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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
- Sprache: Englisch
Understand the full range of systems approaches and how to use them with this innovative overview.
Leaders and managers face increasing complexity and uncertainty because technical, organizational, socio-cultural, political, and environmental issues have become intensely interconnected. Systems thinking is recognized as the essential competence for managing complexity. As the demand for systems thinking grows, however, the fragmentation of the field into different methodologies has become a potential liability. Critical systems thinking (CST) shows how this diversity can be a strength rather than a weakness by revealing how different systems methodologies address various aspects of complexity and how they can be used in combination to resolve the messiest of wicked problems.
Critical Systems Thinking offers, in a single volume, an account of the value of systems thinking and CST in the modern world, an explanation of the pragmatic philosophy and expansion in mindset necessary to embrace CST, and detailed instructions on how to undertake critical systems practice (CSP) using the variety of systems approaches to navigate multi-dimensional complexity.
Readers will find:
- An accessible introduction to systems thinking and CST.
- A description and critique of the best-known systems methodologies.
- A guide to the mindset changes, the steps required, and the toolkit necessary to undertake successful CSP.
- Case studies and examples of CSP.
- A discussion of the nature of systemic leadership.
Critical Systems Thinking is ideal for leaders and managers in government, business, the public sector, the professions, and beyond who want to understand the potential of systems thinking and use it in their work. It is essential for systems researchers and practitioners who want a deeper understanding of the field.
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Table of Contents
Cover
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication Page
Dedication Page 1
Preface
Acronyms
Introduction
Reference
Part 1: The Emergence of Critical Systems Thinking
1 The Scientific Method
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Early Systems Thinking
1.3 The Ascendancy of the Scientific Method
1.4 Romanticism and Disquiet
1.5 The Challenge of Complexity
1.6 Science and the Scientific Method in the Spotlight
1.7 Conclusion
References
2 Systems Thinking
2.1 Introduction
2.2 The Challenge Confronting Systems Thinking
2.3 Complexity and Wicked Problems
2.4 The Search for General Systems Laws
2.5 The ‘Problem’ of Emergence
2.6 A Pluralistic Approach to the Use of Systems Thinking
2.7 The Development of Systems Methodologies
2.8 Conclusion
References
3 Critical Systems Thinking
3.1 Introduction
3.2 The Origins and Early Development of Critical Systems Thinking
3.3 Systemic Critique
3.4 Systemic Pluralism
3.5 Systemic Improvement
3.6 The Argument for Systemic Pragmatism
3.7 Conclusion
References
Part 2: Critical Systems Practice
4 Critical Systems Practice: An Overview
4.1 Introduction
4.2 The Origins of Critical Systems Practice
4.3 Contemporary Critical Systems Practice
4.4 Considerations on the Nature of Critical Systems Practice
4.5 Related Approaches
4.6 Conclusion
References
5 Critical Systems Practice 1 –
Explore
the Situation of Interest
5.1 Introduction
5.2
Explore
– Preliminaries
5.3
Explore
– Process
5.4
Explore
– Example: The Early Days of the COVID‐19 Pandemic in the United Kingdom
5.5
Explore
– Issues
5.6 Conclusion
References
6 Critical Systems Practice 2 –
Produce
an Intervention Strategy
6.1 Introduction
6.2
Produce
– Preliminaries
6.3
Produce
– Process
6.4
Produce
– Examples
6.5
Produce
– Issues
6.6 Conclusion
References
7 Critical Systems Practice 3 –
Intervene
Flexibly
7.1 Introduction
7.2
Intervene
– Preliminaries
7.3
Intervene
– Process
7.4
Intervene
– Examples
7.5
Intervene
– Issues
7.6 Conclusion
References
8 Critical Systems Practice 4 –
Check
on Progress
8.1 Introduction
8.2
Check
– Preliminaries
8.3
Check
– Process
8.4
Check
– Examples
8.5
Check
– Issues
8.6 Conclusion
References
Part 3: Towards a Systems Thinking World
9 Critical Systems Leadership:
9.1 Introduction
9.2 The Growing Interest in Systems Thinking
9.3 Overcoming the Barriers to Implementation
9.4 Critical Systems Leadership
9.5 Conclusion
References
Conclusion
References
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Tables
Chapter 2
Table 2.1 A summary of Boulding’s (1956) hierarchy of complexity.
List of Illustrations
Chapter 4
Figure 4.1 The four
EPIC
stages of Critical Systems Practice.
Chapter 5
Figure 5.1 The four
EPIC
stages of Critical Systems Practice.
Chapter 6
Figure 6.1 The four
EPIC
stages of Critical Systems Practice.
Figure 6.2 Example of a CLD. Regulation of traditional medicines creates cos...
Figure 6.3 Example of a Stock and Flow diagram. Employment planning did not ...
Figure 6.4 Beer’s VSM highlighting the managerial and operational elements o...
Figure 6.5 The iconic representation of Soft Systems Methodology’s learning ...
Figure 6.6 A Rich Picture used by the Winner group of charities.
Figure 6.7 A Purposeful Activity Model, together with its Root Definition, r...
Chapter 7
Figure 7.1 The four
EPIC
stages of Critical Systems Practice.
Figure 7.2 Hull University Business School modelled using the VSM.
Figure 7.3 A Rich Picture to help explore the strategic positioning of HUBS....
