Unity in Diversity [1 ed.] 9780889206625

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UNITY IN DIVERSITY

Proceedings of the Interdisciplinary Research Seminar at Wilfrid Laurier University

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UNITY IN

DIVERSITY Volume 1, 1977

Proceedings of the Interdisciplinary Research Seminar at Wilfrid Laurier University

Contributors: 1

2 3 4 5 6 7

8 9

Ervin Laszlo State University of New York Alastair M. Taylor Queen's University Rod Preece Wilfrid Laurier University Nicolas A. Nyiri Wilfrid Laurier University Toivo Miljan Wilfrid Laurier University Harry Loewen Wilfrid Laurier University Leon Thiry Wilfrid Laurier University John Redekop Wilfrid Laurier University Frederick Eidlin University of Guelph

Edited

by

Nicolas A. Nyiri Rod Preece

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Main entry under title: Unity in diversity (IRS ; v.l, 1977) Includes index. ISBN 0-88920-058-0 bd. ISBN 0-88920-057-2 pa. 1. Social science research - Addresses, essays, lectures. 2. System theory - Addresses, essays, lectures. 3. Interdisciplinary approach in education - Addresses, essays, lectures. I. Nyiri, Nicolas A., 1929II. Preece, Rod, 1939III. Series: Interdisciplinary Research Seminar. IRS ; v.l, 1977. H62.U48

300'.7'2

C77-001555-7

Copyright © 1977 Wilfrid Laurier University Press Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3C5 No part of this book may be translated or reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, microfiche, or any other means, without the written permission from the publishers.

FOREWORD The Interdisciplinary Research Seminar, developed by Professor Nicolas A. Nyiri of the Political Science Department, was initiated three years ago. The purpose has been to encourage and foster interdisciplinary research papers and colloquia which are now being published under the editorship of Professor N. A. Nyiri and Dr. Rod Preece. Contributors have been drawn from several centres and it is planned to expand the sources of papers in the future. The work that has been accomplished has served to bring scholars from diverse fields together and to encourage others to share in the exploration and expansion of critical thinking in a number of areas. It is expected that the publication of the first volume will open the way to an ever-widening interest in this core area of a university's life: critical thinking and dissemination of the knowledge gained. Dr. Neale Tayler Vice-President Academic Wilfrid Laurier University May, 1977

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PREFACE It is a pleasure to acknowledge our debts to a number of people who actively contributed to the publication of the first volume of the Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Annual Proceedings at Wilfrid Laurier University. We wish to thank Dr. Neale Tayler, Vice-President Academic, Wilfrid Laurier University, for his academic, moral and financial support of the Research Seminar. It is our hope that future generations of scholars and students coming to this university will remember his benefaction. We wish also to acknowledge our debt to Dr. Ervin Laszlo of the State University of New York, the internationally known scholar of General Systems Philosophy, for his acceptance of our invitation to deliver the founding lecture in February, 1974. Dr. Ervin Laszlo is The Honorary President of the Research Seminar. Our gratitude is due also to Dr. Alastair M. Taylor of Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, for the second lecture delivered in March, 1974. He is a long-time friend, and also a dedicated scholar to the interdisciplinary nature of academic training and general education. We wish to thank further Mr. Frank Clancy for his careful editing and proofreading of all research articles in this volume. Without his contribution we may have appeared even more deficient in style and form. Mrs. Patricia Moonah is to be thanked for her accurate typing of the manuscripts. We also wish to extend our gratitude to the Department of Geography, Wilfrid Laurier University, for the drawing of diagrams. Lastly, we thank all of our colleagues for their contributions to this volume. Unfortunately we cannot include Dr. John Weir's article from the Department of Economics, Wilfrid Laurier University, because it had been published subsequently elsewhere. His publishers felt that it was not convenient to grant permission to reprint it this time. Nicolas A. Nyiri Department of Political Science May, 1977

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword Preface Introduction: The Idea of a University. Rod Preece.

v vi i

xi

1.

Framework for a General Systems Theory of World Order. Ervin Laszlo.

2.

General Systems and their Value for Academic Research and Teaching. Alastair M. Taylor.

15

3.

Individual and Community. Rod Preece.

45

4.

The Problematic Character of System. Nicholas A. Nyiri.

65

5.

Strategy and High Politics in Northern Europe. Toivo Miljan.

123

6.

Luther and MUntzer: Unity of Opposites. Harry Loewen.

159

7.

A Rational Foundation of Moral Obligation. Leon Thiry.

181

8.

A Reinterpretation of Canadian-American Relations. John Redekop.

203

9.

Politics and Science in Political Science. Frederick Eidlin.

231

1

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INTRODUCTION THE IDEA OF A UNIVERSITY It is rather more than a century since John Henry Newman published his epochal work The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated which stimulated the late nineteenth century debate on the purpose and functions of a university. Influential though his work was, his primary thesis that the purpose of higher education was moral training rather than instruction has fared poorly in our utilitarian century, at least outside Catholic institutions. Today we may debate the merits of technical and professional training compared with the avowed purpose of general intellectual development usually associated with the liberal arts; and it is still acceptable, if slightly disreputable in our democratic era, to argue that our institutions of higher learning should be restricted to an intellectual elite. But Newman's traditional conservative notion that the achievement of virtue rather than knowledge is the purpose of education as well as government seems irredeemably remote from contemporary university curricula and even from modern political culture. Newman's ideas are bound to appear archaic in relation to our secular institutions of learning, and it is presently inconceivable that traditionalist thought could reverse the dominant trends of more than a century. But there is still much of which Newman may profitably remind us. At the opening of the Tamworth Reading Room in 1841 Sir Robert Peel had emasculated the Tory educational tradition with the declaration that "physical and moral science rouses, transports, exalts, enlarges, tranquilizes and satisfies the mind" -and thus the intellectual life becomes appropriately the province of all. Indeed, the principles of universalization and utilitarianism have proved so successful that we are likely to feel a pang of guilt when our research fails to exalt, when our intellectual life does not satisfy the mind; on occasion the utilitarian pressure is such that we are tempted to cut the Gordian knot, to feel satisfied with a conclusion merely because it is a conclusion, to apprehend a result because it is novel, because it does satisfy, because it arouses the mind, because it advances our image. To revere mystery

xii Unity in Diversity is to fail, to be concerned with truth as the end in itself may hinder our careers, to puzzle may distress rather than arouse us. But Newman went further. Newman was not convinced by Peel's view of science. He doubted that the utilitarian benefits would ensue. More importantly, for Newman idle speculation was destructive of man's appropriate ends, and utilitarian speculation was valuable only if it was subordinated to those ends. "Life is for action", he exhorted. "If we insist on proofs for everything we shall never come to action: to act you must assume, and that assumption is faith". Modern science has, in a manner, vindicated Newman. It is now commonly accepted, if without an awareness of the implications for the virtue of relying on tradition and the wisdom of the ages, that the hypotheses of science are based on undemonstrable assumptions about the nature of the universe. But the faith we employ is still for utilitarian ends. For Newman, action, which includes reasoning, is the end in itself, and virtue is knowing how to act appropriately. Like Newman, we are likely today to feel less than happy with Peel's optimistic forecast. But we reject Peel's assertions for reasons other than Newman's. We distinguish between those disciplines which we feel genuinely enlarge the mind and those that train men in skills, that train men to act; we distinguish between the humanities and professional training, with the social and natural sciences lying somewhere between. Yet is not our common dichotomy a false, or at least misleading, one? Is education for action not also the province of even the most abstract discipliens of the humanities? As Cardinal Newman wrote in his Grammer of Assent: It is the mind that reasons, and that controls its own reasonings, not any technical apparatus of words and propositions. This power of judging and concluding, when in its perfection, I call the Illative Sense. The purpose of higher education for Newman is not abstract knowledge, not even a broadening of the mind, but nor is it training for an occupation. The purpose is to produce men who can make sound judgements about life, who can thus live, and assist others to live, their lives wisely. And if that is so, classics, philosophy and the social sciences may be more appropriately practical disciplines than their professional counterparts.

Introduction xiii Newman's notion of the Illative Sense is reminiscent of Aristotle's discussion of phronesis. Phronesis is practical wisdom which is distinguished from sophia, the abstract love of learning. While aristotle reveres sophia. he recognizes that phronesis is necessary for the statesman. For Newman, however, phronesis is superior to sophia and is the appropriate acquisition not merely of the statesman but of all persons, who thereby achieve their human dignity. Michael Oakeshott has taken this line of reasoning further: a pianist acquires artistry as well as technique, a chess player style and insight into the game as well as a knowledge of the moves, and a scientist... acquires the sort of judgement which tells him when his technique is leading him astray and the connoiseurship which enables him to distinguish the profitable from the unprofitable directions to exploreJ Abstract reason can provide only technical knowledge, theoretical knowledge, but what is necessary is what Oakeshott calls "traditional knowledge", parctical knowledge, which is not "susceptible of formulation in rules, principles, directions, maxims". Such knowledge can neither be taught nor learned, but only imparted and acquired. Our students are thus not empty receptacles to be filled but nor are they self-sufficient intellectual adventurers. They are apprentices acquiring experience to fit them for a life of practical wisdom; and junior colleagues are journeymen who bring with them new, and sometimes superior, sometimes ill-founded, technical knowledge, but which bears fruit only when the technical knowledge becomes subsumed within practical wisdom. As professors, then, we do only half a job when we instruct; it is of little avail to attempt to give an education. The practical wisdom derived from a valuable education can only be acquired through experience -- diligently, arduously, indeed through discipline in both its senses. If our students leave our halls of liberal learning with abstract knowledge and technical skills alone we have failed in our task. We are only successful when, in Newman's words in The Idea of a University:

Rationalism in Politics. London: Methuen, 1962, p. 11.

xiv Unity in Diversity a habit of mind is formed which lasts through life, of which the attributes are, freedom, equitableness, calmness, moderation, and wisdom; or what in a former discourse I have ventured to call the philosophical habit. We succeed when our students acquire knowledge of appropriate action, not just the ability to reason abstractly but to live the life of practical wisdom. But does not the public regard the academic in his ivory tower as the least practical of men? Is not the image of the professor that of the most learned but least wise of men? And is not the image a predominantly justificable one? Do we have the wisdom to be craftsman to our apprentices? This is not to suggest that as academics we should also be competent car mechanics or electricians or be able to instruct our students in the practical details of their chosen professions -although there is something to be said for acquiring each of those skills. It is to argue that professors can only perform their tasks adequately when they are of broad learning, of generous outlook. Yet how are we to accomplish our task in this age of expertise, when colleagues in the same discipline talk past each other through the sophisticated voices of their jargons? How are we to be able to acquire and profess that necessary breadth of learning, that hesitant, halting, circumspect but enthusiastic sense of civilization which extolls education as wisdom through arduous experience? How are we to overcome that disease of our new Enlightenment which espouses learning as mere intellectual pleasure? How, indeed, are we to overcome that illness which denies the value of education when it cannot be converted into fun? Each of us in this era of narrow specialization would display an unwarranted arrogance were he to pretend to emulate the learning of a Kant who contributed to the physical sciences as well as philosophy, of a Herder whose work was as influential for comparative philology, religion and mythology as it was for the theory of history, of a Hobbes who expounded physics and mathematics (admittedly with limited success) in addition to political theory, or even of a Bertrand Russell whose work is recognized equally in social and political philosophy, mathematics and logic. The most we can hope to achieve is an idea of the whole either through an appreciation of general theory and its relevance to our narrow specializations, to realize a partial comprehension of those specializations within

Introduction xv the context of the general whole -- hence the concern in a number of the essays included in this volume with general systems theory -or to subject our research to criticism and appraisal, not alone from specialists in our field but from an array of scholars whose different skills, alternative knowledge and varied experience permit us to round out our work, to develop and adjust it in the light of a broader spectrum. The idea of a university is the idea of a community of scholars attended by journeymen, and by apprentices who will shortly leave the alma mater to practice their acquired wisdom in the wider world. In conception a community is a oneness composed of varying but complementary characters; it is a unity constructed from diversity. In conception a university is a community of scholars collectively engaged in the conservation, dissemination and advancement of learning. In fact universities have become units only in the contiguity of their buildings. From their very origins universities began to specialize -- Salerno in medicine, Bologna in law and Paris in theology, for example. Nonetheless, the sense of interdependent complementarity, of community, prevailed. But the increasing specialization of knowledge in this century, already foreshadowed in the unwieldy and utilitarian structure of the University of London founded in 1829, has disrupted if not destroyed the university as community. In the academic world we have become as much a part of the economy of the division of labour as has the industrialized labourer and the factory technician. Early in the nineteenth century the German conservative romantic Adam MUller denounced that division: When the division of labour in the large cities or manufacturing and mining regions dissects men — fully free men — into wheels, cogs, cylinders, spokes, spindles and the like, it restricts him to a totally one-dimensional sphere of the already one-dimensional sphere of the satisfaction of a single need.2 But at least it can be argued that if a division of labour is the most efficient means of industrial production then, suitably organized,

2 Teilung der Arbeit, 1812; author's translation.

xvi Unity in Diversity a division of labour may permit the worker the greatest freedom from labour to develop his faculties. But even if that is true the argument by analogy does not apply to the academic, for his work is in essence not "a totally one-dimensional sphere of the already one-dimensional sphere of the satisfaction of a single need". It is an allencompassing vocation; he lives his life, not merely spends his workday, through his intellectual commitment. Our larger universities are already factories, and have been for some time, and the division of labour is so advanced that on occasion colleagues within the same department are strangers to each other, not merely as they may be on occasion in our smaller universities through ill will, but because there is a lack of opportunity to foster and maintain that necessary sense of common belonging. In our larger institutions the idea of a university is already an impossible dream. This is not to assert that the appropriate idea of a university is alive and flourishing in our smaller institutions. It is to acknowledge, indeed to welcome and grasp the opportunity to make it so. The Interdisciplinary Research Seminar at Wilfrid Laurier University was founded with this sense of community in mind in the fall of 1974 -- which is not to say that all participants in the Seminar unreservedly share that sense. The papers published here were first presented at the Seminar and re-written in the light of comments by the authors' peers and their apprentices. The papers cover different fields of interest and have been prepared by scholars from Wilfrid Laurier and other universities in widely diverging disciplines. What they have in common is not just their interdisciplinary nature but their sense of the complementarity and comprehensiveness of research; the papers are related directly or indirectly to general theory. If they contribute in some small way toward Newman's sense of a liberal education they will have achieved their purpose. Newman expressed his ideal as: This process of training, by which the intellect, instead of being formed or sacrificed to some particular or accidental purpose, some specific trade or profession, or study or science, is disciplined for its own proper object, and for its own highest culture, is called Liberal Education; and though there is no one in whom it is carried as far as is conceivable, or whose intellect would be a pattern of what intellects should be made, yet there is scarcely any one but may gain an idea of what real

Introduction xvii training is, and at least look towards it, and make its true scope and result, not something else, his standard of excellence.3 If we are to be effective scholars we must develop practical wisdom through interdisciplinary activity. If what we have produced to date is only an elementary step it is one we are happy to have taken. And if such an aspiration sounds pretentious and impractical, that reflects only the poverty of contemporary culture in which the discipline of community masquerades as pious sentimentality and practical wisdom is subordinated to idle speculation.

