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The metasystems theory
A POPULARIZATION
President Herriot told us than culture is what it remains when you have all forgotten. I believe that the foundations and basic roots of systems theories are buried somehere in my brain, but I forgot them. I studied them as a student, then during my pilgrimage to laboratories of such geniuses as Herbert Simon, or Pr. Forrester, and in fine, as an adjunct professor in the S cube (Social Science Systems) at the Wharton School, Penn. This paper concerns an idea about what is a System, the system approach, and the essential I retained of this enormous amount of information, I gathered during my encounters with the great founders of the systemic approach.
WHAT IS A SYSTEM?
There are more than 80 définitions of the concept from the most general (Klir and Valach) onto the most elaborate (Stafford Beer,my collegue at Wharton).
KLÌR AND VALACH
A System S results from the coupling os an Universum U and a characteristic A.
U is the population of the system, ie the number of elements which composes the system. A is the number of relations which interwines the elements of S. When each element is related to all the other elements, A is saturate and the graph which formalize it is strongly connected.
WHAT IS COMPLEXITY?
It is the product of A and U. C= A x U. In other terms, complexity increases when the population of a system and/or the number of connections increases too. For example, when one's ages, he loses neurones : U decreases. But the connections which integrates each neurone to all the others increases considerably. (Of course not in such illness as Alzeihmer's disease). Another example is the complexity of our planet. Not only population is exponentially growing, but the number of connections, thanks to internet, telephone and TV, growth even quicker, the result being a tremendous increase in complexity.
WHAT IS A DISCONTINUITY?
The Teilhard de Chardin disciple Lecompte du Nouÿ was the author of a revolutionary théory. To make a long story short let us affirm that when you cross a threshold toward an infinite dimensional change, new properties emerges. And not gradually but suddenly. Infinite decrease in weight and size, transform our classical experience, in quantum physics. Fishes are soluble, you're simultaneously here and everywhere in the galaxy, your cat is alive AND dead. Impossible ro understand for common brains. And don't forget that such a radical change appears at the treshold of 1014 grams, without transition, in one instant. Such behavior is called a discontinuity.
Another discontinuity appears when you reach the infinitely large distances. What emerges is relativity theory, no less disturbing than Quantum theory. How is it possible to think that when few days are lived by an austronaut, one hundred years passed on our planet?
The last discontinuity, but not the least, concerns the crossing the threshold of complexity. A new property emerges brutally in three steps:
1. when inanimate matter becomes complex, due to intricate loops of reactions, life appears.
2. The second step concerns brain complexity : the cousciousness is the result. A cow is conscious of its surroundings.
3. The third step appears with the increase of the complexity of the brain, self consciousness appears. The man is conscious, and he is conscious that he is conscious.
MODERN MAN IS TRAINED NOT ACCEPT DISCONTINUITY
We must attribute this severe limitation of mind, to the dictatorship of neo darwinism theory. In this doctrine, the concept of change by micromutations by essays and errors is a dogma. Only hazard can change this principle. The genetis and biology engineering were very well adapted to this model, and as they are a enormous source of profit, the the neodarwinian dogma is universally accepted, even if in medicine other paths could be explored.
Nevertheless, there is a branch of knowledge which rejects categorically the neo-darwinian dogma : the palaeontology.
According to new-darwinian doctrine, a reptile becomes a bird by small steps, small improvements. But it is impossible. To fly out of his nest, the small bird needs the concomitance of numerous factors such as the weight of the bones, the proportion between the size of the wings and that of the body, a brain change in structure, etc. If all these factors are not present in the same time, the small bird is unable to fly, falls from the nest and crashes. Therefore the chances of survival of a bird according to micromutations are nearly zero. Jean Stone has written a book about this subject, but Stone is a palaeontologist, not a biologist. That means that his status is much lower!
DISCONTINUITY AND CATASTROPHE THEORY
René Thom distinguished many varieties of discontinuities, that he calls catastrophes. The term is deceiving as all the discontinuities are not all catastrophic for us, but when a scientist don't want creates neologisms, he uses old terms in a specific ways. Instead creating new words for the discontinuity concept, he preferred to use the current word in a different sense.
The most serious catastroph that can jeopardize our civilization, consist in the fantastic increase of complexity due to modern real time means of communication. All the brains are intervconnected to acentral superbrain which acts according to its will and interests. Joël de Rosnay, a popular journalist wrote in his book on systems theory, that a new system : the sybionte, would dominates the world. It would be connected to all the brains of the planet and would control our behavior and our value scales. The worst is that this aristocratic person, links oriented, would like very much the deprivation of part of our autonomy for the sake of public intereste. Instead the ego-citizens, we would be changed in equal citizens (citoyens egaux).