Chapter 8
Figure 8.1 The four
EPIC
stages of Critical Systems Practice.
Figure 8.2 The cycle of action research.
Guide
Cover Page
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication Page 01
Dedication Page 02
Preface
Acronyms
Begin Reading
Conclusion
Index
WILEY END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT
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Critical Systems Thinking
A Practitioner’s Guide
Michael C. Jackson
University of Hull, Hull, UK
Copyright © 2024 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
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Dedication
To my grandchildren –
Freddie, Henry, and Isaac.
In the hope that Critical Systems Thinking can help make the world a better place.
Hence people deny that Anaxagoras, Thales, and the wise of that sort are prudent … and they assert that such men know things that are extraordinary, wondrous, difficult, and daimonic – yet useless too, because they do not investigate the human goods. But prudence [phronesis] is concerned with the human things and with those about which it is possible to deliberate. For we assert this to be the work of the prudent person especially – deliberating well – and nobody deliberates about things that cannot be otherwise, or about so many things as are without some end, an end, moreover, that is a good attainable through action. He who is a good deliberator simply is skilled in aiming, in accord with calculation, at what is best for a human being in things attainable through action.
(Aristotle, c. 340 BCE, Nicomachean Ethics, book 6, translated by R.C. Bartlett and S.D. Collins, University of Chicago Press, 2011)
Preface
I concluded the preface to my previous book with the statement: ‘But it is definitely my last book’. I probably did the same in earlier books – I do not dare to look. Writing a book asks a lot of those close to you as you need to go ‘missing’ for an extended period. It is exhausting for the writer. There are other things you could be doing. So, what is the excuse for this new book?
I felt there was unfinished business. My previous book, Critical Systems Thinking and the Management of Complexity (Wiley, 2019), is a comprehensive overview of applied Systems Thinking (ST), demonstrating how Critical Systems Thinking (CST) could bring order to that diverse field and suggesting how best to use systems approaches in practice. I remain pleased with it, and it has been well received. The book is, however, 700 pages long and contains much (necessary for its purpose) historical and theoretical exposition. It sets a challenge to readers. Though it is one, I am assured, that is worth the effort. My only regret is that I did not manage to present a clear enough account of Critical Systems Practice (CSP) towards the end of that book. It is all there, and you cannot tie everything down, but that account could be better structured. This new book, Critical Systems Thinking: A Practitioner’s Guide, seeks to address both these points. It is more accessible, shorter and dwells on history and theory only if essential. The book is designed to provide the most intelligible and direct account of how best to use CST in practice. To my mind, it complements the earlier book nicely.
I felt some frustration. It continues to amaze me that, in a world beset by many complex problems, there is so little recognition of what ST has to offer. From the 1940s to the 1970s, ST led the development of exciting new ideas. This was the era of the formation of the Society for General Systems Research, the Macy conferences on cybernetics, and the Gaither lectures at Berkeley. Systems practice helped transform the postwar Japanese economy (the Deming Management Method); put a man on the moon (Systems Engineering); was involved in such ambitious social experiments as the Norwegian Industrial Democracy Project (Sociotechnical Systems Thinking) and supporting the Allende government in Chile (the Viable System Model); and was influential in the birth of the environmental movement (System Dynamics and ‘limits to growth’). Today, it is rarely taught in universities and while there has been a resurgence of interest in ST, this is not accompanied by a knowledge of its history, the lessons it can impart, or the breadth and diversity of the systems tradition. I have been working on this for 45 years. I have written numerous books and articles and used ST at work and in consultancy. I have done my apprenticeship and earned my stripes. I have tried to do justice to the approach, but it seems that one more attempt is necessary.
I felt that introducing two new ‘frameworks’ could help me express what CST was about more clearly. The first of these I owe to Zhichang Zhu, who led me on a journey from ‘paradigms to pragmatism’, which at times was difficult for me. I had heard people say what a revelation and liberation it was to abandon the ‘spectator theory of knowledge’, seeking accurate representations of an underlying ‘reality’, and embrace the philosophy of pragmatism, in which theories are seen as instruments to guide action. I now know that this is the case. ST has strong pragmatist roots. I believe that, in this book, I have explained it better by paying homage to and enhancing those roots.
The second ‘framework’ I owe to Cathy Hobbs, who insisted that I provide greater clarity on the phases of CSP and that a mnemonic would help. We came up with EPIC, and Cathy supplied the first version of the diagram I use to explain EPIC. It is difficult to capture how exactly systems practice should proceed because it needs to be innovative and flexible in response to the exigencies of the situation in which it is employed. The invention of the mnemonic prompted me to spell out what I thought could be achieved. EPIC is, of course, a label used with tongue firmly in cheek. It is meant to reinforce my insistence that CSP is an ‘ideal type’ of good systems practice. The concept of an ‘ideal type’ comes from the sociologist Max Weber. I adjust its meaning to make it relevant to practice and not just theory development. I see CSP as an abstract model of good systems practice, derived from research and experience. It cannot and is not supposed to be enacted in pure form in the real world. Its use will be different in every application. Nevertheless, it is essential to guide good systems practice, to reflect on what is occurring during an intervention and adjust as necessary, and to evaluate what has been achieved.