Rod Preece May, 1977

3 The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated, London, 1853, Discourse VII, Pt. I.

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FRAMEWORK FOR A GENERAL SYSTEMS THEORY OF WORLD ORDER* Ervin Laszlo Department of Philosophy State University of New York I.

The Conceptual Fit of General Systems Theory Social systems are not observables. Only selected aspects of them are empirically available, and these are given in the form of a wealth of complex data relating to individuals, groups, their psychologies, economies and ecologies, patterns of power and authority, social status, and so on. In themselves, the data do not generate models of social systems but serve only to validate or invalidate theoretical constructions. Theoretical constructions of social systems proceed by analogy with other phenomena that are more accessible to observation. The analogies of the past included naive ones likening social systems to mechanisms on the one hand, and organisms on the other. Today, the analogies grow from the more fruitful terrain of a science of complex organization per se. Hereby the disciplinary bias inherent in attempts to transpose findings from one area of investigation to another without regard for intrinsic differences is overcome. Social systems are neither mechanisms nor organisms, but manifest some of the general principles of organization shared by both sophisticated varieties of servomechanisms and living organisms. Social systems are also not entirely different from other complexly organized phenomena. They are not so dissimilar to "natural" levels of organization that models and laws depicting the evolution of complex organization in physical and biological realms would be fully inapplicable to them. The assumption of the sui generis nature of society would make the use of general systems concepts an arbitrary imposition on the phenomenon of human society. If the assumption is correct, social organization is more akin to the work of human engineers than to the workings of nature: not *This paper had been presented in February, 1974 at Wilfrid Laurier University as the first of the Seminar Papers that led to the establishment of the Interdisciplinary Research Seminar in the following Academic year. The article had been subsequently published by the author in his book entitled A Strategy for the Future (New York: Braziller, 1974).

2 Unity in Diversity theories of evolution, but concepts of engineering -- more specifically, social engineering — would apply. This view of society underlies a philosophical movement based on the idea of a social contract, entered into by autonomous human beings in the light of their own sovereign wills. If society is the result of a contract between independent, rational agents, its characteristics are determined by the will of its members. This view is the outgrowth of a long tradition in which a state of nature is contrasted to civil society. In the former each man is for himself and not accountable to higher authority; in the latter he has surrendered his natural sovereignty in exchange for the security and goods of civilized life. The exchange is based on convention, and is the foundation of society. Society is thus radically distinguished from nature; social organization, and the organization of biological and ecological systems, for example, would have to be kept rigorously apart and even counterposed. The sui generis concept of society suffers from the defect of abstract theory: it does not fully apply to the real phenomena. Real-world societies are not entirely based on human will and convention; they turn out to be highly complex systems often with counterintuitive multiple feedback loops between their components. As Levi-Strauss points out, there is an important distinction between the conscious ideas its members entertain of a society and its actual "deep" structure; and Forrester has shown that the behavior of societies often frustrates the expectations of their members and proves that they are considerably more than the expression of their conscious wills and purposes. Conventionalist and social contract conceptions of social phenomena sever the ties between theories of natural organization and theories of society. By contrast, the constellation of theories in the category known as Social Darwinism affirms such ties, and indeed overemphasizes them. Where conventionalist theorists claim that societies are unlike biological organisms in every important respect, Social Darwinists say that they are like organisms in all such respects. Both positions overshoot the mark. Societies are both different from, and analogous to, other forms of complex organization, and the differences and analogies can be specified. However, to hold that societies are but individuals "writ large" is unwarranted. Social Darwinists impute a number of basic

Laszlo/General Systems Theory of World Order 3 biological attributes to societies, such as the need for growth (Ratzel's concept of Lebensraum), a predetermined sequence of aging (Spengler's view of cultures), and may even think of the planet as a living globe, with the continents comprising the primary organs of the superorganism (Ritter). Social Darwinism applied to the nation-state justifies aggression in the name of the struggle for survival which selects the fittest state, the one that can assure sufficient territorial possessions for itself. Such applications served Hitler's ideologues to further the cult of the Aryan German state in the name of science (e.g., Haushofer's Geopolitik).1 Theories cannot be blamed for the use to which they are put, and the failure of Social Darwinism is not that it was used by real and potential aggressors but that it indiscriminately reduces one level of organization to another. Nor is this approach extinct today: contemporary literature is still filled with examples of biological and ecological reasoning applied to social phenomena. For example, human interrelations are evaluated in terms of symbiosis, parasitism, niche-structures, and biological adaptation. It is necessary to see both the differences and the similarities between social and biological forms of organization. We must neither transplant one empirical theory to another field, nor insist on entirely ad hoc theories. We can proceed from the generalized premise that systems of organized complexity arise in many sectors of reality; and these phenomena bear the marks of specific differentia as well as exhibit the invariants that result from common constraints of existence in this universe. All processes of progressive evolution are processes of structuration supervening upon rich and enduring energy flows. Given a sufficiently rich flow over a sufficiently prolonged time-span, progressive structuration commences, limited by the laws of thermodynamics and supported by the cohesiveness of the possible systems of stable 2 configuration. Configurations exploiting the stability properties For details see Alastair M. Taylor, "The Political Implications of the Forrester World System Model," The World System: Models, Norms, Applications. E. Laszlo, Ed. (New York!George Braziller, 1973). p CF Jacob Brongwski, "New Concepts in the Evolution of Complexity" Zygon. Vol. 5 (1), March 1970, pp. 18-35.

4 Unity in Diversity intrinsic to the flow have selective endurance over less stable configurations, and tend to dominate the flow pattern. The enduring configurations are further subjected to the fluxes in the flow and may hit upon metaconfigurations likewise endowed with a measure of stability. This general evolutionary paradigm applies to all the important evolutionary processes, whether they involve the chemical build-up of the elements, the phylogenetic evolution of organic species, or the development of human sociocultural systems. The process obtains regardless of whether or not there is consciousness on the part of the entities it constitutes. In fact, consciousness arises but exceptionally, in our experience only at the intersection of the higher phases of biological with the lower phases of sociocultural evolution. The higher phases of the sociocultural process thereafter display the effects of consciousness, but their general characteristics continue to unfold analogously with the overall constraints of structuration. Hence when we compare parts of the process that involve consciousness with those that do not, we find that what changes is the specific character of the emerging structures; but they continue to arise through mutual adaptation, competition, natural selection, and the symbiotic formation of superstructures. Whereas in the subconscious phases of the process energy transfers are the key agents of change, in phases where consciousness is already involved communication-flows (i.e., information superimposed on low-energy transfers) are the agency of interaction. The function of energy and communication-flows is, however, quite similar as far as the overall character of the structuration process is concerned. As the human-communication theorist Klaus Krippendorf said, "any communication process, once initiated and maintained, leads to the genesis of social structure --whether or 3 not such structure is anticipated or deemed desirable". The conclusion warranted by the systems theory of the evolution of complexity is that common processes of development characterize social and other forms of evolution, and that the products of these processes are therefore functionally similar. But differences in the manner in which the functions are performed exist and can

3 Klaus Krippendont, "Communication and the Genesis of Structure," General System Yearbook, XVI (1971), p. 171.

Laszlo/General Systems Theory of World Order 5 be accounted for by reference to the level and phase at which they operate. Biological organisms evolve from the symbiotic behavior patterns of cellular and organ systems. Sociocultural systems arise from the mutually adaptive behavior patterns of human beings and their primary reproductive, social, economic, professional, cultural, and political groupings. Consequently social organization is neither a subspecies of biological organization nor something entirely sui generis. Societies are analogous to biological organisms in being complex open systems that maintain themselves in an environment characterized by variety with constraints. They differ from biological organisms in meeting their functional requirements through specifically societal, rather than specifically biological, regulative processes. Thus we find self-stabilization, self-organization, hierarchization, and irreducibility in societies as well as organisms, but they are expressed by different structures and produce qualitatively different phenomena.

FIGURE I. A general map of the relationship of the principal levels of systems in the universe (outer triangle), on earth (inner triangle with solid sides), and possibly on other planetary surfaces (inner triangle with broken sides). Intervening levels and borderline systems are omitted for optimum simplicity and clarity. (Adapted from Krvin Laszlo, Introduction to Systems Philosophy, New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1973, 20.)

6

Unity in Diversity II.

A General Systems Interpretation of Sociocultural Evolution The general systems concepts and principles of evolution and systemic invariance provide a framework for the interpretation of the broad patterns of history. In this interpretation the investigated entities are formally or informally organized human groups, conceptualized as sociocultural systems. Such groups constitute open systems, i.e., have semipermeable boundaries that impose gradients on flows and represent discontinuities on the wider field of human social and cultural organization. Cohesiveness and continuity within the systems is higher, and rate of change lower, than in the relations between the systems. By such indicators, which apply to systems on biological and physical levels as well, it is possible to conceptually distinguish individual sociocultural systems, despite the many strands of relationships traversing the sociocultural field as a whole. Thus isolated, basic systemic invariances are exhibited by sociocultural systems. We find that they have an ordered structure, the subject matter of treatises in social and cultural anthropology, sociology, economics, and the political sciences. They manifest properties which are irreducible to the properties of their individual members (although the personalities of leading figures in authoritarian systems are reflected in the economic and political structure of the systems). Furthermore, we find that sociocultural systems come into the class of self-stabilizing homeostatic systems; they achieve stability through the coordinated use of their effectors to counteract deviations from their established steady-states. In the political realm these functions are associated with conservatism and the maintenance of the status quo. In less formalized societies an entire array of societal mechanisms serves to stabilize existing patterns of life, including mores, customs, religions, myths, traditions, rituals, and so forth. In any complex sociocultural system there are sets of coexisting dynamics serving to maintain continuity by counterbalancing deviations from "law and order". There are institutional structures, value systems, as well as

Laszlo/General Systems Theory of World Order 7 methods of persuasion and coercion, whereby the system seeks to reduce the effect of disturbance and return to its steady-state. This is a state characterized by the parameters of its constant contraints, i.e., the ideological, economic, and legal foundations of the community, state, or nation. Self-organization is also evidenced in sociocultural systems. Historically, self-organization is the process of evolving more adapted and efficient sensing, decision-making, and effector structures, enabling the system to control its environment and grow. Growth can occur on one or several levels, including economic, cultural, military, and territorial growth. Self-organization combined with self-stabilization gives us the rich patterns of history. Here we see stability alternating with dynamic change, and can appreciate that the latter conduces to more complex and efficient organization in viable societies, but may also lead to the extinction of entire sociocultural systems if it is out of phase with the objective constraints of the environment. In general, social structures are pattern-conserving, and technological innovations, as well as external disturbances, pattern transforming. Technology, with or without the challenge of external disturbance, tends to trigger growth through selforganization; social structures tend to capture the growth-curve at a viable level and stabilize the society on a new plateau of organization. The new level can be maintained if deviations forced on the system by external or internal perturbations do not exceed the organizational form's range of error correction. Beyond that range, positive feedback cycles take over, evolving the system toward new levels of organization, where it may or may not encounter appropriate forms of stability in the form of revised value systems, mores, reinterpreted or reformed traditions, and new juridical, economic, and political systems. These processes have been described by the present writer under the heading of self-stabilizing "Cybernetics I" and selforganizing "Cybernetics II". They correspond to the notions of Ervin Laszlo, Introduction to Systems Philosophy. Harper Torchbooks, 1973), p. 38 F.L.

(New York:

8 Unity in Diversity "morphostasis" and "morphogenesis" propounded by Buckley. Morphostasis refers to processes in complex system-environment exchanges that tend to preserve or maintain a system's given form, organization, or state. Morphogenesis refers to those processes which tend to elaborate or change a system's given form, structure, or state. Buckley emphasizes that homeostatic processes in organisms, and rituals in sociocultural systems, are examples of "morphostasis"; while biological evolution, learning, and societal development are examples of "morphogenesis". In his words, "the paradigm underlying the evolution of more and more complex adaptive systems begins with the fact of a potentially changing environment characterized by constrained variety and an adaptive system or organization whose persistence and elaboration to higher levels depends upon a successful mapping of some of the environmental variety and constraints into its own organization on at least a semipermanent basis". Consequently sociocultural systems qua complex adaptive systems map into their internal structure the environmental variety relevant to their persistence, and preserve and propagate the successful mappings. The process results in the evolution of a limited set of progressively more complex sociocultural systems, satisfying, through increasingly sophisticated mechanisms, the requirements of adaptation to the relevant conditions in the environment. Taylor has further developed this general systems model of sociocultural development, making explicit use of the concepts of Cybernetics I and Cybernetics II. He points out that systems models have tended to be conceptualized "horizontally", i.e., either as a single sociopolitical system, or else as a set of transacting systems in a similar state of development. But we still have to account for the "vertical" shifts of societal organization to explain the historical progression from relatively simple and Walter Buckley, Sociology and Modern Systems Theory. Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1967), pp. 58-66. 6

(Englewood

Ibid., p. 63.

Alastair M. Taylor, "Some Political Implications of the Forrester World System Model," The World System: Models, Norms, Applications, Op. Cit.

