Imagining Systems Science in 2020
A few weeks ago I spent some time listening again to Len Troncale at the meeting of the Intl Society for the Systems Sciences in Tokyo. His vision of systems science is staggering. He has kept the whole vision under wraps, doing stealth science, for years. He’s retiring this year and he’s finally writing it all out.
Still ringing in my ears and echoing through my mind are Australian Janet McIntyre’s words. She said repeatedly that nothing matters if it isn’t connected to sustainability, that this planet is going down and that is the only focus worth focusing on.
At the end of October I’m going to be meeting with Gary Metcalf, David Ing, Jennifer Wilby and Pam Buckle Henning in Chicago to discuss systems, next year’s ISSS meeting, and the web site. It’s been rolling around in my head.
Here’s where I’m at this week:
We are self-organizing beings within self-organizing societies. When we feel safe, we open to flows of information and energy/matter. We bond and create networks. We naturally self-organize into greater complexity and integration. When threatened, we close down. Thinking becomes self-referential, circular, and negative. Perspective is narrowed. Closure leads to North Korea and the boys who shot up Columbine High.
We must develop a social technology that reflects these processes. We must develop a new science and a new philosophy/worldview that can integrate the religions and our various perspectives and our cultural differences and the findings of science.
Here’s a start:
First, imagine a new science in the curriculum.
Biology has its taxonomy–its genus, species, etc. Chemistry has its periodic table of elements. Systems science has the 100+ processes found in all complex systems throughout nature.
Next, imagine learning about the world, not from the fragmented views of the various humanities and sciences, but as a network of processes–processes not as dry formulas but as rich deep metaphors–that integrates the humanities and the sciences, where the distinctions blend and disappear.
Imagine a world, where there is no more separate philosophy and religion and science. All is science. Not a cold, mechanical science–not that science has ever been that for scientists–but a living, breathing, and grounded science, one that takes us into the reaches of our imagination, into the processes of our emotions and minds and lives together. One that makes sense, that unites us and guides us in this extremely connected, very populated, very small world.
I’m beginning to glimpse this new kind of science and new kind of thinking. I’m seeing it everywhere in different forms. It’s no accident that the Dalai Lama sees brain science as the path to peace.
When we finally link our emotions, our reasoning, our ethics, and our interactions with each other to a science of systems processes–and it’s beginning to happen–creativity will replace struggle, and our consciousness will expand, and our potential will blossom.
We just have to create this before completely poisoning ourselves and the planet. It’s a race. I’m betting on us.
September 4th, 2007 at 1:58 am
Lynn, we’ll have a lot more to discuss when we get the group together. Although this “Systems Science Connections” group share a common interest in the foundations you cite, we come from a broad range of perspectives.
I’ve become comfortable with theory of practice, particularly in communities. When I say “communities”, the literature would usually lead us to “communities of practice” — taken by most to mean work communities — but I use it as something larger than a group but smaller than an enterprise.
From my practice perspective, I’ve lost some of my idealism, because ideas like a “new science” are anchored by centuries of knowledge that have already accumulated. Resistance to change comes from disciplines (as might be described by power structures, in Pierre Bourdieu’s philosophy). We can discuss whether Kuhn’s idea of Scientific Revolutions — having to burn all of the textbooks, when they become obsolete with a new science — is realistic in a world where much of what we know is socially constructed.
January 22nd, 2008 at 12:02 am
It’s taken months for me to get back to you. Long after meeting up in Chicago and even after you all have met in Toronto.
Oh, but David, this is all about community of practice. It’s not about making the past wrong at all. It’s about integrating and synthesizing with metaphors more “in sync” with who we are. It’s not at all at odds with anyone.
And science is always self-organizing. It’s now becoming more networked in centers than controlled in departments. The best work is interdisciplinary in communities of practice.
What is emerging is a greater understanding of particular processes and those processes are interacting and interpenetrating. Len has shown me how it forms a useful taxonomy. I’m not saying that that is what systems science is, but I am saying that without an understanding of these basic processes, one can’t know systems.