I felt a little unfulfilled. My previous books have been structured as accounts and reflections on the work of others, from which I sought to develop new ideas of my own. That is fine; you need to know a field thoroughly to make a useful contribution. Too much of what goes under the label ST, now that it is becoming popular again, shows little appreciation of what has gone before. It does not build on what has already been achieved or seek to learn from previous mistakes. At best, it ends up reinventing the wheel. That said, I remembered Russ Ackoff insisting that one day I should stop standing on the shoulders of giants and write a book where my own ideas controlled the narrative from beginning to end. In almost all cases, you should do what Russ advises, and I have attempted to do so. I hope he would approve.
I felt I might be abandoning some aspirations too early. In 1814, Wordsworth wrote about ‘The French Revolution as It Appeared to Enthusiasts at Its Commencement’: ‘Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven!’ I am a child of the 1960s and have always felt about that period in the same way. Revolution was in the air; minds were expanding; wars were opposed; imperialism was called out; global and class inequalities were challenged; movements for women’s, black and LGBT+ rights were underway; and environmental awareness grew. The music certainly seemed better. Of course, there were issues, but some things did change. Not enough, though. I was talking to John Mingers and suggested we had made some small contribution to management science. He pointed out how trivial that was compared to the ambitions we held in the 1960s. He was right, but what do you say? I could only respond: ‘Better carry on then’.
I felt that I should continue to ‘rage against the dying of the light’. This is hard to escape when you have had cancer for 12 years, another major liver operation in 2021, and you are on a monthly drug regime. I am, incidentally, very lucky. I can still enjoy beer and walking. Hull Kingston Rovers are getting closer to the success that us fans, and especially the owner, Neil Hudgell, deserve. Hull City are improving. Yorkshire County Cricket Club could do with some ST. My everyday life remains largely unaffected, thanks to the NHS, modern medicine, and a skilled surgeon, Professor Peter Lodge. I really should not go ‘gentle’.
In the acknowledgements in previous books, I have referred to many individuals, and I continue to owe them all a huge debt. Here I acknowledge, in addition, some organisations responsible for flying the flag for ST in the United Kingdom. The Open University Systems Group celebrated 50 years of teaching ST in 2021. It has been preeminent in spreading systems expertise through its teaching and the ‘systems thinking in practice’ (STiP) approach. Systems and Complexity in Organisation (SCiO) has gained government recognition as the professional body for systems thinkers. It was instrumental in launching the ‘Systems Thinking Practitioner Apprenticeship’, which has spread the teaching of ST to a wider range of universities and opened opportunities for in‐work systems training. Of course, I must mention the Centre for Systems Studies at the University of Hull, which celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2022. It pioneered CST and, I would claim, continues to make significant intellectual advancements in the field leading to improved forms of systems practice. Its previous directors deserve a mention: (me), Bob Flood, Gerald Midgley, Jennifer Wilby, Yasmin Merali and Amanda Gregory. Under its current sole director, Amanda Gregory, it is undergoing a significant renaissance. I also wish to acknowledge three ‘communities’ that I have been involved with recently, which have helped me learn more about ST. I have a lecture series in my name at the University of Hull, kindly sponsored by Dr. Andrew and Mrs. Valerie Chen. I must prepare by reading the works of the guest lecturers so I can ask sensible questions. I have, as is obvious in this book, learned much from Andrea Wulf, Fritjof Capra, Debra Hammond, Peter Senge, Carlo Rovelli, Dave Snowden and Charles Foster. I worked with a community of systems thinkers to help prepare a report for the Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research. This project has not yet come to fruition, but I am conscious that our many exchanges have infiltrated my thinking and this book. I therefore thank Cathy Hobbs, Patrick Hoverstadt, Martin Reynolds, Luis Sambo, Anne Stephens and Bob Williams. The third ‘community’ consists of Paul Barnett and the facilitators, guest presenters and participants on the first two cohorts of the ‘Critical Systems Thinking and Management of Complexity’ executive programme that I delivered with the Enlightened Enterprise Academy. Our discussions helped me immensely in refining my thinking for the book. You are all entitled to a free copy.
Sincere thanks to Laura Kenny for some insightful, as well as careful, copyediting. And Brett Kurzman, Becky Cowan and Vishal Paduchuru, as well as Hafiza Tasneem, the Wiley team who believed in the book and brought it to fruition.
Finally, to my dog Mollie, faithful friend of nearly 19 years, who died in 2023. She lived long enough to look at her own memorial stone, inserted into a dry‐stone wall on the way to Beverley Westwood, where we walked most days. To my children, Christopher and Richard, who live happy and (almost) independent lives with their partners Tess and Dannie, and who have given Pauline and me, to date, three wonderful grandchildren. And, of course, to my fantastic wife, Pauline. Without her nothing that I do that is good would be possible. She has suffered most from me going ‘missing’ to write this book.
Michael C. Jackson
Beverley and Runswick Bay, January 2024
Acronyms
These acronyms are frequently used in the text and are not always spelled out:
CSH
Critical Systems Heuristics
CSL
Critical Systems Leadership
CSP
Critical Systems Practice
CST
Critical Systems Thinking
EPIC
Explore, Produce, Intervene, Check
GEMs
Gender equality, Environments and Marginalized voices Framework
IP
Interactive Planning
SAST
Strategic Assumption Surfacing and Testing
SD
System Dynamics
SE
Systems Engineering
SOSM
System of Systems Methodologies
SSM
Soft Systems Methodology
ST
Systems Thinking
STS
Sociotechnical Systems Thinking
VM
The Vanguard Method
VSM
The Viable System Model
All other acronyms are clearly spelled out close to where they occur.