Laszlo/General Systems Theory of World Order 9 homogeneous societies to complex and heterogeneous ones. Thus the negative feedback model of functionalist sociology and systemsoriented political theory has to be supplemented with a model that has both negative and positive feedbacks -- morphostasis as well as morphogenesis. Taylor's model accounts for both systemic selfstabilization within a given level of societal organization and integration, and systemic transformation from level to level. Negative feedback (morphostatic) processes dominate when innovation in a society is at a low ebb and the society is primarily devoted to coping with its environmental contingencies through the existing norms and codes of organized behavior. Animal societies rely primarily on genetically coded mechanisms of societal organization (although some higher primates show definite traces of specifying these codes through acquired, socially communicated habits and practices); and primitive man, inasmuch as he relies more on his instincts than on his knowledge for survival, likewise operates within a societal dynamics that is genetically stabilized through biological inheritance. Its progress is dependent on mutations in the genotype, rather than on changes in the empirically acquired culture. With the appearance of tool-making abilities in man, such biologically adaptive stabilizing mechanisms give place to culturally adaptive modes. These are open to relatively rapid evolution, relying not on genetically but on empirically transmitted information. Cultural evolution, based on the ability to make tools, and create and communicate new knowledge, brings with it an improved control capability over the environment. It is encoded in a new societal structure, representing a distinct level above that of the instinctual, mainly ritualistic one. Technology -- in the broad sense where it includes all forms of purposive human control over the natural environment -- introduces a positive feedback element in the development of sociocultural systems: it changes the man-environment relation and prompts the appearance of new forms of societal organization. But all newly emerged forms of societal organization evolve conservative elements, providing for their own continuity and stability. These are the emerging institutions, values, mores, and their accompanying rituals, world views, religions and, at a more sophisticated stage, the established legal and political structures.

10 Unity in Diversity It thus appears that the societal technics just described function to stabilize sociocultural systems at their mature level of organization, and the material technics, or environmental technologies, destabilize systems and move them toward new levels of organization. The former process incorporates a dominant negative feedback element and is an instance of Cybernetics I; the latter contains a dominant positive feedback mode and represents Cybernetics II. Cybernetics I occurs both at primitive levels of societal existence, where such technologies as exist are mainly biologically coded and have little potential for inducing rapid changes in organization, and at mature stages in the development of societies where the culturally transmitted technologies have reached the limits of their operational effectiveness. By contract, Cybernetics 11 operates whenever new technologies are evolved in a sociocultrual system. Taylor gives as examples the control of fire and the invention of progressively more sophisticated and efficient tools by the Eskimos. Thanks to the development of a highly specialized technology, they were able to survive beyond the timberline and maintain a viable symbiosis with a low-energy physical environment. However, the constraints of the environment set upper limits on the development of their technology, and Eskimo societies stabilized at a well-defined level of societal organization, reinforced by traditions, values, mores, and habits. In other, more favorable environments technologies could evolve further, and societies stabilized at higher organizational levels. For example, the "Neolithic Revolution" of agriculture and the domestication of animals elicited new settlement patterns, new forms of societal organization, more complex division of labor, and the growth of the human population. However, in some areas the environment imposed limits on this technological development too, and forced the systems to stabilize at the upper bounds of their capacities. This was the case at Jericho and Jarmo, where the scarcity of water supplies set strict limits on the development of agriculture and the use of domestic animals. Q

5

Ibid.,

Laszlo/General Systems Theory of World Order

11

Where the environment was still more favorable, new technologies prompted further evolution in patterns of social organization. The transplanting of farming technics to the rich bottomlands of the Nile, Tigris—Euphrates, Indus, and Huangho made possible a great increase in agricultural productivity and could support a vastly increased population. This in turn called for the evolution of more complex forms of societal organization, with increasingly large groups of people functioning in an administrative and regulative, rather than in a directly productive capacity. Towns arose with progressively sophisticated administrative and governmental structures. With them we witness the move to the next major level of sociocultural organization, where urban civilizations control entire river valleys, equipped with mature technologies and well-defined rules of social behavior. Sociocultural systems moved beyond this stage of organization too, when further refinements of their environmental control capabilities enabled them to control vaster territories — less hospitable lands, and the seas. Thus arose the great agricultural and maritime civilizations of the Middle Ages. Their relatively stable patterns were shattered with the technological spin-offs of modern science: the advent of industrial civilization. We are now moving toward a global industrial and post-industrial civilization made possible through the invention of instantaneous global communication networks, worldwide trade facilitated by fast transport technologies, and increasing interdependence among the established political, military, economic, and ecologic structures. The evolution of sociocultural systems exhibits a growth pattern characterized by progressive hierarchization. Sociocultural evolution has proceeded by building dynamically stable systems through the mutual adaptation of existing systems, and then adapting the thus formed larger systems with similar systems in their environment to form still more inclusive units. Primitive societies such as clans and tribes, were integrated into village structures with the advent of agriculture and a sedentary mode of life; villages were in turn integrated with one another to form locally cohesive cultures. In some regions city-states arose; in others a more diffuse organization has emerged, bound by a common language, shared values, and economic and political interdependence. Already in classical times, the more powerful units could impose

12

Unity in Diversity

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their rule on the weaker ones and form empires. The rise of sea powers and international trade in the Middle Ages broug^ aDiut the phenomenon of mercantilism and the establishment of colonial regimes. With it evolved the European concept of the nation-state as a sovereign entity. In this century colonialism suffered a demise and the thereby liberated peoples entered on the scene as nation-states endowed with the legal rights of sovereignty. Since 1945 the number of such actors has more than doubled. Hence in the last decades the thrust toward the formation of progressively larger geopolitical units has been reversed. Although integration proceeds in all functional respects -- in the world economy, culture, communication, mobility, military bloc formation, and multinational corporate structure -- it is halted in the political area on the level of the seventeenth-century concept of sovereign nation-states. Attempts to weld larger regional politics have so far failed -- the federation of European states still awaits

Laszlo/General Systems Theory of World Order realization, and even the United Arab Republic, though bonded by strong common motivations focused by the presence of Israel, has shattered. Portugal remains virtually the sole empire, though an insignificant one; the political organization of the rest of the world, however heterogeneous it may be, is along the lines of the "sovereign equality" of states. Even participation in the United Nations, the only universal political organization, is premised on this recalcitrant and currently totally inadequate concept.

13

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GENERAL SYSTEMS AND THEIR VALUE FOR ACADEMIC RESEARCH AND TEACHING*

Alastair M. Taylor Departments of Geography and Political Science Queen's University Introduction This is an imposing title for my remarks today, but the original description was even more impressive: "The Importance of an Interdisciplinary Approach and its Theoretical Base, General System Theory, for Academic Research and Teaching." With all deference to my hosts, I would prefer to offer my views under a lighter, a more frivolous, but hopefully no less relevant a title, namely: "Education — Can We Shift It from Uh-Huh to Ah-hah?" For this is the burden of my statement, and please remember that it is couched in the form of an open-ended question. Let me exemplify the difference which I ascribe to "uh-huh" and "ah-hah" respectively with a few lines from Wordsworth's "Peter Bell." The great nature poet had little use for Peter Bell whom he condemns as follows: A primrose by the river's brim A yellow primrose was to him, And it was nothing more. . . The soft blue sky did never melt Into his heart; he never felt The witchery of the soft blue sky' There you have it -- for that primrose to be nothing more than a yellow primrose represented "uh-huh" for Peter Bell. But for those who can feel the "witchery of the soft blue sky," life is viewed and experienced in a different dimension: of discovery, of empathy, of significance, and of joy. ("Ah-hah") Many Peter Bells no doubt are born that way, but how many are rendered virtually insensate by our societal environment — and by our education and its methods? If the educational system has *This paper had been presented at the General Public lecture, Wilfrid Laurier University (24 March, 1974) in support of establishing an Interdisciplinary Research Institute. By permission of the author.

16 Unity in Diversity become humdrum, in effect "uh-huh", to so many of our students -and all too often the most intelligent and sensitive among them -does this situation not have something to tell us about the state of health of our formal education and, by extrapolation, about societal structure and value system? This problem of "uh-huh" versus "ah-hah" boils down, in my view, to a question of "significance" in two areas: content, and values. The first deals with knowledge and epistemology, in short, with "is". The second relates to relationships and axiology, in short, to "ought". We shall have more to say presently about "is" and "ought", but first I want to correlate "content" and "values" with two contemporary phenomena which have a direct, indeed a critical, bearing upon our educational structures and objectives. These two phenomena are: an information explosion, and a relationship explosion. Let me explain. The information explosion: The late John Grierson of the National Film Board (and one of the creators of the documentary film) once remarked that whereas for almost all of history, mankind had to exist with a paucity of information, today the problem is reversed: we have to cope with a plethora of information (and misinformation) which bombards us through the mass media and the schools alike. We are all but inundated by this phenomenon, so that how are we going to sort out the genuine from the spurious, the significant and enduring from the trivial and ephemeral? A science historian, Dr. Derek de Solla Price, has studied the exponential growth of scientific publications and treatises. The earliest surviving journal is the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, first published in 1665. It was followed rapidly by some three or four similar journals published by other national academies in Europe. Thereafter, as the need increased, so did the number of journals, reaching a total of about one hundred by the beginning of the nineteenth century, one thousand by the middle, and some ten thousand by 1900. According to the World List of Scientific Periodicals, a tome larger than any family Bible, we are now well on the way to the next milestone of a hundred thousand such journals.' That figure is part of a process of exponential growth of "a high order of accuracy," so that the "number has increased by a Derek J. de Solla Price, Science Since Babylon, (Yale University Press, 1961), p. 95.

Taylor/General Systems for Academic Research

17

factor of ten during every half-century, starting from a state in 2 1750 when there were about ten scientific journals in the world." It had become evident by 1830 that no scientist could read all the journals or keep conversant with all published work that might be relevant to his interest. So the abstract journal appeared on the scene. But according to Price, the "number of abstract journals has also increased, following the same law, multiplying by a factor of ten in every half-century" -- so that by 1950 its population had in turn reached the critical magnitude of about 300 -- which has in turn stimulated a demand for "abstracts of abstracts" involving some process of electronic sorting of abstracts to cope with the ever-rising flood of literature. The number of papers recorded in Physics Abstracts since it came into being in 1900 amounted (in 1961) to about 180,000 and the rate has "steadily doubled at a rate even faster than once every fifteen years." At a time when our ecological problems are raising the spectre of resource depletion as a result of exponential economic growth, it is hardly comforting to note that the information explosion shows no sign yet of moving towards steady-state in any form. Obviously, much of this plethora of data is of a secondary informational value -- or even trivial -- but meanwhile, how are to see the conceptual woods for all these disparate trees? So, what are we going to do? The relationship explosion: So much for our contemporary knowledge, or "is", crisis. But there is a concomitant crisis in relationships, that is, in developing linkages among these bits of information which can provide integration both within a given discipline and between disciplines. As we all know, each discipline has traditionally defined its own area of investigation, its own methodology, and its own goals. Yet this compartmentalization cannot be impermeable: astronomy and physics begat astrophysics, and we have biophysics, biochemistry, and so on. And in the social sciences we find increasing need for inter-disciplinary research, as in an area, for example, such as urban studies. But 2

Ibid., p. 96.

3

Ibid., p. 98.

4

Ibid., p. 102.

18 Unity in Diversity this kind of interdisciplinary approach reminds me somewhat of a military alliance, such as NATO: each discipline brings to the common task its own point of view and interests, and maintains its disciplinary sovereignty -- so that the conceptual cement is weak, and this arrangement (which is summative in its structure) remains very different from a constitutive structural arrangement, such as we find in a "common market" (as opposed to alliance) approach. So, though in this progressively interdependent world the need increases for a proliferation of conceptual and methodological relationships, the existing societal structures emphasize too often compartmentalization. And perhaps the most dramatic compartmentalization occurs on the campus between the sciences and the humanities — between the former's "is" and the latter's values or "ought". How did we get into C. P. Snow's bind -- and can we get out of it? This question brings me to my next part: From a Newtonian to a Normative Paradigm Here, I shall attempt to blueprint cursorily three paradigms, that term derived from Kuhn's well-known study of models or worldviews of reality. The traditional religious paradigm. It has been said that the religious model of reality, as held traditionally by the Christian Church, was dealt three traumatic blows by science. You will recall the creation of the universe, as conceptualized by Genesis. For the first three days, God labored to create the earth. Then on the fourth day He fashioned the sun and moon, and "He made the stars also." But Copernicus' heliocentric theory displaced our planet from its fixed, central place in the scheme of things, and thereby robbed it of its unique status. But let us proceed with Genesis. On the fifth day the Lord created the animal kingdom, and on the sixth day He made man "in His own image, in the image of God created He him," and man was given dominion over the fish, and fowl, and cattle, and over "every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." And that passage strengthened Western man's view that he was not a part of, but rather apart from, nature (a dichotomy which was to play considerable ecological havoc). But in the 19th century, Charles Darwin's researches had the effect of robbing Homo of his fixed, central, and unique status in biology. Yet surely man retained his primacy among the primates? For had he not been endowed with Logos, the reasoning faculty that justifies

Taylor/General Systems for Academic Research 19 our self-appointed title of Homo-sapiens? Not so, said Freud: man's vaunted rational nature is shot through the sub-conscious fixations and irrational drives that make him the plaything of forces over which he exercises no control. Indeed, the philosophers, from Moses through Copernicus, Darwin, and Freud until Bertrand Russell on the "descent of man", could contend that "man is not a rational animal but merely deludes himself by thinking that he is." In the religious paradigm, precisely because man was held to have been created in God's image, and possessed free will, in the Lord's words, "man is become one of us, to know good and evil." In effect, man was deemed to possess not only knowledge but a sense of values. The "is" of his terrestrial experience was indissolubly linked with "ought". The religious paradigm never divorced epistemology from axiology. Knowledge was always tied to conduct. The Newtonian Paradigm. However, the magnificent successes of astronomy and physics in early modern times, culminating in the Newtonian synthesis, established a new scientific paradigm which in effect viewed the universe as a gigantic mechanism, operated by impersonal physical laws, so that it was likened to an intricate and splendid timepiece, with God in turn relegated at most to the role of clock designer and winder. The triumph of mechanism, strengthened by the "practical" accomplishments of the Industrial Revolution and the "utilitarianism" of the factory system and Bentham, enthroned the new scientific model of reality -- and was in turn carried over as the best model for emulation by Western Society. This scientific paradigm was based upon "objectivity" -it was value-free -- in short, it was concerned with "is" and had no place per se with "ought". This mechanistic model was to be transposed in turn from physics to biology, while in the human disciplines, for example, Ranke set out to transform history into a full fledged science — by finding out how things really were (wie es eigentlich gewesen) and to let the "facts" speak for themselves. Meanwhile, other scholars employed Darwinism to explain societal phenomena in biological terms, thereby creating Social Darwinism with its justification of "survival of the fittest" as a value-free concept to apply to human activities.

