined as "energy memory." Odum looked at natural systems as having been formed by the use of various forms of energy in the past. Odum elaborated that "emergy” is a measure of energy used in the past and thus is different from a measure of energy now. The unit of emergy (past available energy use) is the emjoule to distinguish it from joules used for available energy remaining now." He developed a means for diagramming ecosystems as energy circuits, while his brother Eugene studied higher levels of organization that emerge in living systems over time.

René Thom (1923-2002), a French mathematician who was best known as the developer of catastrophe theory initially received a baccalaureate in philosophy in 1941. He became strongly influenced by the pure mathematician Henri Cartan. In 1946 he moved to Strasbourg to study under Cartan and in 1951 he earned a doctorate in mathematics. In 1951 he also travelled to the United States where he met Einstein and the mathematicians Hermann Weyl and Norman Steenrod. Returning to France in 1953 he taught at Grenoble University and then at Strasbourg University. This was followed by a move in 1964 to the Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifique at Bures-sur-Yvette, near Paris, and he then left the strictly mathematical world to tackle more general and philosophical notions such as the theory of catastrophe and wrote papers on linguistics, philosophy and theoretical biology. He described how gradually changing forces lead to ‘catastrophes’, or abrupt changes. Although Thom's expertise was in a mathematical field known as topology, which studies the shapes and symmetries of abstract multi-dimensional geometric objects, Thom argued that there is only a limited number of ways in which sudden and catastrophic events take place, and suggested a methodology by which these processes could be described with their own abstract mathematical forms. He developed Catastrophe theory as a by-product of the discipline of topology. His work involved the visualization or computer simulation of some very complex higher-dimensional shapes. His theory was first set out in a paper published in 1968 “Structural Stability and Morphogenesis", then elaborated in his book on structural stability (Thom, 1993), which was a mathematical treatise dealing with the seven ways in which things are likely to collapse suddenly. Catastrophe theory became an established area of mathematical research and had a notable impact on the development of new ideas, in particular . He won the Fields Medal (which is the mathematical equivalent of the Nobel Prize) in 1958 for his work on "cobordism" theory, a branch of pure mathematics.

Catastrophe theory can be described as a special branch of dynamical systems theory. It studies and classifies phenomena characterized by sudden shifts in behavior arising from small changes in circumstances. Rene Thom defined catastrophe as the loss of stability in a dynamic system. The emphasis of this theory is sorting dynamic variables into

16 slow and fast. It also recognizes that stability features of fast variables may change slowly due to the dynamics of slow variables.

Systems Thinking, Viability and Decision-Making

Peter Checkland (1930 - ) was educated at St John’s College Oxford, from where he graduated with in chemistry in 1954. Following a 15-year successful research career at ICI Fibres he joined he University of Lancaster’s department of systems engineering in 1969 as professor of systems. There was a set of ideas called “systems engineering” which aroused his interest as a way to think more holistically about managing the many different aspects of a project – people, money, technology, materials, markets. In 1969, Checkland became the leader of an action research program that led to the establishment of (SSM) as an alternative approach to tackling the ill-structured problems that managers face; an approach that also established the now well-recognized distinction between “hard” and “soft” systems thinking. Checkland views grouping problems into two areas: ill-defined and well-defined problems. Well-defined problems are also known as hard problems. Ill-defined problems are also known as soft problems. SSM considers the different views of people. It assumes that each individual will see the world differently (Checkland,1981).