Introduction
The source of our power lies in the extraordinary technological capital we have succeeded in accumulating and in propagating, and the all‐pervasive analytic or positivistic methodologies which by shaping our minds as well as our sensibilities, have enabled us to do what we have done. Yet our achievement has, in some unforeseen (perhaps unforeseeable) manner, failed to satisfy those other requirements that would have permitted us to evolve in ways that, for want of a better word, we shall henceforth call ‘balanced’.
(Özbekan, 1970)
This book seeks to help people take decisions to improve situations that are of concern to them. It does not seek to provide solutions but to provide guidance on taking better decisions, particularly in the face of complexity and uncertainty. In philosophy, the study of human action and conduct is called praxeology. This is often understood in the narrow sense of calculating the optimal means of achieving known ends. Humans have become very good at this and, as Özbekan said, have ‘accumulated and propagated’ ‘extraordinary technological capital’ in support. The danger, recognised by him, is that the ‘analytic or positivistic methodologies’ that have enabled us to develop these powerful technologies have shaped our thinking to the extent that we are increasingly their servants rather than their masters. A way of trying to protect against this is to broaden the study of human conduct to embrace Aristotle’s notion of prudence (phronesis), which certainly involves some calculation but in relation to the broader purpose of investigating and pursuing ‘the human goods’ i.e., what is best for humankind. This requires, in Aristotle’s terms, ‘good deliberation’. Critical Systems Practice (CSP) is about how to carry out ‘good deliberation’, giving due attention to human requirements other than those that can be met by employing linear, mechanistic, means‐end logic. Perhaps we can then evolve in a more ‘balanced’ way.
In developing this argument, I needed some ‘catch‐all’ concepts. I use Systems Thinking (ST) to refer to all the various strands of thought and practice that make use of systems philosophies, theories, perspectives, methodologies, models, methods, concepts and ideas to understand and intervene in the world. This tradition of thought embraces, for me, Cybernetics and Complexity Theory as well as, for example, General Systems Theory, Systems Engineering, System Dynamics and Soft Systems Methodology. I am aware of the differences; indeed, my point is that they are all good at different things. But it helps to have a generic term. This goes for Systems Approaches too. To avoid endless lists, I use this concept to refer to all the various systems philosophies, theories, methodologies, etc., employed by those in the broad ST tradition.
The book has three parts. The first traces the emergence of Critical Systems Thinking (CST) and has three chapters. Chapter 1 outlines the achievements and limitations of the scientific method, suggesting that increasing awareness of these limitations and their consequences for humanity and the environment points to the need for ST as a complementary approach, especially in the realm of human affairs. Chapter 2 sets out the challenges this poses to ST and two ways in which it has tried to meet them. The first of these, the pursuit of general systems laws, flounders, because higher levels of complexity give rise to ‘emergent properties’ which cannot be explained with theories appropriate to lower levels of complexity. ST has been more successful in following a second route – developing a range of systems methodologies that engage with different aspects of complexity in different ways. However, this has led to fragmentation. Chapter 3 shows how CST has sought to restore order to a field in which different systems approaches came to be seen as competing. It does so by pointing to the strengths and weaknesses of the different approaches (systemic critique) and suggesting that they could be used in combination (systemic pluralism) to achieve wide‐ranging systemic improvement. Systemic pragmatism provides the rationale and justification for CST.
Part 2 looks at how CST can be translated into practical action through the EPIC stages (Explore, Produce, Intervene, Check) of CSP. Chapter 4 provides an introductory overview, explains the role of EPIC as an ‘ideal type’ of systems practice and links CSP to some related approaches. Chapter 5 details the multiperspectival Explore phase and how it employs five insightful ‘systemic perspectives’ – mechanical, interrelationships, organismic, purposeful and societal/environmental – to surface the most important issues that need attending to in a situation of interest. Justification is provided for the choice of these five perspectives. Chapter 6 considers how best to Produce an intervention strategy to manage those issues. This rests upon an understanding of what different systems methodologies do well. Five types of systems methodology are identified: engineering, system dynamics, living, soft and emancipatory. Each type is related to one of the ‘systemic perspectives’ and prioritises the concerns it highlights. Example methodologies are described, and their mode of operation is clarified using case studies. Chapter 7 discusses Intervene, the third stage of CSP, considering how best to conduct a flexible multimethodological intervention in accordance with agreement on which systems methodologies, models and methods are best suited to addressing the issues of concern. Chapter 8 looks at Check. EPIC should be seen as an iterative process which continually identifies and manages new issues as they come to the fore. Nevertheless, attention must be given to evaluating progress both during an intervention and as it comes to an end. Check considers the best way of doing this from a CSP perspective.
Part 3 contains Chapter 9. This explains Critical Systems Leadership as an approach that can best take advantage of the current upsurge in interest in ST and overcome the barriers to successful implementation deriving from the way ST is presented and perceived and from various cultural and societal constraints.
The book is a ‘practitioner’s guide’, and the busy reader can be excused for going straight to Parts 2 and 3, which explain CSP and how to succeed in applying it, but that would be a pity. CST has the broad purpose of enhancing ‘good deliberation’ in ways that will allow us to evolve in a more ‘balanced way’ and improve the world in which we live. CSP needs to be understood as a means of realising that ambition.
The structure of the book is summarised in the Table below. The Structure of the Book.