20 Unity in Diversity But later historians challenged Ranke's approach, pointing out that a fact of itself is of little value unless it conveys a meaning. And in our century, philosophers of science have concluded, in Heel an's words, that "There is . . .no object of experience that does not involve in some way the subjectivity of the knower . . . There is, then, no immediate, intuitive access to a domain of scientific facts, and consequently there are no epistemically privileged scientific facts." And as Kuhn points out, "normal science" operates within the prevailing view of reality held by a given society — even as the Newtonian model of celestial mechanics was based on certain implicit assumptions, such as the separateness and absolute properties of time, space, and motion. We can agree with Skolimowski that "all observation is value laden" ("Weltanschauung infused.") "Consequently, the statement that 'scientific descriptions are free of values' should really read: 'except for the values in which the pursuit of science and the edifice of science are based.' We can summarize our argument to this point as follows: the traditional scientific paradigm that dichotomized mind and matter, man and his environment, and knowledge and values, cannot be sustained. The nexus between man and his environment is continuous and duo-directional -- and he compartmentalizes "is" and "ought" at his peril and in any case, only temporarily. Towards a Normative Paradigm. Why should this be the case? For our part, in searching for an answer, we recall that man has been called that species which makes tools to a set and regular pattern. But one cannot invent a tool unless he has a purpose in mind -- in short, Homo is also teleological, i.e., he is a goal-seeker. And in making choices of goals and tools, he is confronted with "good", "worse", and "better". Alone among the species, Homo is selfconsciously teleological and axiological: he is caught up in ends and means alike, and consequently he has to advance in tandem both "is" and "ought". And so we come back to values -- and to Peter Bell's "yellow primrose", and the "witchery of the soft blue sky". Those phrases may not be susceptible of quantification, but they are essential ingredients in the totality of man's relationship

5 Patrick A. Heelan, "The Logic of Framework Transpositions," International Philosophical Quarterly, XI, 3, Sept./71, p. 316.

Taylor/General Systems for Academic Research 21 with his world. Just what is the nature of that relationship today, given the dynamics of this century's technology? First of all, it has introduced the space age which means that for the first time in history, 20th century man has acquired a three-dimensional environmental control capability. Note that when one goes up in a plane, his perspective alters, and he perceives a new set of visual and environmental relationships. The cartographical projections which enabled mariners to operate on two-dimentional "flat space" will not assist the plane's navigator: the Mercator projection has to be replaced by say a polar projection. This circular, global and configuration is seen again in the seating arrangement for the major organs at the United Nations. The parameters of our relationship with our physical environment have undergone a quantum shift -from two to three dimensions, from the geomorphological discontinuities that traditionally separated nations to the technological continuum that enables a hovercraft to move across beaches and seas, a space capsule to circumnavigate the globe every 90 minutes for months on end -- and an audio-visual signal to rotate the earth at the equator 7 times in one second. It is an Einsteinian paradigm in which time, space, and motion are fused, and transactionality occurs between all entities and their respective environments. It is a paradigm in which distance has been telescoped, and political, economic, and military compartmentalized independence has been replaced by interdependence and mutual involvement. In short, I suggest that the only realistic paradigm, or view of reality, that can be sustained is one that is holistic and transactional in all its manifestations. And this asseveration brings me to my next area of focus: Systems and Educational Theory and Practice. Systems thinking is congruent with -- indeed an integral part of -- this 20th century paradigm which I have sketched. In the late 1920's, von Bertalanffy had called for an "organismic biology" whose fundamental task should be the "discovery of the laws of biological systems at all levels of organization.". In advocationg this "new philosophy of nature," he rejected logical positivism with its epistemology determined by the concepts of atomism, and reductionism. In place of linear causality connecting two variables as the basic category, von Bertalanffy and other investigators

22 Unity in Diversity developed a system theory which stressed concepts such as "wholeness," isomorphism, steady-state maintenance, and goal-directedness. As von Bertalanffy pointed out, complex phenomena must be explained not only in terms of their components, but also in regard to the entire set of relations between the components. Here we get to the concept of "system" which can be defined as a whole functioning as such by virtue of the relations of its parts. Hence the expression made familiar by GST: "the whole is more than the sum of the parts". There is nothing mysterious about it. Whereas one type of complex possesses summative characteristics, that is, it may be understood as the sum of its elements considered in isolation -• such as a heap of sand -- a second type of complex, or "system", possesses constitutive characteristics, which are not explainable from the characteristics of isolated parts but, in addition, depend on the specific relations within the complex — such as the three lines which, when joined, become a triangle with its own emergent properties (such as the sum of its angles equals 180 degrees). This holistic approach proved to be highly fruitful in biology, where it was first explored by von Bertalanffy and Weiss. Subsequently, it found applications of great promise likewise in the social and behavioral sciences. In consequence an increasing number of investigators adopted holism as a methodology. Those among them who were philosophically oriented saw in holism not merely a competent methodological instrument, but also a valid conception of the empirical world. This conception now functions as a basic presupposition in the field of contemporary empirical systems research.^ Contemporary systems research cuts across the following boundaries, hitherto largely unpenetrated in contemporary systematic thought: (1) traditional disciplinary limits; (2) culturalideological barriers; (3) quantitative-qualitative, or "sciencephilosophy" gaps; and (4) descriptive-normative, or "pure vs. humanistic science" distinctions.7 Ervin Laszlo, "Introduction: The Origins of General Systems Theory in the Work of Von Bertalanffy," The Relevance of General Systems Theory, (New York: Braziller, 1972), p. 6. 7

Ibid., p. 7.

Taylor/General Systems for Academic Research 23 As Laszlo has pointed out, coherent and systematic theories of the empirical world are based on two "primary presuppositions": 1. the world exists; and 2. it is, at least in some respects, intelligibly ordered, that is, it is open to rational inquiry. (And this reminds me of the words of Henry Adams that the ages of Faith and Science were not so far apart in their fundamental postulates: "the assertion or assumption of ultimate unity has characterized the Law of Energy as emphatically as it has characterized the definition of God in Theology. It is a reproach to Saint Thomas Aquinas, it is equally a reproach to Clerk-Marxwell.")8 Armed with this monistic, non-reductionist view of the phenomenal world, systems theorists approach that world in terms of a number of invariant ordering constituents (or "integrative principles"), all of which are logically compatible with one another. Thus the phenomenal world is seen to be structured and functioning as a macrohierarchy of systems at levels of progressive complexity. These systems exist in time-space; they are subject to quantization (continuity-discontinuity); to symmetry (invariance under transformation); and to forms of equilibration (such as homeostasis among organisms, which are open systems functioning within a larger ecology, and subject as such to negative and positive forms of feedback. This concept of "feedback" is of course a familiar aspect of systems theory and methodology because of the inseparable nexus and transactions occurring between a system and its environment. For purposes of illustration, I might pick out two integrative principles which are central to GST and, as will be shown later, because they can prove powerful methodological and analytical tools in academic research and teaching. The first is isomorphism. The interwar years saw important advances made in understanding the relationship of sensory, cortical, and motor neural nets, arranged circularly as well as linearly, thereby permitting data fed in to be "trapped" and retained as information. World War II offered great scope for the practical application of these developments in neural and information theory. For example, the speed of moving targets required the invention of devices capable of o

Henry Adams, Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres, (New York, New American Library (Mentor), 1961), p. 364.

24 Unity in Diversity processing enormous amounts of information rapidly so as to make appropriate "decisions" and to function on the principle of selfcorrection. From the appearance of machines designed to process information has come postwar developments in automation and the science of cybernetics. Important implications flow from these developments. On one hand, interwar neurological research explained how organisms, in addition to transforming energy as mechanisms, also function as systems capable of processing, storing, and retrieving information, and of making decisions. On the other hand, these attributes characterize non-living systems as well. Consequently, it becomes possible to generalize the concept of "organism" to the concept of "organized system." "Organized g systems include organisms." Thus the principle of isomorphism permits us to group and compare one-to-one correspondences between living and non-living entities on the basis of characteristics or attributes shared as organized systems. Conversely, we can employ this principle also so as to reveal and analyze those attributes which make living and non-living systems dissimilar. The second integrative principle that we want to single out for illustration is that of successive levels of organization. Isomorphism helps explain how systems share similarities of structure and function, but we have also to account for degrees or stages of complexity among organized phenomena. We reject the reductionist thesis that laws at the lowest level are sufficient to explain phenomena at all levels; rather, we insist that the laws in the more complex biological field, while not identical with those of physics and chemistry, are nevertheless logically compatible with them. Similarly, we contend that the organization of the most complex level, the sociocultural, can be expected to exhibit this same logical compatibility. The structuring of the phenomenal world as a hierarchy of successive levels of organized complexity recognizes the interaction of the "individual" -- be it an electron, atom, molecule, crystal, cell, plant, animal, tribe, state, and so on -- with its larger environment. The attainment of each new level of organization is Q

Anatol Rapaport, "Foreword," Modern Systems Research for the, Behavioral Scientist (Walter Buckley, editor), (New York:Aldine, 1968), p. xix.

Taylor/General Systems for Academic Research

25

accompanied by an emergence of new attributes or properties -- as in the case of water at the molecular level which possesses properties not found in either of its atomic "parents". The addition of new levels of integration has not involved the abandonment of integration at lower levels, but henceforth the lower-level entities serve as subordinate units in the more complex system. We might list some of the uniformities found among integrative levels: a. Each level organizes the level below it plus one or more emergent qualities. Consequently, the integrative levels are cumulative upwards, and the mergence of qualities marks the degree of complexity of the conditions prevailing at a given level, as well as giving to that level its relative autonomy. b. The mechanism of an organization is found at the level below, its purpose at the level above. c. The higher, i.e., more complex, the level, the greater its variety of characteristics, the smaller its population. This is accounted for by the increase in the number of emergent qualities or properties, and the fact that a given unit is composed of subordinate units. From the standpoint of population, the integrative levels form a pyramid. d. The higher level cannot be reduced to the lower; since each level has its own characteristic structure and emergent properties, any such attempt results in the fallacy of reductionism. e. A disturbance introduced level reverberates at all the severity of such disturbances degree of integration of that

into an organization at any one levels it covers. The extent and are likely to be proportional to the organization.

f. Every organization, at whatever level it exists, has some sensitivity and responds in kind. Examples of characteristic behaviour include: action-reaction at the physical level, combinationrearrangement at the chemical level, sensitivity-reactivity at the biological level, stimulus-response at the psychological level, and contact-adaptation at the culture level. Had we the occasion, we could examine a number of other ordering constituents, or integrative principles, some of which are present in GST, while others are not usually associated with systems thinking yet are logically compatible and mutually supportive. (In association with a number of specialists, we have dealt with the place of integrative principles in a recently published work.) These include Time, Space, Motion, Energy as constructs, a number of "principles of regulation", such as invariance (or symmetry), equilibrium, the binary principle (which makes possible "dialectic" and "process"), quantization (continuity-discontinuity which we

26 Unity in Diversity find not only in the physical and biological domains but in sociocultural structures and activities as well), statistical regularities, and action-reaction (cause-effect). There are also various principles that can be employed to demonstrate epistemological relationships. Since the publication of this book, attention has been increasingly focussed on what might be regarded as yet another epistemological relationship, one which seems to have far-reaching significance, namely, prepositional and appositional modes of thinking as correlated with the functions of the two hemispheres of our brain. This area of investigation may have much to tell us about our binary ways of thinking: linear of sequential, and reticular, and their relationship in turn to apperception and creativity (and it may even help to do some bridging of C. P. Snow's "Two Cultures"). Summary of the General Systems Approach. Because of their implications for academic research and teaching, the following attributes and methods of GST might be summarized: 1. It views the universe as monistic and non-reductionistic. 2. Hence, it espouses a holistic approach to the understanding and study of the universe which it regards not as a "big, buzzing confusion" but as orderly and capable of yielding meaning to man. In other words, while a systems approach has much to say about entropy — or randomness and chaos — it views the universe also in terms of negative entropy, that is, as an organized metasystem, in short, as cosmos. 3. A systems approach seeks out isomorphisms of structure and function in all the domains of nature, and the principle of integrative levels enables these isomorphisms to be classified and compared on the basis of complex!fication. 4. A systems approach emphasizes organization and hence relationships among systems and their environments; consequently, the significance which it attaches to circular causality and to feedback processes (both negative and positive). 5. Man is viewed as a "holon" (to use Arthur Koestler's term); as such he is an integral part of our terrestrial ecosystem; moreover because (by virtue of his level of systemic organization) he is at once a model-maker, tool-maker, and goal-setter, man the problem-solver is involved in making choices -- and these choices represent judgments and values. Hence a systems approach leads one to a systems philosophy, which must be no less holistic in turn. And as such, it must be able to account for man and his See Henry Margenau (editor), Integrative Principles of Modern Thought. (New York, Gordon and Breach, 1972), p. 522.

