As humans and persecuted thinkers began to notice some inconsistencies between belief and observations of the physical world, cause and effect relationships were noticed, and true science began to emerge.
Naturally the birth, or re-birth of reason in human thought lead to faster progress in many areas of inquisition and problem-solving. The problem was that reason was applied for the most part in a reductionist manner; as our technology became more refined, we were able to look at smaller and smaller parts of things. In physics, we became aware of atoms and molecules, while biology centered on the cell and its components. Science believed that by understanding smaller and smaller parts, we would unlock a deeper understanding of our Universe. Reductionism was better than mere belief, but in the end, it led to having lots of names for smaller and smaller parts, but understanding didn't seem to be growing as it should.
In the 1930s, scientists, (biologists, primarily) began to notice similar trends of progress and operation in different physical processes. Surely, they thought, there must be some way to quantify what they were noticing.
In the end, what they noticed was that relationships between components was as important, if not vastly more important that identifying parts. They noticed the repeating, cyclical nature of nearly everything, which led to a different way of looking at how natural events unfold in real time.
In a very simplified summary, that way of analyzing the world around us is known as systems thinking, often referred to by a more intimidating name, systemic analysis.
One way to understand systems thinking is to consider your household thermostat. It monitors the air temperature (input). When the temperature dips, the input triggers an activity (process). That process is the triggering of increased heat, which raises the air temperature (output). When the air reaches the desired temperature, that information joins the input process, but is known as feedback. The goal of the systemic operation is relatively consistent, or stable maintenance of temperature.
As are nearly all stable systems, your thermostat is a negative feedback system. We commonly think of negative feedback as criticism - but that has limited application in systems thinking as a whole. By example, your thermostat stops heat production when the heat rises to the desired point. Rising heat triggers a shutoff of heat production.
If rising heat triggered even more heat production, that would be a positive feedback system. It is negative feedback that keeps a system stable.
When you need food, your system triggers a feeling of hunger. As you eat, your hunger diminishes and finally leaves completely, so you stop eating. Again, that is negative feedback - the process of consuming food triggers you to stop eating (hopefully) and your body remains stable.
Cancer might be an example of a positive feedback system that threatens the larger system that is the human body. Cancer is the unrestricted reproduction of cells; negative feedback mechanisms are not working. The growth of of those cells consumes resources and destablizes the big system of which it is a part. If not controlled, the system strays so far out of stability, or equilibrium, that it ceases to function, or dies.
Most organizations, life-forms, and natural occurrences are systemic in nature, and most of them are complex systems. That means they have multiple feedback relationships between many components, and such systems are able to absorb changes, or solve problems quite well. This can be viewed as problem-solving, which can also be thought of as a form of cognition.
We consider problem-solving to be a product of our own interior monologue, or thought. But complex systems can absorb changes in their conditions or input, and maintain systemic stability.
You are not thinking or consciously commanding white blood cells to rush to a papercut, but they do so in response to the input of information. The Earth itself is a complex system that problem-solves; rising temperatures will allow the survival of plants that can absorb heat, rather than reflecting it back into the atmosphere. Eventually these plants will spread in the friendly environment, and absorb more and more heat, until they trigger a lowering of the temperature. Then more reflective plants will thrive, spreading and reflecing heat back into the system until the temperature rises again. This can happen with very simple simulations of planets with only black and white flowers, and the prototype program which you can download in various forms is known as Daisyworld.
You may have heard of top-down computation as compared to bottoms-up computation. These are competing theories on how to program computers or robots to handle complex tasks. Bottoms-up programming acknowledges the real world processes that occur in this systemic process, and the strange thing is that the emergence of complex systems occurs because of what is called self-organization. Within the laws of physics, as objects and particles interact with each other, they find these repeating patterns of relationship and organize around them. This built in flexibility takes form as negative feedback systems, which interact with each other in ways that are mutually beneficial, or at least in ways that are not mutually harmful. As increasingly complex systems work together to become macro-systems, they have a complexity that enables them to solve complex problems.