Introduction
Part 1
: The Emergence of Critical Systems Thinking
Chapter 1
: The Scientific Method
Chapter 2
: Systems Thinking
Chapter 3
: Critical Systems Thinking
Part 2
: Critical Systems Practice
Chapter 4
: Critical Systems Practice: An Overview
Chapter 5
: Critical Systems Practice 1 – Explore the Situation of Interest
Chapter 6
: Critical Systems Practice 2 – Produce an Intervention Strategy
Chapter 7
: Critical Systems Practice 3 – Intervene Flexibly
Chapter 8
: Critical Systems Practice 4 – Check on Progress
Part 3
: Towards a Systems Thinking World
Chapter 9
: Critical Systems Leadership: Overcoming the Implementation Barriers
Conclusion
Reference
Özbekan, H. (1970).
The Predicament of Mankind, a Quest for Structured Responses to Growing World‐Wide Complexities and Uncertainties: A Proposal to the Club of Rome
. University of Pennsylvania.
Part 1The Emergence of Critical Systems Thinking
The most striking indication of the pathology of our species is the contrast between its unique technological achievements and its equally unique incompetence in the conduct of its social affairs.
(Koestler, A., 1979, Janus: A Summing Up. Pan Books)
1The Scientific Method
Inquire of ancient Wisdom; go, demand
Of mighty Nature, if 'twas ever meant
That we should pry far off yet be unraised;
That we should pore, and dwindle as we pore,
Viewing all objects unremittingly
In disconnection dead and spiritless;
And still dividing, and dividing still,
Break down all grandeur …
(Wordsworth, 1814)
1.1 Introduction
This chapter outlines the achievements and limitations of the scientific method, beginning with a brief discussion of early Systems Thinking (ST) and how it was pushed to the margins of reputable thought by the success of the Scientific Revolution. The Scientific Revolution began in the sixteenth century with Copernicus’s heliocentric account of the cosmos and was consolidated in the early seventeenth century with the establishment of the scientific method based upon mechanism and reductionism. Newton’s Principia, published in 1687, marked its apotheosis. This was a revolution that encompassed remarkable developments in mathematics, physics, astronomy, chemistry and biology. It inspired the agricultural and industrial revolutions of the eighteenth century which transformed the world in which we live. The chapter goes on to discuss some of the limitations of the mode of thought underpinning the Scientific Revolution. Recognition of these limitations, and their consequences for humanity and the environment on which we depend, has led to a positive reassessment of the value of ST as a complementary approach to the traditional scientific method.
1.2 Early Systems Thinking
ST has existed for millennia and emerged amongst peoples in all continents.
Indigenous communities, living in close interrelationship with the land and dependent on knowledge sharing for community well‐being, produced the first ST. Yunkaporta provided an Aboriginal perspective:
There are no isolated variables – every element must be considered in relation to the other elements and the context. Areas of knowledge are integrated, not separated. The relationship between the knower and other knowers, places and senior knowledge‐keepers is paramount. It facilitates shared memory and sustainable knowledge systems. An observer does not try to be objective, but is integrated within a sentient system that is observing itself.
(Yunkaporta, 2019, pp. 169–170)
Many Eastern philosophies evince a systems orientation. The Daoist I Ching, with its emphasis on dynamic changes of relationship between interconnected variables, is frequently cited as the oldest systems book. The Greeks introduced systems ideas into the Western tradition of thought. The pre‐Socratic philosopher Heraclitus, with his theory of the unity of opposites, is often acknowledged as an influence by later systems thinkers. Aristotle was the first to articulate the systems mantra that ‘the whole is more than the sum of its parts’. He went on to reason that the parts only obtain their meaning in terms of the purpose of the whole. For example, the parts of the body make sense because of the way they function to support the existence of the whole organism. Plato anticipated cybernetics, an important strand in contemporary ST, when he drew an analogy between the ‘steersman’ (kybernetes) of a vessel and of the ship of state.
Systems ideas continued to be prominent in later Western thought, for example, in the works of Kant and Hegel and the philosophical traditions of phenomenology and pragmatism. In the twentieth century, however, the influence of the Vienna Circle turned philosophy into a form of logical analysis designed to clear away ambiguity and confusion so that science could make better observations and decide what was and was not the truth. Language, Truth and Logic (1936), A.J. Ayer’s manifesto of logical positivism, declared that discussions on metaphysical questions – about the nature of reality, existence, consciousness, for example – were nonsensical because they did not lead to hypotheses that were subject to empirical verification. In this tradition, arguments about ethical issues equated to nothing more than shouts of approval or disapproval. At Oxford University, according to Cumhaill and Wiseman (2023), it took four women, inspired by the later work of Wittgenstein, to bring philosophy back to life. Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgley and Iris Murdoch were ‘metaphysical animals’ who saw philosophy as relevant to the whole of human life, not just to humans as calculating machines. Philosophy had to accept humans as part of the natural world, help them navigate their lives together in a particular historical period, suggest alternative ways of going on and re‐engage with the language of morality.
It is important to consider why, given its provenance, ST went out of favour and has had so little influence and impact on the development of the modern world.
