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Creating a Science of
Purposeful Systems
Stuart A. Umpleby
Department of Management
The George Washington University
Washington, DC 20052
A brief history of “purposeful systems”
• In the early days of cybernetics, the 1940s to
the 1970s, it was common to talk about
purposeful systems
• Then there was a period of a few decades
when purpose was rarely mentioned
• Now interest in purpose seems to be
increasing
Why an increase of interest in
purpose?
• Beginning in the mid 1970s Heinz von Foerster
and others in the American Society for
Cybernetics began discussing “second order
cybernetics”
• This was an effort to pay more attention to
cognition, to describe the observer as an
essential part of the scientific enterprise
• That effort led to interest in second order science,
a development not just within cybernetics but
within philosophy of science
Why a reconsideration of science?
• In recent years several authors have been discussing
the need to expand our conception of science
• Ben Shneiderman, Science 2.0, described changes
brought about by the internet
• Karl Mueller, three levels of science – science
infrastructures, normal science, second order science -use scientific reports as data, related to meta-research
• Studies of science, technology and society -- a science
of how scientific knowledge is used in society
• A science of how knowledge is used to aid decisionmaking, similar to action research
What trends have supported an
interest in purpose?
• New technology creates new possibilities for
obtaining, integrating, and comparing scientific
data
• Rapid changes in society, such as automation and
robotics, call into question what our purposes are
• Behaviorism emphasized observing behavior
rather than asking people what their purposes
are
• Success in achieving our goals, often through
technology, has led to more thought about goals
Three models used in cybernetics
•
•
•
Regulation
Two basic elements: the regulator and the system regulated
How to amplify management capability
Enables managing nations with hundreds of millions of people
Self-organization
A large number of elements governed by interaction rules
Rules can be changed to obtain a different outcome
Incentive systems, police and courts
A general theory of biology, learning and economic development
Reflexivity
Two levels are involved
Actors both observe and participate
Elements are purposeful systems
Not only a scientific theory but also a theory of the evolution of science
The common element of the three
models is purpose
• In regulation, what is the regulator trying to
achieve? What is the goal or purpose?
• In self-organization, what is the result that
existing interaction rules produce, and what
interaction rules are needed to produce the
desired results?
• Understanding reflexive systems requires
understanding not just their behavior but also
their purposes
Understanding the elements of social
systems
• In the early days of science the elements of
systems were inanimate objects
• The key to success in science was the method
used – conjectures and refutations
• It was assumed that the methods used for
social systems would be the same as those
used for physical systems
• But purposeful systems need to be treated
differently from inanimate objects
Three Theories of reflexive processes
• Vladimir Lefebvre’s theory of reflexive control
(1977) created a theory of two systems of
ethical cognition
• George Soros’s reflexivity theory connected
cybernetics to economics and finance
• Heinz von Foerster’s second order cybernetics
created a reflexive view of science and added
a biological perspective to normative and
sociological views of philosophy of science
Heinz von Foerster
From objectivity to participation
• The interest in purposeful systems raises the
question of how to create verifiable
knowledge of purposeful systems.
• Statistics reveal the results of purpose better
than purposes themselves
• The purposes of science are often not
understood by non-scientists
• A gap is opening up between scientists and
the general public
There is a need for public acceptance
of science
• Scientists increasingly tell the general public what
they should do
• About nutrition and health – diet and exercise
• About climate change – reduce use of fossil fuels,
conserve energy
• About economic development – increase
education and improve the rights of women
• But does the general public know where these
ideas come from? Are they just an alternative,
unfamiliar culture?
A positive trend connecting science
and the public
• Service learning is a mode of instruction that is
increasing around the world
• Students work to help a client – an immigrant
family, a small business, a voluntary organization
• Students develop confidence in their ability to
solve problems
• Students describe what they did using concepts
from the course, thus connecting textbook
knowledge to personal experiences
• This is more participatory form of education
But rapid changes in science seem to
threaten democracy
• Science is currently progressing quite rapidly
• The new knowledge, to be maximally
beneficial, needs to be widely shared (e.g.,
vaccines)
• And people need to feel they are benefitting
from the advance of knowledge
• If people do not believe they are benefitting
as much as others, they will reject elites,
including scientists
Inequality in the U.S.
• It used to be that CEOs in the U.S., Europe and
Japan earned about 43 times as much per year as
the average worker
• In the U.S., CEOs now earn more than 400 times
as much as the average worker
• A CEO can earn more in a day than the average
worker earns in a year
• About 90% of the benefits of increased
productivity in recent decades has gong to the
top 1%
The political system is changing
• How and why is the political system changing?
• Great progress in physical science and
engineering is part of the cause
• Improvements in social science are part of the
solution
• Not only scientists but also the general public
need to be able to cope with complexity
From replication to achieving desired
change
• Currently there is interest in replication in
science. Can research results be reproduced?
• A more fundamental change would be to
combine science, society and purpose and
ask, is our current knowledge producing the
purposes we seek?