Complex, dynamic open and complex systems display what are known as emergent properties; that is, self-organization is not always predictable. Think of the phrase, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. That whole may be an unexpected ability or trait of amazing sophistication and might be completely unforseeable. That is what so exciting about knowing you are a system that is a part of inumerable other complex systems, and it is why OPOL just might be right about the liberal awakening: our system is in a phase of emergence, as information is triggered througout the system in new ways immune to filtering. The Daily Kos and other blogs are perfect examples.
Natural systems are decentralized; there is no boss of the Earth, or really, of your bodies countless systems. Systems survive and remain stable because of the natural problem solving that arisies from self-organization and emergence. Again - your workplace is a system. The reason your supervisors and management teams often seem to give instructions that don't make sense is that they think they can order effective problem solving from the top down. They fail to recognize that you, the components of the system, are very good together in solving complex problems, by making natural use of the multiple feedback relationships that you have with so many others. If you just did your job description, and everyone else did the same, the organization would fail. You build relationships, and work with others to find real ways of solving problems. Then management, which has grown distant from the daily grind, comes in with "solutions" that are usually reductionist; someone in particular is the problem. They don't see your value, they are threatened by the thought of decentralized problem-solving as it really occurs, and react improperly, by giving commands that are bound to fail.
That is why you and your co-workers always know ahead of time that when it comes time to make cuts, they will be senseless and counter productive. True problem solving would be increased by encouraging many contacts with co-workers, to create as many random contacts as possible. The more random contacts, the more the system is prone to discover a connection or new relationship between two components, or people, that wildly increases problem solving and effectiveness.
bin Laden is meaningless. Think of terrorist organizations as the Borg on Star Trek. They were part of a collective, where leadership was de-emphasized, but the collective allowed itself to self-organize. Ships repaired themselves, damage and loss was absorbed into a complex system that repaired itself.
Likewise, terrorists operate as cells - self-organized, communicating over the internet, displaying organizational learning and emergent properties that might keep it one step ahead of the dinosaur, top down structured reductionist superpower.
Complex constructs, like groups or even corporations, and terrorist organizations, display behavioral traits that are similar to living organisms. Think of the work groups you have been a part of that you could tell was special, that worked together in a way that felt different and displayed abilities far beyond each of you individually. There was a group personality. Almost a mind, as it were - like your consciousness itself - an emergent quality of the nested neural networks in the human brain.
Liberals may rise again, because we are in the uncharted waters of self organization and emergence that make up the information age. You are a part of it right now - and the input you put out into the larger, living organism of the United States and the world must, by definition, be felt by all other components, even if it is in a small and undetectable degree.
Bush and his people are the worst of all problem-solvers - far worse than mere reductionism. Reductionism is a part of systems thinking, a necessary part. It tells us the importance of relationships, really even in quantum physics, where the smallest "particles" may have no mass, and exist, possibly, only as relationships with relationships to other relationships.
Bush does not start with observation, he starts with belief, as do his cronies. It is reductionism based on belief. They do not accept feedback; they stay the course, or as Stephen Colbert said, believe the same thing on Wednesday as they did on Monday, no matter what happened on Tuesday. So, we stay the course, ignore the feedback. Ignore the feedback on global warming. Encourage tort reform so that corporations can be immune from the feedback that keeps them stable. De-regulate industries so there are no consequnces, no feedback, to keep them stable.
They can't act in their own interest. Greed compells them to deregulate, the system becomes unstable, and collapses. Think savings and loan, Airlines, Enron.
The reductionist president can't learn, can't problem solve, and his administration and corporate supporters are not even acting in their own interests, and must, by the laws that govern the Universe, cause their own downfall, as cancer dies when the system it inhabits dies. This process cannot be subverted.
The only question, really, is whether we can do away with this cancer before it takes the rest of us down with it, in a great, systemic collapse.