1.3 The Ascendancy of the Scientific Method
The human mind can engage with the world in a multiplicity of ways. Charles Foster’s (2021) exploration of 40,000 years of human consciousness demonstrated this by examining what has been lost as the Upper Palaeolithic period transitioned into the Neolithic and Enlightenment worlds. Neolithic people began the ‘divorce proceedings’ between humans and nature by learning ‘to draw lines’. They started to see themselves as distinct from the natural world and to try to control it. But in seeking to tame nature, they also enslaved themselves. As Foster put it: ‘Thoughts as well as sheep were corralled’. People had to stay in settlements throughout the year to respond to the constant demands imposed by husbandry. With larger settlements came politics and hierarchy, and the rich Palaeolithic culture was reduced to the ‘priest‐curated stories of Stonehenge’. In Foster’s account, it was Enlightenment thought that completed the process of estranging us from nature and our humanity by ridding the world of enchantment, conceiving of it as a machine and humans as economic units.
The Enlightenment is closely associated with the Scientific Revolution, which led to significant advances in knowledge in many fields. The success of the Scientific Revolution depended on the efforts of Francis Bacon and Galileo who, in the early years of the seventeenth century, established a well‐defined scientific method. First, a phenomenon of interest is identified and studied. Second, a hypothesis is constructed suggesting what causes this phenomenon to occur. Third, predictions are formulated about how the elements involved will behave in the future. Fourth, carefully devised experiments are conducted to test these predictions, and the results of these are measured. The experiments must be clearly described so that they can be repeated by other scientists to check if they get the same outcomes. Finally, the results are analysed, and conclusions are drawn about the veracity of the hypothesis. On this basis, it seemed, the progress of science could be guaranteed.
The philosopher Descartes provided the justification for the notions of mechanism and reductionism upon which the scientific method is based. This relies on a mind–matter dualism whereby an immaterial mind can use rational thought, as exemplified in logic and mathematics, to reach conclusions about the workings of an independent mechanistic universe in which wholes are no more than the sum of their parts. Writing in 1637, Descartes reasoned that, if he wanted to understand the world and the problems it posed, he had
… to divide each of the difficulties that I was examining into as many parts as might be possible and necessary in order best to solve it [and] beginning with the simplest objects and easiest to know … to climb gradually … as far as the knowledge of the most complex.
(Descartes, 1637/1968, pp. 40–41)
Logic is used to build back up from the properties of the parts to an understanding of the whole. In this way, humans can achieve certainty about the nature of reality.
In 1687, in the Principia, Newton provided mechanism with its affirmation, setting out his laws of motion and theory of universal gravitation, and uniting terrestrial and celestial mechanics. The universe, set in motion and sustained by God, operated like clockwork. It followed entirely predictable rules that could be fully comprehended by humans. In the eighteenth century, scientists refined and extended Newtonian mechanics and, in 1814, the mathematician Laplace asserted that Newton’s laws could in principle be used to predict everything for all time if the current position and velocity of all particles in the universe were known (Mitchell, 2009). In the nineteenth century, the problem of extending Newton’s laws of motion to systems involving multiple elements was overcome with developments in statistics and probability theory. In systems of disorganised complexity, because the average behaviour of elements corresponds closely to actual behaviour, it is unnecessary to predict what each element is doing. It became possible to apply Newtonian mechanics to thermal phenomena whether exhibited by solids, liquids or gases. This gave rise to thermodynamics and its fundamental laws of conservation and dissipation of energy. The second of these demonstrates that all isolated systems move from order to disorder as useful energy is lost in the form of friction or heat. Entropy, as a measure of disorder, gradually increases. The universe runs down as useful energy is dissipated.
By the close of the nineteenth century,
… scientists had developed two different mathematical tools to model natural phenomena – exact, deterministic equations of motion for simple systems; and the equations of thermodynamics, based on statistical analysis of average quantities, for complex systems.
(Capra and Luisi, 2014, p. 104)
Physicists could be forgiven for a degree of hubris in believing that the scientific method, enabled by these tools, could be extended to other fields. It surely would not be long before chemical, biological and even social phenomena would succumb to mechanistic explanations and be seen as nothing but complicated expressions of the laws of physics. Michelson proclaimed, in 1894, that
… it seems probable that most of the grand underlying principles have been firmly established and that further advances are to be sought chiefly in the rigorous application of these principles to all phenomena which come under our notice.
(quoted in Mitchell, 2009, pp. ix–x)
More pithily, Lord Rutherford, a fellow physicist, is reputed to have declared that: ‘All science is either physics or stamp collecting’.
The scientific method, underpinning the advances made in the sciences, enabled massive improvements in agricultural yields and industrial productivity. Agricultural societies were rapidly transformed into manufacturing economies through the invention of new machines, methods and processes, as well as through the more efficient harnessing of energy resources. Urbanisation, improvements in the prevention and treatment of infectious diseases, and declining childhood mortality led to population growth and longer life expectancy. Increased industrial productivity made consumer goods plentiful and affordable. The standard of living of the general population gradually increased. A greater range of jobs became available, educational opportunities increased and suffrage was widened. Transportation improved as new roads, canals and railways were built. Shipping lines were opened, increasing international trade. New methods of communication were invented, and the world became a smaller place. It was reasonable to assume that progress would continue. Improvements in science and technology seemed to be leading the way inexorably to richer societies which provided safer, more fulfilling lives for their citizens.
ST did not seem to be necessary. So, what is wrong with the traditional scientific method? In exploring this, we need to consider the opposition it aroused among the ‘Romantics’, its lack of success in fields such as the life and social sciences and debates about its appropriateness even in the physical sciences.