The traditional SSM methodology was composed of seven stages. These stages make up a process, and this process may have to be repeated many times before a reasonable accommodation or agreement may be reached:

1. The problem situation unstructured 2. The problem situation structured 3. Root definitions of relevant systems 4. Conceptual models 5. Comparison of stage [2] and stage [4] 6. Identify feasible and desirable changes 7. Action to improve the problem situation

His method involves identifying the situational elements and parties involved when studying a system. Checkland put forward the need to identify the ‘root definition’ which is expressing the domain of the problem, by using CATWOE to describe the human activity and situation. The root definition defines what is agreed and what is still up for discussion while the elements that make up CATWOE look to identifying and describing the:

• Clients - Those who more or less directly benefit or suffer e.g. customers from the work activity of the • Actors - The players (individuals, groups, institutions and agencies), who perform the scenes, read and interpret the script, regulate, push and improvise and who undertake the • Transformations - The processes, movements, conversions that take place as the nature of the production and service transformations, the content and processes involved, the transformations that generate a product or a service, how they are achieved and how are they performing. • Weltanschauung - World-view. What is going on in the wider world that is influencing and shaping the "situation" and the need for the system to adapt to? • Owners - The controllers who are paid by or act on behalf of the owners. Who are they and what are their imperatives? How do they exercise their ownership power? Are their other stakeholders - who claim a stake and a right to be involved i.e. as legitimate quasi-owners? • Environment - The trends, events and demands of the political, legal, economic, social, demographic, technological, ethical, competitive, natural environments provide the context for the situation and specific problem arena. (Checkland,1981).

He has since also been awarded the prestigious Beale Medal by the Operational Research Society, in recognition of his sustained and significant contributions to the philosophy, theory and practice of operational research (OR). His work is published in four key books, of which “Systems Thinking, Systems Practice” (Checkland, 1981) is the most widely known of his books in the field of systems theory. In a recent book by and Sue Holwell ‘Information, Systems, and Information’(Checkland,1998) , he focuses on information systems, their creation and relation to IT, viewed within an organizational context. The core idea behind the work is that the conceptual models developed in SSM can be used to initiate

17 and structure discussions about information requirements analysis. To the two authors ‘information systems exist to serve, help or support people taking action in the real world'.

Herbert A. Simon (1916.-2001) was a a mathematical social scientist. He studied at the University of Chicago in 1933 and then at the University of California, Berkeley where from 1939 to 1942 he worked on operational research problems dealing with municipal administration, while at the same time working on a Phd dissertation in administrative decision-making at the University of Chicago. All the time gaining a a broad base of knowledge in economics, political science, symbolic logic, mathematics and statistics. Concentrating his efforts in the theory of human problem-solving and trying to simulate it with computer programs his central work began to focus on human cognition. In so doing he developed the concept of "decision-making" in organization and under uncertainty which was a different perspective from that of mainstream microeconomics at the time which was based on "rational man". He came up with a behavioral theory based on "bounded rationality". Agents, he claimed, face uncertainty about the future and costs in acquiring information in the present. These two factors, thus, limit the extent to which agents can make a fully rational decision. To Simon they have only "bounded rationality" and are forced to make decisions not by "maximization" but by "satisficing” (if they don't achieve their objective then try to change either their aspiration level or their decision). These "rules of thumb" are the utmost agents can achieve in the "bounded" and uncertain real world (Simon,1957,1991).

Simon’s paper on complexity titled ‘The Architecture of Complexity’ (Simon,1962) is the most referenced work in Hierarchy Theory, which he puts forward as a way of looking at "the complexity of a system without specifying the content of that complexity", and hierarchies evolve much more rapidly from elementary constituents than will non-hierarchic systems with the same number of elements. Simon's thesis is the concept which he called " near-decomposability" which is the degree to which the behavior of a system at any one level is free of` the interactions on a lower level and the degree which its interactions are irrelevant to the higher levels of the system. He saw nature as being organized in levels, and the pattern at each level being most clearly discerned by abstracting from the details of the levels below. Hierarchic structures give even the most simple systems the most viable structure to maintain their identity. Finally, in his "Sciences of the Artificial" (Simon,1969) he provides a basis for a "science of design" to complement the classical "sciences of the natural," in ways that are especially appropriate for disciplines like operations research and management science which are concerned with the design of rational systems that are truly implementable.