Taylor/General Systems for Academic Research 27 works not only in epistemological but in axiological and aesthetic terms -- and, ultimately, for those who wish to pursue the quest, in the sphere of ontology as well. And so we are talking not only about Homo fabricans but Homo concipiens, and yet, Homo ludens. too. The aesthetic factor in man is linked with the play factor as well. (To return to Genesis: "And God saw every thing that He had made, and, behold, it was very good." Creation is a joyful act, and it is linked with play. By the sixth day, everything had come together — as a "system" ' "It was very good" is the equivalent, I suggest, of "Ah-hah"). The Systems Approach and "Ah-hah". Man the model-maker has to be able to perceive relationships in order to be psychologically satisfied. The absence of pattern and goals can dysfunctionalize him. Gestalt psychology demonstrates how the brain comprehends sensory stimuli in terms of wholes of one kind or another. We may understand a disparate piece of phenomena, but it is relationships which excite us and unlock our creative capacities. In that sense, the difference between "uh-huh" and "ah-hah" is the difference between: summative and constitutive forms of perception and thought; the child sweating over say fractions without understanding them and the sudden realization of the significance of the relationship between two numbers; the disparate pieces of a jigsaw puzzle and the satisfaction that comes when the pieces fall into place, the puzzle "comes together", and the pattern has emerged: the kaleidoscope that changes pattern with the same bits of colored glass because of a quarter of an inch rotation by the perceiver; the elimination of epicycles from Copernicus' geocentric theory by a reconceptualization of spatial relationships between the sun and planets, including the earth; Darwin's making use of the same species but arriving at a new, world-shaking hypothesis because to the older theory of fixed species he added organism-environment relationality, i.e., "process"; Einstein's making use of the same ordering constituents as Newton: time, space, and motion, but reconceptualizing them, and thereby getting solutions to problems which the earlier model could not solve.

28 Unity in Diversity In effect, this shift to "ah-hah" seems to involve a new set of relations, a reordering of data, in short, a new "organization" of the phenomenal world in terms which are significant to the organizer and to the societal system with which he interacts. And that word "significance" is surely at the core of any diagnosis or remedial treatment of our contemporary educational system. Some Applications of Systems to Research and Teaching We have attempted thus far to present GST as a possible model appropriate for understanding our world and, mutatis mutandis, helping to serve the educational institutions of our day. A "model" can serve one or more of say three purposes: 1. description; 2. analysis; and 3. prediction. Inter alia, the principle of integrative levels has something to say about our capacity for prediction in the physical and social sciences. That capacity progressively optimizes as we move from our existing level of conceptual and/or societal organization "downwards," i.e., to levels that comprise fewer variables and act as sub-systems that are integrated within, and sometimes ordered by, the higher-level system. That is why prediction is much greater at the atomic and moleculr levels of organization than at the sociocultural -- a fact of life with which the social scientists have to live 1 Yet even the sociocultural system is capable of some predictability, if we function at the macro-level and employ the principle of statistical regularities - such as the stochastic approach found in acturial tables (but which are sufficiently accurate to enable life insurance companies to reap handsome profits). Meanwhile, I would suggest that a systems approach can be fruitfully employed in the areas of description and analysis. Isomorphism and related integrative principles provide both a conceptual frame of reference and corpus of analytical tools. This is because these ordering constituents themselves obey a fundamental integrative principle, namely, invariance under transformation -- so that these ordering constituents not only remain constant despite systemic or environmental changes, but permit existing data, and again new information, to be organized coherently and systematically. In short, I am suggesting at this point that with these principles -- and perhaps only with them -we can attempt to cope with, and control, the information and relationship explosions with which we began this lecture. Let me

Taylor/General Systems for Academic Research 29 give you an example from my personal experience. For some 30 years I have been involved in a textbook (soon to be in its seventh edition) which purports to provide an overview of civilization on a global scale. How do you set about organizing all that data? My co-author and I utilized two ordering concepts which were invariant, despite all societal differences and processual alterations. The first was to recognize the centrality of the man-environment nexus, that is, that all people have always interacted within a planetary time-space manifold. And that mankind's technology and its use relate directly to that nexus. The second ordering concept was the adoption of the cultural anthropologist's "universal culture pattern". Irrespective of time and place, men have been following a pattern containing certain common elements, such as social organization, political institutions, economic activities, law, science and/or technology, art, religion and philosophy. All peoples, then, have cultures. It follows that the basic differences between the farmers of ancient China and those of present-day Saskatchewan are due mainly to the fact that their culture traits are at different stages of development -- or that they have worked out different methods of solving the same problems. As we might expect, too, the relative importance of each of these major "common elements" in the universal culture pattern will vary according to the level of organization and integration of a given societal system, as conceptualized by its particular world-view as well as by the extent to which that construct is actualized by its technology and societal institutions and behavior. As a construct, the universal culture pattern satisfies the criteria for any meaningful statement about invariance, since it takes cognizance of both that which remains constant and those operations or transformations under which invariance holds. As a result, it can serve a dual purpose. On one hand, it enables sociocultural data to be subsumed under conceptual common denominators, thereby permitting comparative studies to be made "vertically" (in terms of continuities and discontinuities alike among the various levels of societal organization in terms either of a whole culture pattern or, again, of specific segments of that pattern). At the same time, it provides a schema for analyzing "horizontally" the character and interaction of the components comprising any given society or level, functioning holistically as an organized

30 Unity in Diversity system. I would like to make the following points regarding this particular example. First of all, the two ordering constructs employed provide an invariant frame of reference for author and reader alike in the organizing and analyzing of materials -- and such frames of reference and their organizing powers are not that common in the average student's campus experiences these days. Secondly, the two ordering principles have a synergistic effect: together they make possible -- in fact require -- the introduction of yet other integrative constituents, such as the principle of successive levels of organization, quantization, and the dynamics of equilibration between a societal system and its environment. When we first wrote this textbook, we were proceeding empirically and in an ad hoc fashion -- and I am now envisaging a systematic utilization of GST and integrative principles in a future edition. Finally, however, let me add that those two ordering concepts have stood the test of time and successive editions: they have combined to produce an organizational format and analytical approach which have proved themselves in terms of content and pedagogy alike. A systems approach has been increasingly adopted by the physical and biological scientists -- as evidenced, for example, in a variety of studies on homeostasis involving positive and negative feedback mechanisms, or, again, in ecological studies. Management specialists have taken to systems theory and methods in turn, as well as engineers and specialists in cybernetics -including Forrester at MIT who has employed systems principles and the megacomputer to develop a world dynamic model in an effort to simulate possible developments in the decades ahead on the basis of the interaction of certain major variables, such as population increase, diminution of non-replenishable resources, pollution indices, andyexponential economic growth (as manifested in GNP). The social sciences are becoming progressively involved also in systems research. Talcott Parsons and Buckley have developed models of society as a complex adaptive system. Easton is wellknown for the application of systems thought and methods to the study of political systems. It is hardly surprising, in fact, that the increasing use of the term "political system" has been accompanied by an ever-growing systems-oriented literature in political science and international relations. Within systems

Taylor/General Systems for Academic Research 31 analysis, some scholars have focused upon a "functional" approach, that is, they have been concerned with the needs or requisites of political systems, and the structures (institutions, activities, etc.) which fulfill them. Again, systems has been applied to different political systems for the purpose of locationg structural and behavioral isomorphisms and to study the interaction of these systems with their societal environments by means of feedback processes. Thus with Easton, the environment's inputs take the form of demands and supports -- for example, demands for the allocation of goods and services, the regulation of societal behavior, participation in the political system, and communication of policy intent by the system's elites; while supports take such material form as the payment of taxes and military service, as well as obedience to laws and regulations, voting and other forms of political activity, and respect for public authority. The political system works upon these inputs, as well as those factors generated within the system itself, and converts them into outputs, which take the form of "decisions and actions." And these decisions and actions affect the environment (by means of feedback loops) thereby altering the societal environment and affecting in turn the latter's further inputs into the political system. Thus we have an open-ended system, equilibrating within the dynamics of its particular societal environment. The systems approach is also being utilized increasingly in geographical theory and methods. Thus, systems analysis has been applied to the study of physical processes (such as the interaction of a river system and the geomorphological factors comprising its physical environment), to spatial analysis, and to urban problems and planning. Meanwhile, some of us are in the process of applying GST to the development of a systems model for the analysis of political geography. To illustrate my remarks I thought it may be useful to show how I have structured a course at Queen's on Environments and Technology -- and the role played by GST in its theoretical formulation and empirical demonstration. (It will take the form of a book in the next year by Braziller as a study of a systems approach to societies at different historical ages and organizational stages.)

32 Unity in Diversity Our systems model endeavors to account for both: (a) systemic levels of socio-cultural organization; and (b) cybernetic processes that demonstrate (i) systemic self-stabilization within a given level of organization and integration; and (ii) systemic transformation so as to result in a sociocultural quantum leap across an environment frontier. The question of delineating the number and categories of organizational levels depends upon one's particular purpose. I approached this question from the basic standpoint of the manenvironment nexus because, of course, sociocultural systems are "open" and exhibit feedback stabilization with their overall environment. Regarded horizontally, each level depicts transactions occurring between the physical environmental factors, the stage of manipulative equilibration (as made possible by existing technologies and science), transportation facilities, communication networks, and the paradigmatic character and organization of the given society in which the political process ("the authoritative allocation of values") functions. It is a geo-political model inasmuch as it correlates specific levels of societal and political organization with precise stages -- or dimensions -- of environmental control as shown in the expleted- and impleted- space columns. Viewed vertically, these progressive stages of overall environmental occupance assume a geometrical sequence: Point-line-planevolume as man's control capabilities increase. This sequence also demonstrates the actualization of the principle of integrative levels: each such level tends to build upon the properties and societal experiences of the level(s) below and in turn contribute its own "withinputs" and outputs -- which take the forms of new technologies and new societal structures, accompanied by new paradigmatic apperceptions of the man-environment relationship. We can discern progressive developments in complexity and heterogeneity although in any one historical situation a different, or even contrary, experience may occur. In summary, figure 1 provides a time-space grid, showing both societal-environmental stabilization when viewed horizontally (process in planetary space) and societalenvironmental quantization when examined vertically (process on planetary time). Mankind's overall experience has been to expand anthropogeographic space concomitantly with its accelerative contraction of the temporal sequences associated with new stages

Figure 1

Figure

Taylor/General Systems for Academic Research 35 of environmental control, i.e., from S, -- the food-gathering level of socioeconomic organization, through $„ -- the foodproducing level, and sequentially Sg, the level to which the Forrester thesis is directed. The relation of species other than man to their environments is determined primarily by Darwinian, genetically coded mechanisms, so that the evolutionary process can be described as adaptive equilibration — because, while the overall process is mutagenic and open-ended, and hence exhibits positive feedback, negativefeedback mechanisms dominate in the maintenance of individual species and their members. Conversely, organisms with sensorycognitive circuits are at the stage of manipulative equilibration to the extent that they possess deviation-amplifying capabilities. Applying the principle of integrative levels, we can understand why adaptive, i.e. instinctive, homeostatic equilibration can be retained at the lower levels of an organism such as Homo, who, at the same time, functions consciously at the highest, or cognitive, level in order to adapt the external environment to fit his own constructs. (In fact, the concomitant presence of negative and positive forms of feedback free him from having to devote all his conscious efforts to satisfying basic physiological needs, as his autonomic nervous system takes care of them). It is by "man the toolmaker" that the equilibrating process shifts progressively from a reactively adaptive to an actively manipulative role. Hence our model recognizes the central function of technology in the development and transformation of sociocultural systems from Paleolithic times to the present; in other words, the role of technology and science, i.e., "material technics," as positive-feedback processes. Concomitantly, we should also recognize the role of societal institutions and mores to maintain continuity and persistence in any sociocultural system. In this respect, therefore, "societal technics" function as negative-feedback processes so as to ensure overall stability and societal invariance under technological and environmental transformations. Building upon the type of systemic schema employed by Easton, we have diagramed (Fig. 2) a model which (a) accounts for (i) biospheric and (ii) sociocultural inputs from the total environment; (b) recognizes the given sociocultural system as (i) converter and (ii) comprising numerous subsystems (including the political); and

36 Unity in Diversity (c) relates its outputs -- material and societal technics -- to positive and negative forms of feedback. The diagram indicates how material and societal technics interact and, depending upon the state of the system vis-a-vis its environment, how they combine so as to result in systemic selfstabilization or, alternatively, in systemic transformation. We shall term the first systemic process "Cybernetics I; the second Cybernetics II." The diagram also aims to show that whereas Cybernetics I, comprising net negative-feedback processes, acts to stabilize a given socio-cultural system within its environment, the dominant positive-feedback processes comprising Cybernetics II can (i) increase the system's negentropy and information gain, and thereby also increase its environmental control capability so as to actualize the existing potential the system-environment nexus, and/or (ii) enable the system's outputs (in the form of material and societal technics) to cross the permeable frontiers separating one environment from another and thus quantize to a new level of societal organization. As I have stated elsewhere: "Quantization occurs when deviation is amplified to the point where no deviationcorrecting mechanism can prevent the rupturing of the basic systemic framework, i.e., when the latter can no longer contain and canalize the energies and thrust which have been generated." 12 We might briefly illsutrate the application of Cybernetics I and II to actual societal experiences. Examples of Cybernetics I are subhominid societies wherein Darwinian mechanisms are fully operative; again, mature or senescent sociocultural systems in I borrowed these terms from Ervin Laszlo's "theory of natural systems," in which he describes "System-cybernetics I" as "function of adaptation to environmental disturbances resulting in the reestablishment of previous steady state in the system"; and "System-cybernetics II" as function of adaptation to environmental disturbances resulting in the reorganization of the system's state, involving, with a high degree of probability, an overall gain in the system's negentropy and information content." See his Introduction to Systems Philosophy (New York: Gordon and Breach, 1972; Harper Torchbooks, 1973), p. 36. 1 ^Alastair M. Taylor, "Evolution-Revolution, General Systems Theory, and Society," in Evolution-Revolution: Patterns of Development in Nature, Society, Man and Knowledge, R. Gotesky and E. Laszlo, eds., (New York:Gordon and Breach, 1971), p. 123. As I stated therein, while overall sociocultural development has been "upward", i.e., in the direction of progressive complexification and heterogeneity, history is replete with instances of quantization from more complex to simpler levels of societal organization.