1.4 Romanticism and Disquiet
The success of the Scientific Revolution ensured that mechanism and reductionism came to dominate Enlightenment thinking. This provoked outrage and opposition from those philosophers, writers and poets who marched together under the banner of ‘romanticism’. The Romantics questioned science’s reliance on reason alone which, they felt, separated life from art, humankind from nature and individuals from society. The philosopher Immanuel Kant was an important influence. He believed that Newtonian physics could provide universal truths, but this was because it restricted itself to elucidating what the human mind was capable of discerning through the senses. What existed beyond the scope of the senses was beyond science’s ken, and Kant provided a warning to those who seek to extend its scope into the biological and human domains. He saw that it was impossible to provide a mechanical account of the vitality, growth and diversity found in nature: ‘Are we in a position to say: Give me matter and I will show you how a caterpillar can be created?’ (Kant, quoted in Mensch, 2013). An organismic approach, going beyond the realm of ‘blind efficient causes’, seemed essential in the life sciences. When it came to the study of human behaviour, Kant faced a difficulty even more severe than he encountered with nature. According to science, humans are subject to causal determinism, but this undermines the notion of free will, on which the whole of morality depends. To rescue morality, alongside belief in God and immortality, Kant placed human freedom in the realm of the ‘noumena’ – things capable of being inferred but beyond the reach of scientific knowledge:
We have in the world beings of but one kind whose causality is teleological, or directed to ends, and which at the same time are beings of such character that the law according to which they have to determine ends for themselves is represented by themselves as unconditional and not dependent on anything in nature, but as necessary in itself. The being of this kind is man, but man regarded as noumenon.
(Kant, quoted in Kemp, 1968, pp. 120–121)
Wulf (2022) traced the liberating influence of Kant’s thought on the ‘magnificent rebels’ of the ‘Jena Set’ of romantic thinkers. To them, imagination rather than reason was the faculty of mind most in need of cultivation. Imagination brought the external world into being. Focussing too much on reason impoverished reality, stripping it of poetry, spirituality and feeling. The polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was the most influential figure in the Jena Set. It has been argued that he developed a ‘way of science’ completely at odds with what became the mainstream:
… there is the possibility that there could be a different science of nature, not contradictory but complementary to mainstream science. Both can be true, not because truth is relative, but because they reveal nature in different ways. Thus, whereas mainstream science enables us to discover the causal order in nature, Goethe’s way of science enables us to discover the wholeness.
(Bortoft, 1996, p. xi)
In Bortoft’s view, mainstream science is a ‘science of quantity’, concerned only with those aspects of phenomena that can be quantified. The scientist seeks to exclude subjective experience. Thus, Newton’s physics of light and colour is perfectly intelligible to someone who is colour‐blind. Goethe offers an alternative ‘science of quality’; his approach pays close attention to how the phenomena under investigation are experienced, addressing those things that cannot easily be measured. While mainstream science fragments the world, Goethe, coming to the study of colour through his interest in art, was interested in what gives rise to colours and how they relate to each other and our emotions. In his later work, as a ‘phenomenologist of nature’, he argued that to appreciate reality more comprehensively, to make it visible and understand its meaning, requires a consciousness that recognises the ‘authentic wholeness’ expressed in the reciprocal relationship of parts and wholes. This is difficult to obtain, and the eponymous hero of Goethe’s tragic play Faust sells his soul to the devil in exchange for a hoped‐for moment of transcendence on earth in which he can understand himself, nature and the universe as a harmonious, interconnected whole.
There is no one ‘theory’ of romanticism, but most commentators agree it possesses two common themes – the promotion of the power of the mind and an organismic worldview (Peckham, 1951). Fichte, Schelling and Novalis, important figures in the Jena Set, illustrated these themes. Fichte’s ‘ich‐philosophy’ put the self, as a free being, centre stage. Schelling saw the world as an interconnected whole within which humans and nature were inseparable. Novalis railed against the mechanistic worldview, which was drowning out the ‘eternally creative music of the universe’ and replacing it with ‘the monotonous clatter of a gigantic millwheel’. In his view, a poet can gain a better understanding of the world than a scientist, and science needed to be poeticised.
Romanticism spread from Germany and became a strong current of thought in England, the United States and elsewhere. In England, there was recognition of the dangers posed by mechanistic thinking, especially to an understanding of humanity’s ‘oneness with nature’. Wordsworth saw such thinking as diminishing human potential and our enjoyment of nature:
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
(Wordsworth, 1807, lines 1–4)
In the quotation heading this chapter, he identifies reductionism as the main culprit. As did Coleridge, who borrowed his concept of ‘organic form’ from the Jena Set. Keats declared, in harmony with Goethe, that Newton ‘had destroyed all the Poetry of the rainbow, by reducing it to a prism’ (quoted in Wulf, 2022). Blake, in his poem London (1794), saw the ‘mind‐forg’d manacles’ of mechanism as giving rise to many of the problems associated with the industrial revolution. In Jerusalem (1808), he mourned that ‘dark satanic mills’ were plaguing England’s ‘green and pleasant land’. In the United States, Emerson, Thoreau and Whitman championed the romantic project, emphasising nature, transcendentalism and the self. A modern American songwriter who declared, with Whitman, that ‘I contain multitudes’ echoed the romantic frame of mind when he wrote:
Yet one place where additional learning does not disentangle the mystery of the subject is music. As a matter of fact, the argument can be made that the more you study music, the less you understand it. Take two people – one studies contrapuntal music theory, the other cries when they hear a sad song. Which of the two really understands music better?