It was Stafford Beer ’s (1926-2002) forty year’s study and work on the Viable System Model (VSM) which was to further clarify the necessary components, functions and levels of hierarchy used by systems to maintain their identity and thus attain viability in turbulent environments. . Stafford Beer studied philosophy at London University and was initially heavily involved in operations research work for the British army during the Second World War and later on with the steel industry as a production controller and operations research manager. Stafford Beer is widely known as the ‘father of ’, a title given to him by Norbert Wiener the founding father of Cybernetics and to whom he had a special bond. His friendship extended to many of the early pioneers and theorists of the science such as Warren McCulloch, Ross Ashby, George Spencer-Brown, Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela. Clearly many of his conversations with these theorists shaped many of his ideas, most notably Ross Ashby’s ‘Law of Requisite Variety’ on the Viable System Model.

Management Cybernetics to Stafford Beer was the ‘science of effective organization’. Laying the scientific base to his theory in management and modeling (Beer,1959,1966) he further explored the requisite organizational structure giving viability to the system and its ability to respond to unanticipated environmental changes, and thus maintaining its structure and its identity. To do so he maintains that for a system to be viable five functions must be fulfilled:

1. System Five : Policy 2. System Four: Intelligence 3. System Three: Control 4. System Two: Coordination 5. System One: Implementation

The model involves regulatory capacity of the basic units, attenuation and amplification to dampen oscillations and coordinate activities (System Two) via information and communication. It validates information flowing between system one implementation activities and system three control activities (System Three Star). It deals with the long term and the outside environment (using System Four) and balances the interaction between the future and the present, the outside and the within

18 by System Five which carries out setting the overall policy function. Any deficiencies in these functions impair or endanger the viability of the system. The viability, cohesion and self-organization of any viable system depend upon these functions being recursively present at all levels of the system. A recursive structure comprises and is contained in autonomous units within autonomous units. That is, the model replicates itself within each primary activity and its sub-primary activities. These functions and their interrelationships are specified in a comprehensive model which he called the Viable System Model and which is outlined in depth in his books ‘Brain of the Firm’ and the ‘Heart of Enterprise’(Beer,1972,1979,1985). He applied the model to Chile in 1970 for the then newly elected President Salvador Allende. He worked with an eminent Chilean team led by Fernado Flores and Raul Espejo in the application of Management Cybernetics ideas and models to Government. Their work to control ,monitor, coordinate and plan all state activities in real time, much in the same way as the human manages itself was a revolutionary historical scientific attempt only stalled by the subsequent overthrow of the Chilean president Salvador Allende who by training was a medical physician and was fully aware of the complexity and management of the . Together their activities in the Chilean Project and subsequent work laid down the foundations for the science of Information Management and Management Cybernetics.

In the nineties, Stafford Beer worked on a new model for the design of communication processes and management processes in particular - the Team Syntegrity Model (Beer,1994). It is meant to be a concrete approach to the design of the VSM’s System 3 - System 4 relationship and a model for democratic management. Team Syntegrity builds on Buckminster Fullers proposition, that all systems are polyhydra. Beer proposes a formal model for an infoset to deal with complex challenges or problems, establishing a protocol based on the structure of the polyhedral, the icosahedrons. Team Syntegrity is a future-oriented approach to the design of democratic management in the sense of the heterarchical-participative type of organization. It is a holographic model for organizing processes of communication, in particular for the (self-) management of social systems. Based on the structure of polyhedra Beer believed it was especially suitable for realizing team-oriented structures as well as for supporting processes of planning, knowledge generation and innovation in turbulent environments.

Conclusion An attempt has been made to briefly outline the contributions of the pioneers of systems theory and cybernetics. Even though an enormous number of papers and books were covered dealing with the subject matter, much injustice has been done to their extraordinary historical contributions. The same can also be said to the use of the systemic approach. The extraordinary achievements and discoveries of these pioneers and theorists can only reinforce our spiritual appreciation and perception of the creator and his creation. References

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