Taylor/General Systems for Academic Research 37 which the available material technics have achieved their maximal environmental control capability and reached steady state. Under Cybernetics II we can distinguish between two types of societal experience: Systemic self-organization and development, and systemic transformation (environmental quantization). As an example of the first type (involving the actualization of the potential present in the system's technics vis-a-vis the potential and constraints present in the environment), we might choose lithic man's advancement into the high latitudes. It was made possible by the control of fire (energy production) and the invention of progressively sophisticated and efficient tools (such as microliths) This development resulted in what has been described as a "tour de force" by the Eskimos, who attained maximal use of such a technology so as to survive beyond the timberline and maintain a viable symbiosis with an austere, i.e., low-energy, physical environment. However, since environmental constraints set boundaries on expansion and control of the biosphere, negative-feedback mechanisms were to become dominant, resulting in overall societal stabilization (Cybernetics I). Eskimo society has remained at S, (in figure 1). But through Cybernetics II we can see how material techniques acquired in one society at a less complex level of organization permit systemic transformation to occur by means of a different environmental relationship, or in a new environment altogether. In Mesolithic times in southwestern Asia, the Natufians used stone sickles to cut certain wild grasses. The way was thus prepared for a technological quantum in this same environment, which took the form of "withinputs" in the existing societal system: the domestication of these ancestors of wheat and barley, and also of the further domestication of certain wild species of animals. The resulting "Neolithic Revolution" (Gordon Childe's term), transforming the man-environment relationship and quantizing to S?, not only extended society's environmental control capability but created new settlement patterns, new societal organization, and a more complex division of labor, while an increased and relatively assured food supply enabled a larger population to be supported. However, at this stage of incipient agriculture, limited water supplies (as at Jericho and Jarmo) set rigid limits upon growth, so that ultimately steady state (Cybernetics I) eventuated.

38 Unity in Diversity We can see even more dramatically how positive feedback can bring about a quantum leap when new material technics are applied to a different environment. Whereas in Jericho and Jarmo the manenvironment relationship stabilized at the Neolithic village level, the transplanting of farming technics to the rich bottom lands of the Nile, Tigris-Euphrates, Indus, and Huang-ho resulted in a hundred-fold increase in food harvests, making possible a "social surplus" that unprecedentedly increased population numbers and densities, and freed many persons to work in occupations and localities removed from the fields. Hence we find the rise of towns, accompanied by more complex governmental and administrative structures, hieratic elites, etc. In short, the "Urban revolution" ($3) describes a systemic transformation in which environmental control eventually covers an entire river valley and raises technological and societal activities to new negentropic levels and complexification, resulting in the first "civilizations." With this hydraulic technology, control of the river eventually reaches a new plateau of stabilization because of the constraints inherent in the surrounding environment. Thence Cybernetics II yields once more to Cybernetics I, the latter reinforced by societal technics which maintain systemic equilibration for millenia in these riverine civilizations. Political Geography — Systems Model a. This GST meta-model can also be employed in the development of a new theoretical framework for Political Geography (which is currently deficient in theory, based as it is traditionally on mechanical, balance-of-power models, though Hartshorne, Jones and Clark and Rosenthal have made some useful conceptual contributions.) b. We can use PIL to show the evolution of politics -- which can be diagrammed also as follows: (Geopolitical -- PIL diagram). c. The question facing mankind today is: how to, or will we, get to a trans-national level of political organization, and what forms do we have as options. It would appear that we have three options from which to choose in the remaining decades of our century: a. "Ptolemaic" Nationalism In effect, this is a continuation of the present nation-state system, in which each sovereign actor unilaterally determines its own "vital interests" and regards its relations to other nationstates in two-valued, either/or terms. ("Nations do not have

Taylor/General Systems for Academic Research 39 eternal friends, only eternal interests.") Differences among states remain susceptible to resolution by coercion or actual physical violence — hence the probable continuation of arms races and wars. Alliances represent a concatenation of disparate, sovereign states linked in a common cause against some other concatenation. Their purpose and structure are not suited to transformation into supranational "communities." Nor do the structure, membership, and objectives of the nation-state system conduce to the mounting and implementation of the kind of global strategy required to cope sufficiently soon or adequately with the massive challenges posed by the Forrester model scenarios. b. "Copernican" Internationalism Alternatively, of course, it is conceivable that the nations of the world will agree to yield their traditional juridical pretensions and political unilateralism so as to transform the United Nations into a global government with powers not only to take executive initiatives but to enforce those decisions. Some scholars have attempted to show how the present charter could be amended so as to create such a world authority. But the organization's first quarter of a century of existence makes such a development appear highly unlikely. A very different form of Copernicanism could instead emerge. This would be the agglomeration of so much technological, military, and economic resources under the control of one or two superpowers as to make permanent their dominance — perhaps as twin stars encircled by their respective constellations of satellite dependencies. This geopolitical configuration could be equated with geoeconomic Copernicanism in the form of multinational corporations functioning throughout the world, with their headquarters, research facilities, and charters of incorporation located in a given superpower. The result in centralization of authority to make decisions and allocate resources might well facilitate initiatives to rectify existing ecological imbalances, but this very centralization of political and economic power would almost certainly result in coercive rather than co-operative action. c. Multilevel Transactionality Based upon the principle of integrative levels, the model proposed here recognizes concurrent existence and behavior at different levels of societal organization. Such multilevel transact! onality applies no less to political systems (i.e., subsystems

40 Unity in Diversity within an encompassing socio-cultural system). Already, unitary political structures -- such as in Western Europe -- possess two levels of government, national and municipal, while federal structures as in North America, Australia, and India -- have three tiers of governmental organization (federal, state [provincial], and municipal). Transactionality occurs both horizontally, i.e., among departments and decision-making processes in each tier, and vertically, i.e., between governmental and administrative tiers as well. Each of us lives concurrently at more than one level of sociopolitical organization. "Sovereignty" resides in all levels of the national polity simultaneously (though its ultimate invocation to legitimize action reposes with the highest, i.e., most nearly all-encompassing level of geopolitical organization). Paleolithic societies could function harmoniously with their environment by means of one level of sociopolitical organization and decision-making; the subsequent addition of new levels attests to the progressive complexification of post -- Stone Age societies and their authoritative allocation of values and resources. Viewed in this historical perspective, the evolution of geopolitical structures suggests that still other governmental levels beyond what we possess today will be required to cope with those problems in our collective environments which transcend national boundaries and are therefore no longer susceptible to unilateral resolution by individual polities. We should resist conceptualizing our options in simple dyadic terms: either to retain the nationstate system basically as it is or to scrap it and create a unilevel type of world government. Apart from the difficulties of transforming the United Nations — which was conceived primarily as a mechanism of its member states -- it may well be that one or more political levels will emerge between the present national structure and any ultimate world government. Indeed, given the complexity of our global environment and its regional variations, and the large number of historically rooted national governments presently in existence, the creation of but a single supreme decision-making and enforcing authority would appear to be too centralized — and "truncated" -- a step to envisage realistically. The emergence of various economic "communities" in different continents may portend the evolution of a number of regional supranational authorities throughout the world. Also, there is evidence that we may be

Taylor/General Systems for Academic Research

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entering into a new kind of participatory democracy -- involving citizens at all levels of sociocultural organization, both governmental and nongovernmental. Multilevel transactionality could involve more groups and individuals in the decision-making process, and also develop a new awareness of interdependence in tackling problems common to all, including the ecological challenge. For my part, I do not see traditional "liberalism" -- either political or economic — moving to implement any Forrester scenario without new and appropriate conceptual inputs into our existing political subsystems, coupled with massive societal pressures. Certainly, the required transformation will have to overcome both passive resistance from the mortua manus of tradition, and active hostility from the entrenched bastions of power in every national society. But if this analysis has any validity, the character of those mutually supporting pillars of the nation-state system — power and sovereignty — is already undergoing a profound transformation. Heretofore, confrontation strategies have not only accepted Clausewitz's dictum that "war is nothing but a continuation of political intercourse, with a mixture of other means," but have justified the use of force as the ultima ratio on the grounds that in a dyadic, adversary relationship, the outcome is zero-sum, with the losses of the vanquished being matched by the victor's gains. But given our present weaponry, recourse to naked force produces non-zero-sum results, that is, all parties are made losers — whereas co-operation can bring about a non-zero-sum payoff that is advantageous to all concerned. Finally, I would underscore a salient conclusion that derives from the application of this systems model to the Forrester thesis. The attainment, or even approximation, of planetary steady state will require a reversal of the traditional feedback roles of technology on the one hand and of societal technics on the other. Cybernetics I in time became dominant at every previous stage of societal organization and -- barring a thermo-nuclear holocaust destroying human life itself -- this process can be expected to recur in the emerging "global village" ($5). I do not rule out a continued positive-feedback role for material technics in certian areas: growth and further environmental control will still be required on much of the planet for many years ahead, and of course we have just set our sights on extra-terrestrial expansion. But

42 Unity in Diversity henceforth a central purpose of technology must be to sustain and optimize -- rather than despoil and destroy -- the life-support processes of our global ecosystem. And concomittantly with this new, and highly creative, role for science and technology is required an equally new and creative positive-feedback role for our societal technics. We have scarcely begun to probe the subsurface levels of either individual or societal innovation. Such a "crossover" will call for the progressive recognition and adoption of a new sociocultural paradigm, involving different societal values and political priorities, and the mobilization of our shared resources of creativity, courage, and compassion in order to build a new world order. Conclusions I have been reading a new book by Lewis Harris, the public opinion analyst, called "The Anguish of Change". His polls demonstrate "quantitatively" the anguish of contemporary society as it reacts to seismic changes occurring in contemporary societies throughout the world: the erosion of traditional values; the emergence of a new life-style; women's lib; the running out of non-replenishable resources; the degradation of our physical environment; the increase of crime and urban disorder; the problems accompanying any shift from economic growth to steady-state; and the shift as well to a post-industrial society. Like wars today, these problems cannot be compartmentalized or walled out — even from the campuses' Like the energy crisis, a dislocation in any one place affects the rest of the environment. In our three-dimensional, Einsteinian, reticular environment, decisions affecting the course and perhaps viability of Spaceship Earth must be made -- and hopefully, our university graduates will occupy positions of leadership in order to make those crucial decisions. Are they being exposed to the kinds of problems that they will have to live with in the decades immediately ahead? Do they understand not only that Bangla Desh's population of 75 million will possibly double in the next quarter century -- without the resources to provide subsistence -- but that Canadians cannot expect to live in a privileged wealthy ghetto in the midst of such planetary dislocation?

Taylor/General Systems for Academic Research Is our educational system adequte for the job that will have to be done -- as currently structured? Is it conceptually geared to the needs and goals of a planetary eco-system?

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INDIVIDUAL AND COMMUNITY* Rod Preece Department of Political Science Wilfrid Laurier University

If the social cohesion necessary for the search for the good society can be provided by revolutionaries only in the rarest of circumstances, we must seek that cohesion within the present order. But first we must ask at what level that cohesion is to be sought -at the level of the family, the community, the nation or the state? Social cohesion creates an identity, a feeling of belonging, of being an integral part of the unity which constitutes that cohesion, but the creation of an identity is only successful to the extent that the body identifies itself by differentiating itself from that which does not constitute it. And, insofar as the interests of those who belong to a cohesive identity conflict with the interests of others, the social cohesion constitutes an integrative force only among those who constitute the cohesive body and constitutes, by contrast, an antagonistic force in relation to those who do not constitute that body. Insofar as there are conflicts between groups, the integrative force of each group is increased but concomitantly the potentially disintegrative force is heightened in the society as a whole. Indeed, a major element of the disintegration of complex societies results from the identification of conflicting interests in particularistic groups. The greater is the cohesion within such relatively small groups, the greater is the disruptive force in society as a whole, through the increasing differentiation of conflicting interests, minimized only to the extent that the groups fulfil the functions of solidarity and identity for the *This paper was read at the 1st Interdisciplinary Research Seminar (23 January, 1975), Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario.

46 Unity in Diversity members and hence reduce alienation and the potential aggressiveness of conflict. To belong to a group is not only to identify with that group but to differentiate oneself from other groups, and, where there are conflicts of interest, to take an antagonistic stance toward other groups. Mao Tse Tung, following Marx, has argued that there is a significant difference between antagonistic and non-antagonistic contradictions (or conflicts of interest) and that if the contradictions between groups are non-antagonistic they are ultimately reconcilable and capable of harmony. For Mao, and other Marxists, it is only class conflict which contains ultimately irreconcilable contradictions. Yet, the greater the complexity of interests in modern society the greater the contradictions, and, if none of these interests is essentially antagonistic to other interests, there certainly appears no actual point of potential synthesis. Indeed, as class becomes less significant an aspect of interest contradictions so other interests become increasingly antagonistic and the alienation and anomie engendered are no less real than in class-conscious conflict. Even though cross-cutting cleavages may diminish the potential effects of the conflicts, when there is no overriding cleavage factor, there remains the increasing distance from, and lack of identification with, one's fellow men. If identification within any group creates a potential conflict with any other group, then, it would appear, it is only at the universal level that non-conflicting and non-antagonistic social bonds can be created, for it is only in the universal bond that no potential enemy is created by the bond. But since the effectiveness of the bond itself depends upon knowledge of that which exists outside the bond and upon a sense of common interest (and where there is a scarcity of resources that sense of common interest means competing against other entities with different interests for the same prizes), then a universal bond becomes possible only in relation to a common enemy, e.g. pestilence, famine, invading The Political Thought of Mas Tse-tung, ed. and trans. Stuart R. Schram, reprinted in King and McGilvray Readings in Political Philosophy. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1973), p. 440.