(Dylan, 2022, p. 274)
1.5 The Challenge of Complexity
As Kant anticipated, traditional science, successful in astronomy, physics and chemistry, encountered difficulties when it sought to extend its scope to higher levels of complexity as found, for example, in the fields of biology and sociology. At these levels, mechanism and reductionism falter, raising questions about the universality of the scientific method. Complexity makes it difficult to place boundaries around a study and to isolate the key variables impacting what happens. Experiments are difficult to repeat because the phenomena under investigation are constantly changing and cannot be brought into the laboratory. Ethical issues become significant. At the human level, the existence of free will makes prediction difficult if not impossible. Intentions drive behaviour. In general, analysis of the parts alone cannot explain emergent properties, such as life and self‐consciousness, which arise from the way the parts are organised. Aristotle’s insight that a whole is more than the sum of its parts becomes pertinent. The domain of application of the scientific method is smaller than many thought, as will be apparent from a brief review of the fields of biology, ecology, psychology and sociology.
In biology, there are emergent properties at the level of the organism, such as life itself, viability, adaptation, growth and development, reproduction and regulation. These need to be explained, but that seems impossible in terms of physics and chemistry. Goethe, much influenced by Kant, argued that organisms are driven by ‘vital forces’ that provide them with their general form and properties as wholes. They are then further shaped by their environments (see Wulf, 2015). A less mystical account became possible with the birth of ‘organismic biology’ in the first half of the twentieth century. As Capra wrote:
Vitalists assert that some nonphysical entity, force, or field, must be added to the laws of physics and chemistry to understand life. Organismic biologists maintain that the additional ingredient is the understanding of ‘organization’, or ‘organizing relations’.
(Capra, 1996, p. 25)
The best‐known organismic biologist, Ludwig von Bertalanffy, argued that the failure of physics in explaining biological systems arises because it only considers systems which are ‘closed’ to their environments. Closed systems obey the second law of thermodynamics, which presents the universe as a machine that is gradually running down. Von Bertalanffy (1950) asserted that organisms are, by contrast, ‘open systems’. They can temporarily defeat the second law of thermodynamics by living off their environments. They import matter and energy, which enables them to exist in a dynamic state, retaining their basic form while increasing their complexity through differentiation and integration. The history of biological science, since von Bertalanffy’s time, can be seen as a series of pendulum swings between organismic and reductionist positions, with both seemingly having much to offer.
The most important figure in the early development of ecology, according to Wulf (2015), was Alexander von Humboldt, who was a friend of Goethe and was immersed in the philosophy of Kant. Under the influence of the Jena Set, he was able to
… [revolutionize] the way we see the natural world. He found connections everywhere. Nothing, not even the tiniest organism, was looked at on its own. ‘In this great chain of causes and effects’, Humboldt said ‘no single fact can be considered in isolation’. With this insight, he invented the web of life, the concept of nature as we know it today.
(Wulf, 2015, p. 5)
Even more remarkable for the time, von Humboldt recognised the connection between human activity – such as deforestation, ruthless irrigation and the ‘great masses of steam and gas’ – and the state of the natural environment. Based on his thinking, ecology sought from its beginnings to grasp interconnectivity and emergence. It was born by taking a systems approach. Twentieth‐century ecology has continued in this vein with the formulation of the concept of an ‘ecosystem’. The Gaia hypothesis, which postulates that the Earth itself is a living system, has also gained currency.
The Gestalt psychologists, writing in the early twentieth century, challenged the mechanistic, stimulus‐response approach that dominated their field. They emphasised the importance of mind in bringing order to the chaotic reality with which it is confronted. The German word gestalt, meaning shape or form, refers to the patterns employed by the mind to make sense of what is perceived. For example, we see patterns of dots before the individual dots themselves. In Koffka’s words, it is apparent that ‘the whole is something else than the sum of its parts’ (quoted in Ramage and Shipp 2009, p. 260).
Auguste Comte, writing in the early nineteenth century, called for a new science of society which he initially called ‘social physics’. The scientific method was to be used to seek out general laws governing behaviour in the social world. When that failed to bring the results expected, Spencer and Durkheim took sociology in an ‘organismic’ direction towards what became the dominant theory: ‘structural‐functionalism’.
Alternative types of sociology were, however, waiting in the wings and came to the fore in the 1960s and 1970s. ‘Interpretive social theory’ questions the society‐makes‐person bias of structural‐functionalism. It starts from the study of individual perception and action convinced, by Dilthey’s ‘hermeneutics’ and Schutz’s ‘phenomenological’ approach, of the importance of subjective meaning. The ‘sociology of radical change’ challenges the conservative bias of structural‐functionalism, portraying society as characterised by inequalities that give rise to conflict between different groups which can, in turn, lead to change. It builds on the work of Marx and the Frankfurt School. Marx was concerned, in his early work, with the alienation of ‘men’ in capitalist society. Later, he argued that the contradictions that exist within capitalism will produce a revolution, led by the exploited working class, and a communist society. The most influential thinker still working in the Frankfurt School tradition is Jurgen Habermas. Whereas Marx based his early critique of capitalist society on alienated labour, Habermas (1979