• This would mean a more serious treatment of
“action research”
Two kinds of social science research
Current social science
• The scientist is outside
the system studied
• An experiment is of
interest to scientists
• The purpose of research
is to create knowledge
by testing falsifiable
propositions
Action research
• The scientist is inside
the system studied
• An experiment is of
interest to subjects and
researchers
• The purpose of research
is to improve the lives
of the research subjects
Social science vs. action research
• A consequence of
research is new
knowledge in the form of
articles and books
• Experimental groups and
control groups help to
ensure objectivity
• Knowledge is usually
expressed in the form of
linear causal relations
with a high level of
statistical significance
• New knowledge can be
methods to guide actions
by subjects or researchers
• Ensuring participation by
all relevant stakeholders
is important for valid
results, meaning results
that advance society
• One form of knowledge is
knowing when a system is
stable or unstable and
how to change it
Conclusion
• Science is changing due to new technology,
past successes and new goals
• An early interest among cyberneticians in
purposeful systems is receiving new attention
• Adequately dealing with purposeful systems
requires changes in science
• Doing research on purposeful systems
requires replacing an emphasis on objectivity
with an emphasis on participation
Contact Information
Prof. Stuart Umpleby
Department of Management
School of Business
George Washington University
Washington, DC 20052 USA
blogs.gwu.edu/umpleby
[email protected]
Presented at a conference of the
World Organization for Systems and
Cybernetics
Sapienze University of Rome
Rome, Italy
January 25-27, 2017
Two theories of knowledge
• Aristotle, realism
– The world is primary, ideas are secondary
– Our ideas should be a good description of the
world
• Plato, constructivism
– Ideas are primary, because we have immediate
access to them
– We construct descriptions by interpreting our
experiences
How the nervous system works
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
The blind spot
Image on your retina
Move your eyes within your head
Conversations at a party
Listening to a speech
Two kittens
Injured war veterans
The meaning of these experiments
• The brain does a great deal of work for us that
we are not aware of
• What we think we see or hear is not always
there. Varela on a cat’s brain
• We do not see that we do not see
• Observations independent of the
characteristics of the observer are not
physically possible
First and second order cybernetics
in the 1970s
•
•
•
•
Observed systems
The purpose of a model
Controlled systems
Interaction among
variables in a system
• Theories of social
systems
• Observing systems
• The purpose of the
modeler
• Autonomous sys.
• Interaction between
observer and observed
• Theories of the
interaction between
ideas and society
Engineering Cybernetics
Biological Cybernetics
Social Cybernetics
The view of
epistemology
A realist view
of epistemology:
knowledge is a
“picture” of reality
A biological view of
epistemology: how the
brain functions
A pragmatic view of
epistemology:
knowledge is
constructed to achieve
human purposes
A key distinction
Reality vs. scientific
theories
Realism vs. Constructivism
The biology of cognition vs.
the observer as a
social participant
The puzzle to be
solved
Construct theories which
explain observed
phenomena
Include the observer within the
domain of science
Explain the relationship
between the natural
and the social sciences
What must be
explained
How the world works
How an individual constructs a
“reality”
How people create,
maintain, and change
social systems through
language and ideas
A key assumption
Natural processes can be
explained by
scientific theories
Ideas about knowledge should
be rooted in
neurophysiology.
Ideas are accepted if they
serve the observer’s
purposes as a social
participant
An important
consequence
Scientific knowledge can
be used to modify
natural processes to
benefit people
If people accept constructivism,
they will be more tolerant
By transforming conceptual
systems (through
persuasion, not
coercion), we can
change society
Three Versions of Cybernetics
Three theories of knowledge
World
1
Description
3
2
Observer
Expanding not a science but
the philosophy of science
• Karl Popper identified three “worlds” – the
external world, the ideas in the mind of an
observer and recorded scientific knowledge
• The three sides correspond to three points of
view in the history of cybernetics –
engineering, biological, and social cybernetics
• The triangle suggested a way to unify
previously competing theories of knowledge
The cybernetics of science
NORMAL SCIENCE
The correspondence
principle
Incommensurable
definitions
SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION
New philosophy of science
Old philosophy of science
Amount of attention paid to
the observer
An Application of the Correspondence Principle
The Correspondence Principle
• Proposed by Niels Bohr when developing the
quantum theory
• Any new theory should reduce to the old
theory to which it corresponds for those cases
in which the old theory is known to hold
• A new dimension is required
How cybernetics expands science
• The classical approach to science would be
the left side of the triangle
• Second order cybernetics would be the whole
triangle including the scientist reflecting on his
or her descriptions and seeking to act in the
world
• The triangle suggests that second order
cybernetics is no longer a competing
epistemology but a theory of epistemologies
Strategies for advancing social science
• For several decades social scientists tried to
imitate the physical sciences
• Physics was regarded as an example of how to
do science
• Now the idea is to expand science so the
physical sciences become a special case of a
larger view of science
• The new view includes purposeful systems
• Inanimate objects are a special case
Current work on Second Order
Science
Second order science
• Three levels of science (K. Mueller)
– Second order science, meta research (2)
– First order science, normal science (1)
– Research infrastructure (0)
• Expand science by adding two dimensions
using the Correspondence Principle
• Examine the use of ideas in practice
– If not used, why not? (global models)
– If used, what were the consequences?
From second order cybernetics to
second order science
• Philosophers of science usually place the scientist
outside what is observed
• Second order cybernetics claims that descriptions
are constructed in the minds of scientists
• It places a scientist inside the social system that is
observed
• These thoughts are bringing about a wide-ranging
reconsideration of our conception of science
The importance of
second order science
• Expanding our conception of science opens
new lines of investigation for research
• Treating physics not as an example for all of
science but rather as a special case of a larger
conception of science will help the unification
of the sciences
• New possibilities for research in the social
sciences will mean advances in the social
sciences at a time when they are needed