Preece/Individual and Community 47 Martians, and only then if the bond is strong enough to prevent internal conflict about, say, who is to receive the scarce antidote to the bubonic plague. The universal ism of Marxist internationalists, and the fantasy of world government, which was so popular in the years following the second world war, would have to create a galactic enemy if it were to maintain sovereignty and allegiance, or at least the government would have to face almost insuperable problems of nature, success against which would in turn destroy the necessary cohesion. Universal cohesion, however desirable in the abstract, must remain an obscure chimera, not merely because of the practical difficulties of creating a universal state, but because identification depends upon having someone outside the identity in order to be able to have a feeling of belonging inside. Solidarity and identity are successfully fostered by the identifying agency precisely because others with different interests are excluded from it. And the identification at an increasingly particularistic level becomes increasingly necessary where divergences of interests occur with greater complexity. Under the feudal order social cohesion was first engendered by the extended family, encouraged in the community by the Church, though with universal overtones, and encompassed under the authority of the baron. Relationships were immediate and the social bond was direct. But with the development of the nation state, strong allegiances were created to distant symbols of authority outside the immediate realm of experience. And with the construction of the towns and the beginnings of geographic mobility, the extended family relationships weakened their hold and have so continued to the present where even the nuclear family's effectiveness has been limited in many instances to the realm of early childhood. This is not to deny the family its continued role as a socializing agency but to indicate its failure to maintain a sense of unifying identity once adulthood is reached. The Church, too, has had increasingly less hold as geographic mobility has increased, though it has remained somewhat stronger in North America than among protestant Europeans where, in the former, it initially performed the identifying functions for the new immigrants who had left their families behind. Indeed, as the power of family and Church have declined, so other organizations have replaced them as agencies of identification. In

48 Unity in Diversity the modern world, school, club, union, employer, sports association and nation all play their part. Yet the result has been an overall weakening of the social bond, not only because each has played a less significant role than did the extended family formerly, but also because each agency of identification has interests in potential conflict with those other agencies. And it is not necessarily striking differences of interest which create the alienation. Indeed, the man who finds his identification performed most effectively by his trade union may thereby expose himself to problems both with his employers and his family -- with his employers because he may be viewed with less trust and greater apprehension, with his family because of the nagging of a wife who is left alone and the remoteness of the children who see their father so rarely. Again we are faced with an insoluble contradiction. Social cohesion is a necessity; yet, when it is created at a particularistic level, it militates against cohesion in the society as a whole where there are conflicts of interest among different particularistic groups. On the other hand, the cohesion cannot be created at the universal level because there are no outsiders against whom to set the identity. To be sure, as the anthropologists have shown, in simple societies where there are few conflicts of interest, identity is achievable without an external enemy, though even there more effectively than when there are external threats from wild animals, and when there is pestilence and shortage of food. But it is the complexity of modern society which creates the impossibility of cohesion in the industrialized world. Certainly outsiders may be simply less acceptable fellows in a more inclusive group but as the contradictions of technological society increase so the likelihood of the "less acceptable" becoming unacceptable increases. In the industrialized world, social cohesion, insofar as it is possible in times of peace, must be a complex synthesis of cross-cutting relations with different groups. Yet that synthesis is in turn likely to alienate the individual from one or more of those groups because their interests are incompatible. Again, the relative simplicity of roles performed by each individual in feudal society contrasts with the enormous complexity of potentially conflicting roles performed in modern society, with their ensuing potentials of

Preece/Individual and Community 49 alienation and anomie. In relatively simple society, in a society where there are still common, worthwhile, potentially achievable goals, the possibility of a common sense of identification through a common purpose remains. Modern society in its complexity has long superseded that potential unity of simplicity. It is in its interest in the Greek polis that traditional political theory has demonstrated its greatest concern with the notion and the necessity of community. To be sure, Hobbes, Rousseau and Burke, not to mention the nineteenth century Geminschaft theorists and the anarchists, realized its importance, but nowhere is community treated more as the central theme of politics than in the writings of Aristotle. As Sir Ernest Barker has written: The assumption of Aristotle, as of Greek thought generally down to the days of Zeno and the Stoic doctrine of the cosmopolis, is that of the small state or civic republic whose citizens knew one another personally, and which can be addressed by a single herald and persuaded by a single orator when it is assembled in its "town meeting". It is a small and intimate society: it is a church as well as a state: it makes no distinction between the province of the state and that of society; it is, in a word, an integrated system of social ethics, which realizes to the full the capacity of its members, and therefore claims their full allegiance. A limit of size is imposed upon it by its very nature and purpose (as, conversely, the limit of its size has helped to produce its nature and purpose): being a church and a system of social ethics, it cannot be a Babylon. Small as it is, it is complete in itself: it is "self-sufficient", in the sense that it meets from its own resources -- its own accumulated moral tradition and the physical yield of its own soil and waters -all the moral and material needs of its members; and as it does not draw upon others, so it is not conceived as giving, or as bound to give, to others, or as making its own contribution to the general development of Hellas. Whole and complete, with a rounded life of its own, the polis rises to a still higher dignity than that of self-sufficiency. It is conceived as "natural" -- as a scheme of life which, granted the nature of man, is inevitable and indefeasible.2 However, with Harry Jaffa, we should not forget that: What we mean today by "individual" is utterly incongruent with polis. Modern individualism conceives each human being to have a sphere of privacy wherein are generated activities and ends which the state, as state, can never order or direct to

P The Politics of Aristotle, (London: Oxford University Press, 1952), pp. xlvii - xlviii.

50 Unity in Diversity their completion and perfection.

3

It is the notion of community in the Aristotelian polis — though not necessarily involving Aristotle's notion of nature -which is the antithesis to, the negation of, individualism, and which denies the interest contradictions of modern complex societies. It denies those contradictions not merely through its simplicity, but also through its self-sufficiency, since conflicts tend to arise about the apportionment of scarce resources commonly desired. The Aristotelian polis, then, is the societal form of social cohesion, the prerequisite for the achievement of other goods. Nonetheless, we must not confuse the Aristotelian polis with the city-state of Aristotle's contemporary Greece. The Greek states then abounded with individualism. The polis of Aristotle's Politics is an idealization of an even more ancient Greece to which Aristotle wishes to return. The new Greece is a Greece of individual justice in which actions are judged by reference to the present, in isolation from the welfare of the whole, with the result that, as Sir Henry Maine explained: Questions of pure law were constantly argued on every consideration which could possibly influence the minds of the judges. No durable system of jurisprudence could be produced in this way. A community which never hesitated to relax rules of written law whenever they stood in the way of an ideally perfect decision the facts of particular cases, would only, if it bequeathed anybody of judicial principle to posterity, bequeath one consisting of the ideas of right and wrong which happened to be prevalent at the time.^ Above all, it could not maintain a sense of duty and obligation to a community whose essence was the fount from which the conception of justice grew. If justice now reposed in the individual, and the individual case, alone, the solidifying and integrating effects of community would be lost, through the achievement of individual rationality. Now it would be merely Utopian to suggest that we attempt to return to the order of the earlier ancient Greece and the anti3

"Aristotle" in Strauss and Cropsey, The History of Political Philosophy, (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1972), p. 67. 4

Ancient Law, (London:

Oxford University Press, 1950), p. 62.

Preece/Individual and Community 51 Utopians would be right to mock any such suggestion. Yet we can only make rational political decisions if we postulate our ideals, consider to what extent these ideals can be achieved and in what circumstances, and consider to what extent those ideals militate against other ideals or are necessary to them. It is equally chimerical for the anti-Utopian to deny the ideal as for the Utopian to ignore practicality. This aim of social cohesion, we have claimed, is not to be regarded as necessarily a worthwhile end in itself but is a prerequisite of the attainment of other ideals. The individualist must himself assert communality to a degree if the possibility of achieving his individualist ends is to be a practicality. Indeed, it is necessary whatever the ideals to ask what degree of social cohesion is conducive to those other ends and to what extent it supports them or militates against them when undertaken beyond the necessity. We need the notion of ultimate social cohesion if we are to consider the practicality of its implementation to a degree. We need the notion of impractical ideals if we are to determine what proportion of them can be achieved. Utopianism is a prime requisite of rational anti-utopian theory -- theory in which we consider only what is possible. We must not forget that what is possible must be what is possible of the desirable. It is logically impossible to remain with the total antiutopianism of Francis Bacon, a view reiterated by Engels, and to deny the possibility of imagining the good without first conquering nature. For how can we imagine what to do with nature unless we have some ideals, some goals, in view? How can we make a worthwhile political decision about any circumstance unless we have some notion of what it is that is worthwhile? Of course, we may all be wrong in what we deem valuable, but, if we are, "conquering nature" will not help us correct our errors. The notion of social cohesion alone, however, is insufficient for determining the security from which other goods stem, for survival is also necessary, and, as the Greeks discovered, the traditional polis was insufficient for self-defence. It is not that the Greeks were devoid of notions of some communality, some sense of Hellenic identification, beyond the polis, but they were unaware of the dangers presented by the rise of nation states. As Sir Ernest Barker indicated:

52 Unity in Diversity There was some notion among the Greeks of a community called "Hellas", but it was in no sense a political community. Herodotus conceived it as having the four bonds of common blood, common speech, common religious shrines, and common social habits; but he recognized no political bonds. Plato, in the argument of his Republic, was enough of a Panhellenist to argue for some system of international law, as between polis and polis, which would mitigate the rigours of their mutual wars; but the very nature of his argument involves the sovereignty of each polis. The orator Isocrates preached the unity of Hellenic culture, and advocated a symmachy of autonomous Hellenic cities united in concord and conquest against the nations around, and especially against the Persians; but he left the cities autonomous. Aristotle himself could say that the Greek stock had the capacity for governing every other people, if only it could once achieve political unity.^ Hobbes concerned himself with the appropriate size of the state at some length but concluded only that: There is no set limit to the size of a civil society. The size should be great enough to deter any enemy from risking war, and herefore depends on the size of the enemy.6 Yet how can one know the size of a potential enemy? Following the logic of Hobbes1 argument, the state would have to be as large as conceivable so that no enemies could be strong enough to combine to conquer it. Half the world plus one would appear the minimum, at least in a period prior to mechanized, and now nuclear, warfare. And if this seems absurd, such calculations led such a renowned philosopher as Bertrand Russell to embrace international government as the only saviour of the world. However, the notions of the Greek philosophers, especially those expounded by Isocrates, suggested another alternative — which never became a practicality in the ancient world: a confederacy in which each polis was autonomous but in which each polis combined with each other polis against a common aggressor or against an aggressor to any one, or in which each polis could combine to deter any polis from within the confederacy offending against any other such polis. In dismissing Kant's notion of a perpetual peace guaranteed by an association of states, Hegel claimed with some justice that: 5

Ernest Barker, QjD._Ci_t., p. xlvii.

Lawrence Berns, "Thomas Hobbes" in Strauss and Cropsey, Op. Cit. p. 378.

Preece/Individual and Community 53 Even if a number of states make themselves into a family, this group as an individual must engender an opposite and create an enemy.7 Nonetheless, once the association is sufficiently large no single state or association of other states would be capable of attacking it. As Hegel suggests, however, the origins of such an association would be likely to stimulate the creation of other contending associations. But whilst Kant's association could be no guarantee of perpetual peace, such associations of nation states have not been entirely without success for modern industrialized states. Of course, Isocrates1 political organization of politeia would be inappropriate to industrial and technological development. Again relative priorities have to be weighed. To what extent does the good life consist in the rich life and to what extent are cohesion and security prior values? And again historical reality cannot be ignored. There is no simple retrogressive step from complexity to simplicity. Innocence lost can never be re-gained. Yet some options are still open for parts of Africa and Asia which have not yet "developed" into industrial societies. But cannot technology continue without maintaining the present contradictions of interests? Can technology not be rationalized so that the anxieties and tensions it presently engenders are diminished? Can there not be a technological society in which the anxieties and frustrations created by geographical and social mobility are eliminated, or at least vastly reduced? In other words, can there not be a relatively immobile technological society? Perhaps there can be, though it would not be as extensively technological nor as rapidly expanding as we have experienced, but maybe that is precisely what would be appropriate. However, even with a relatively immobile technology there would be occupational conflicts of interest between professionals and labourers, among floor sweepers, machine operators and foremen, and there would be conflicts of gender, ethnicity, occupation, race and religion where these were not uniform, even in a Marxian classless society. Indeed, one of our very tragedies is that we have no worries about the necessities of life. The maintenance of life, freedom 7

The Philosophy of Right, (Oxford: Clarendon, 1942), p. 295.

54 Unity in Diversity from dire want, is guaranteed by the modern state. We are not required to fend for ourselves and thus the fulfilments which the achievement of the satisfaction of elementary needs may bring are denied us. Even a stable technology in conditions of affluence, then, is unable to provide us with the prime necessity of a satisfactory life: a degree of the simplicity of poverty. Of course, this is not to argue that it is the impoverished who are "truly" wealthy, for they see the wealth of those around and are envious. It is our hopes and expectations which deny any return to innocence. Research psychologists tell us that apes fight much more among themselves when they are provided with food and shelter and do not fend for themselves. Community, integration and identity are fostered when there is a common need to forage together, to be together, to do together. The leisure with which technology provides us is stultifying not because of any defect in leisure itself but because leisure has a value as a contrast -- when it is dialectically opposed to necessity. Leisure and necessary work are concomitant aspects of the complex synthesis of satisfied man. It is not, however, merely the complexities of modern life which have created the contradictions we presently face. The ideology of liberalism is itself responsible to the extent that its concentration of attention on self-reliance and individual interest has required that each individual finds an extensive measure of the necessary cohesion within himself. And herein lies the danger to which liberalism has exposed the modern world, for self-reliance and individual interest is practice and interest at the expense of the community. More than ever, modern experience denies the validity of Adam Smith's assertion that the sum of individual selfish ends is the public good: Every individual...intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.^ 8 An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, (New York": Modern Library, 1937), p. 423.

Preece/Individual and Community 55 Similarly, Hegel, strongly influenced by The Wealth of Nations, asserts the "cunning of reason": In his own enjoyment each gives enjoyment to all, in his own labour each works for all as well as for himself, and all for him.9 But, in fact, increasing complexity of interests for the individual creates increasing divergence from the social cohesion within which the good society can be sought. Indeed, the less the individual is required to rely on himself the less the frustration and alienation he faces, for, as a member of a community which acts as an individualembracing entity, the individual can lose a part of himself in the communality, become an integral part of an identifying whole and thus no longer feel the necessity to escape from the anxieties which individual freedom entails. The tensions created by our mobile, technological era are reduced to the extent that the individual is able to lose the alienated self, the self-reliant, frustrated self, in something greater than himself. In modern society emphasis has been placed on identification of the individual at the level of the nation-state and, despite the effectiveness of the identification in times of war, the identification has been too remote from the individual for the functions of solidarity and identity to be performed adequately in times of peace. And, in some cases, the nation-state is today scarcely able to perform the functions at all -- witness the tendencies to separatism among the Welsh, Scottish and even Cornish "nationalists" in Britain, the inability of even the new Canadian nationalism to smother nascent separatist cries from British Columbia and the prairie provinces as well as somewhat more vociferously from Quebec, the remnants of Bavarian sentimental claims of German state irredentism against her "kingdom", Walloon and Flemish squabbles over ethnic identity in the Belgian state, Nigerian tribalism and West Indian island particularism. Even Arab "nationalism" has arisen from the failure of Arab states to create a sense of identity and belonging within existing structures and thus the alienated seek their identity at a different level, albeit a supra-national rather than a particularistic one. g

The Phenomenology of Mind, (London: Allen and Unwin, 1964), p. 520.