Is such an utopia possible. Are we loosing our power, our human control on events to obey to a superior systems which could decides for us?
JAY FORRESTER AND THE ECOLOGY CONCEPT
I met Forrester in his laboratory, at M.I.T. Professor Forrester is one of the major figures of the realm of the system approach. He was a gentleman farmer and became immensely rich with his discovery of the tores memory. But his enormous fame came from his book Industrial Dynamics, followed by Urban dynamics and World dynamics.
As a representative of the system theory, Forrester was a powerful opponent to the tenants of system analysis. The systems analysis approach declares that to know an organization, you must study with the greatest décision, as painstaking as it can be, each of the elements which intervenes in its functioning.
On the contrary systemic approach put the emphasis on the relations. The behavior of a systems is therefore defined by the structure of its relation agencement. Forrester considers an organization as a fitting of elements and of channels animated by five sort of lows: monetary,(financial flows) capital (machines, land, etc), machine (computers, robots, etc), manpower (number and level of employees) and... psychologicological (motivation, creativity, ambiance, courage, entrepreneurial spirit etc.). All these elements and these channels where defined by complex level and flow equations. But the complexity of the system was fast growing with the predominance of positive or negative feed-back loops at such extent that thousand and millions of equations were necessary to calculate the behavior of the systems.
Instead of undertaking such an impossible task, Forrester had the idea to built a system homomorphous (i.e. analogical and simplified) of the actual system. Simulation and mapping, find their roots in this novation. Moreover, Forrester studied the way to design a cybernetic system, who could function eternally, craeting and destroying life, in a close cicuit and elaborate loops of feedback. He called ECOLOGY the designing of such systems, similar to Earth natural regulation.
I described the man who was facing me, a young student without prestige. And the professor was tall, blue eyed, staring at me with a metallic glance, reinforced by very fine silver-rimmed spectacles. He confessed that he was very embarrassed to define the psychological flows, and he coul'd not attend any cooperation with psychologists, awful people!
He was furious against Pears and Meadows, charlatans that claimed the end of the world for the end of the century, on the bais of a small model of 1200 equations Appointed by Club de Rome, presided by Aurelio Peccei, president of Fiat, they write a book which had an enormous influence, up to now : Halte à la croissance! , stop the growth ! His predictions were false but they influenced films as Space Odissey, Matrix, Green Soyeland, or Brazil. They wher among the generators of the ecologist movement, and of long-lasting devlopment current.
THE PRESENT OUTCOMES OF P.AND M. PREDICTIONS
Of course, the predictions of Pears and Meadows about the shortage of energy and gaz oil resources, appears today to be utopian and even ridiculous. But they had a positive consequence : to stress the importance of nature and the emergence of negative outcomes of non controlled industrial growth.
To day, the predictions of the Club de Rome are false, but the warning was correct. The loss of control of the financial and industrial growth is the result of a generalized dispise of our leaders for nature and its cycles.
THE TWO STEPS OF THE FINAL CRISIS
We can predict two steps in what we can whithout exaggeration the final end af a world. 1. The disaster. 2. The catastrophe.
1. The disaster. It is already at our door. The industrial tissue is in complete recession and the liquid assets are important. With ten thousand dollars you can afford to control one hundred more shareholdings tha, a year ago, and we do not know when it will stop. The result is a loss of liquidities and a strong deflation. It is a real disaster for our industrial richness and such domains as employment, medicine, freedom of change, and even real goods like gold. (It could be prohibited, or its value artificially drop by injection of gold in the market bay central banks).
2. The catastrophe. The liquidity assets are only papers, like currency and money. Their value comes bay what they represent. Now, we now that if in the past they stand for gold, industries and physical wealth, today they stands for themselves. And what they represent is worst than nothing: they stand for considerable debts and abyssal losses of value. So in the final step, both shares and money, will have no value. Violence, amazment, revolutions, change in societal behavior, bartering economy, will succed to recession.
CAN WE AVOID THE TWO STEPS OF THE CRISIS?
Yes. But we must before understand the logic of the two staps and that is difficult because our education and our common sense prevent us to evaluate them honestly. We must considerate that the crisis is not of the same nature than in 1929. Today there is no sanctuary, no country to help us. Another consideration is to accept to struggle against one of the main factors of the crisis : the globalization. We must accept to destroy integration and cut the links and the generalization of real time communications.
But there is another main factor of the crisis: the universal loss of meaning and the limitation of the value system to pleasure and utilitarian short term scales. This will be the subject of the second part of this paper.
Good Night and dream to a better wisdom for the world leaders.
Bruno Lussato.