56 Unity in Diversity In times of peace the identification of a nation, or the lack of it, finds its clearest expression in such activities as space travel and international sport, which is the raising of political conflict to the integrative level of intense national awareness, ostensibly without belligerent implications. If war is the continuance of politics by other means then international sport is sublimated warfare. International sport creates an integrating awareness of identity in opposition to another identity, whose interests of necessity conflict because they both vie for the same prize. Yet the integration is sustained only if some measure of success is achieved in relationship to expectations. Indeed, the failure of Brazilian and Mexican soccer teams in recent World Cup competitions has not been without immediate political repercussions. Conversely, the success of the England team in the 1966 event created a sense of unity and identity greater than anything experienced in Britain since the second world war. Neighbours who had previously been nothing more than nodding acquaintances found a bond, an extra meaning in their relationship. Emigration from Britain dropped to its lowest ebb since the war and there was an unmistakable new sense of national pride and a feeling of well-being, which, to be sure, outlived the event by only a few months. Canada's defeat of the Soviet Union in the 1972 hockey series between the countries had a similar impact, but one which was less pervasive and sustained, both because Canada's success was not too unexpected and because Canada's immediate potential sense of identity is not as great as that of England. Indeed, it was as though Canada did not quite know what to make of her success. There was more a sense of joyful but frenzied bewilderment rather than a sustained euphoria. Canada's secondary place in the quasi-international ism which has been North America, conflicting with a reduced but effective commitment to a distant crown and a colonial past, has hindered her development to a fully-fledged nation. The internationalism has prevented the identity until recently because the belonging to a greater whole has interfered with self-dependence. Just as the individual loses his identity as part of a greater whole, so Canada as a nation has felt herself an insignificant economic appendage of her southern neighbour. Thereby Canada has failed to become the identifying agency in which the functions of solidarity and identity

Preece/Individual and Community 57 could be more effectively performed for the Canadian population. In the technological age it has been national identification on which most attention has been centered, yet it has been at the level of the family that most social cohesion has been lost in the same period. Children are still reared in the family but rarely do they have a responsible place in it. Affluence has meant that the necessity of the youth to the family has been lost and thus the youth achieves his maturity, his responsibility, his sense of belonging and his commitment to the family much less easily. To be sure, many adolescents are seen "to grow up" much earlier than did their parents but that is only in the peripheral exigencies of life. The children have few responsibilities and thus they mature in social behaviour outside the home, but that is precisely because they have no necessary and integral place within the home. The youth becomes an appendage of the family rather than an intrinsic and constructive part of it and thus he loses his identity within it. He is an affordable luxury rather than a producer. He becomes more and more an individual and less and less a part of social cohesion. Similarly, increased geographical and social mobility have weakened not only the family but also the basis of the geographical community, for now the community is ever changing its membership and thus diminishes its continuity and thereby its sense of identity. The spatial community is no longer the settled, integrating stratification it was in periods of relative community isolation. Today, mass communication and the facility of travel make the community an insignificant part of a greater whole. Its former isolation allowed it to function as an identifying agency unhindered by impositions of ideas and allegiances external to it, whereas now it serves predominantly as a dormitory for individuals who find their socialization nationalized through mass communication systems. Each individual now receives the same information from a remote source but now reacts to that information in the light of individual differences because the interests of each individual have become more complex and contradictory. The community is no longer able to provide the individual with a spiritual, integrating home. Yet, as presently constituted, neither the family nor the nation provides it either.

58 Unity in Diversity The present failure of family, geographical locality and nation to perform successfully the function of community -- the provision of identity -- is because each exerts its influence over the individual; it does not allow him a significant contribution to the community. The family provides for its offspring; they are not indispensable to it and hence they do not feel the significance of being an essential productive part of it. Similarly, local, provincial and national governments are providers of benefits rather than recipients of general significant individual responsibilities. It is the failures of the family, however, which affect the individual's identity the most. "Community" begins at birth with the family; the individual has no life without the family. Indeed, the social contract theorists who postulated natural man as the isolated individual failed to recognize that man never could be such; man begins his life as a member of a community. He has no life without community and he only begins to fulfil his life when he has responsibilities within and obligations to, that family and when his productivity is viewed as necessary to its successful continuity. Man is at least initially fulfilled when he is seen as, and consequently views himself as, an indispensable element of his primary allegiance. The family, however, cannot be the fundamental level of political life. The family cannot provide the broadness of scope required to provide the security in which to fulfil man's aspirations. Even if the nation-state is too distant an allegiance to fulfil man's belonging needs, if the family provides the individual with a recognition of his necessity, then the nation-state is able to fulfil the secondary role of defence against outsiders and is the most appropriate unit in which economic and educational wealth may be successfully organized. Even if it may be desirable to reduce economic wealth, to achieve such reduction would injure man's expectations and aspirations to a damaging degree. The nation state is the most appropriate unit of the secondary level of man's allegiance at least in part for no better reason than that it is there and to change it would cause anxiety and frustration. However, if the nation-state is to remain the unit of political action, if it is to succeed in maintaining stability and security, it must ensure that the individual achieves his initial fulfilment

Preece/Individual and Community 59 in the family -- and this requires a reduction in the liberal democratic value of equality of opportunity. Equality of opportunity creates extensive geographical and social mobility -- precisely those factors which interfere most severely with familiar solidarity and identity. In reaction against the excesses of the self-confident, even arrogant, social science individualism of the first sixty years of this century, a significant proportion of the more progressive, 10 younger intellectuals now describe themselves as communitarians. Yet little analytical attention has been given in recent years to the notions of individual and community, a lack which has led to some inadequacies of expression. It is here hypothesized that an individualism-communitarianism continuum might contain the following characteristics: selfish individualism

co-operative individualism

competitive individualism

authoritarian communitarianism

individual communitarianism

tribal communitarian ism

Selfish individualism is Hobbes1 war of all against all, where each individual attempts to achieve his own ends at whatever cost to the interests of other individuals. Adam Smith provides, at least in some small measure, a rationalization of this position but only because he believed that selfish individualism produces the greatest common good. In fairness to Smith one should note that some thinkers have claimed that Smith has been mis-read. Perhaps, then, the selfish individualism position might be better attributed to the This has not, however, led to a return to the idealist notion of the general will in which a community has a common purpose which is the expression of a collective mind. Such fictions depend on certain analytical confusions which have been exposed by, among others, S. I. Benn and R. S. Peters. See Social Principles and the Democratic State. (London: George Allen and Unwin, l959TTpp. 235-251.

60 Unity in Diversity popular image of Smith's philosophy rather than the reality of it. Competitive individualism is the doctrine we associate with liberal democratic capitalism in which competition is approved to a degree and in certain realms. Thus economic competition is encouraged up to the point where it is in danger of negating itself -when a victor creates a monopoly position. At this point competition is restricted in order to recreate competition. In education, "equality of opportunity" competition is encouraged to the point at which the failures are likely to lose their dignity. At that point competition is hindered. In liberal democratic competition, insofar as it is possible, no one should lose. Everyone should win in one way or other. Similarly, attempts to achieve greater social equality are allowed to interfere, though not too severely, with competition. This has been the prevalent trend of the last century but as it becomes necessary that for every victor there must be a loser so the possibility of maintaining a successful competitive system is reduced. Radical critics of liberal democratic capitalism frequently attack it as though it belonged to the category of selfish individualism -- but that is only because the egotistical position is easier to deride. Co-operative individualism is the position most frequently confused with communitarianism. Those modern philosophers who describe themselves as communitarians most frequently espouse situations in which each individual co-operates with each other individual to achieve his own individual ends. Thus, as every viewer of the children's television programme Sesame Street will recognize, cooperative individualism occurs when two or more individuals are attempting to achieve their own goals, and lack of strength, individual incapacity and lack of technical skills prevent the accomplishment of those ends. In such circumstances the ideal is expressed by everyone helping to have that goal achieved. Whilst such behaviour is entirely consistent with communitarianism it does not fulfil the A far more significantly egotistical, but less well known, analysis is provided by Max Stiner, The Ego and His Own, (New York: Dover, 1973), first published in German 1845". See also the works of Ayn Rand.

Preece/Individual and Community 61 requirements of communitarianism which involve a sense of identity and solidarity lacking in all forms of individualism. Individual communitarianism is the position attributable to traditional Toryism in which the individual achieves his highest ends through the community and in which the individual lessens his anxieties and frustrations through a commitment to the community above and beyond any commitment to the individual members who comprise that community. A sense of community exists in those circumstances where any potential psychological harm to any one individual is diffused within the community through individual's sense of belonging and significance. Anxiety and frustration which occur to an individual are reduced by the knowledge that the individual does not have to rely on himself but is an integral part of something greater than himself. His love of the community, a love which is different from any love for the individual members of the community, gives the individual a sense of loyalty which helps diminish the effects of the pressures of anxiety and frustration. The community's interests are not the sum total of individual interests but consist in the elimination of contradictions -- to the degree possible -- among its members; it consists in the creation of a stable pattern of relationships among its constituents. It may well be that the interests of any of the members in any specific function may thereby be hindered. However, the interests of the community always involve the interests of the members of that community. The community's interest cannot be conceived without reference to the interests of the individual members. The question of the distinction between society and community (traditionally expressed in the terms of Gesellschaft and Gemeinschaft) is frequently raised. The implication of our analysis is that society is at most an association of co-operating individuals (at the least an association of competing individuals) who find some level of common identity at a supra-individual level. Community is an association of individuals who feel a common commitment and belonging, who find their identity in that association and are fulfilled through it. Authoritarian communitarianism occurs when the community is the end in itself, irrespective of the interests of its individual members. This is the doctrine associated with fascism in which the

62 Unity in Diversity interests of the state outweigh, indeed stand without reference to, the interests of any and all individuals who comprise it. Tribal communitarian ism is the situation which prevails in structurally undifferentiated and functionally diffuse societies. In such societies the sense of self, of individual, has not yet arisen. The lack of differentiation maintains the unit as the sole medium of expression, although, of course, the commencement of wide differentiation leads toward the discovery of the sense of individuality. Concluding Remarks Technology and liberalism have created an individualism with which the individual cannot copy for he is no longer anything more than himself. The sense of self is so pervasive in liberal society that man is no longer a part of something in which his anxieties and frustrations may be decreased by becoming characteristics enveloped and minimized within the group. Nor do the Marxists escape the concentration on individuality which ultimately destroys the individual. Whereas Marx claimed that: The mortal danger of each person consists in the danger of losing himself. Hence, lack of freedom is the true mortal danger for man.'^ In fact, the danger for man lies in his only finding himself as an individual and failing to find himself as more than himself, a part of a communal whole. Whereas Marx believed that the individual achieves his highest end as a member of a community and thereby achieves his highest freedom, in fact, by losing some of himself in the community, he achieves his necessary end as something more than himself; by losing the freedom Marx considers necessary to prevent the loss of self the self achieves its expression through self denial and hence self-fulfilment by having the community become a part of the self. Insofar as today the individual fails to find his identity within the family and the community he seeks his integration within individual associational relationships. Thus develops, for example, the notion of romantic love, which entails the search for a common bond uniting two people when the traditional social bonds are no longer able to maintain social cohesion. When family and community were the centre of life, mutual desire, companionship and

1 ? "Bebatten Uber die Presse Freiheit", Rheinische Zeitung, No 135. May 15, 1842.

Preece/Individual and Community 63 the extension of the family were the reasons for the new bond. But in an age of familial insignificance, romantic love has come to replace the notion of family and community (together with a healthy lust) as the justification for union.

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THE PROBLEMATIC CHARACTER OF SYSTEM* Nicholas A. Nyiri Department of Political Science Wilfrid Laurier University Introduction In this paper we shall explore the value of Systems Thinking1 -or Systemic Thinking - concerning the understanding of Concrete Reality, and the sources of problems associated with the meanings and definitions of "System", much debated in recent publications regarding its explanatory value. Systems thinking has become a very popular approach not only in the social sciences but also in the natural science, particularly in 2 biology and engineering in the form of systems analysis whose subject-matter is the discovery of "the general in the particular" in all living organizations. Interest in such discoveries aside, another stimulus to adopt the systems approach arose from attempts to predict and control the behaviour of systems (organized entities) instead of passively suffering from or merely reacting to changes which occurred from time to time in the physical, biological, economic 3 and political domains. Yet "systems problems" appeared intractable since very little was known about systems, about systems analysis, and control over system-behaviour or even about system design. One major problem was the first step of "recognizing the system" we are trying to deal with, not to mention the appearance of systems ideas in different guises in cybernetics, systems-engineering, general systems theory, *This paper was read at the 3rd Interdisciplinary Research Seminar on March 27, 1975, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario. F. E. Emery (ed.), Systems Thinking (Baltimore, Maryland: Penguin Books, 1970); and J. Beishon and G. Peters (eds.), Systems Behaviour (New York: Harper and Row, 1972). o Note that Systems Analysis is not the same as Systems Approach because analysis is a method whereas an approach is an attitude or a mood one takes towards objects and subjects of Reality. See for details in C. W. Churchman, The Systems Approach (New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1968). 3

Beishon and Peters (eds.), Op. Cit.. p. 11.

66 Unity in Diversity operations research, systems analysis, and computer systems. New jargons were a second problem that gave an additional impetus to confusion: i.e. open and closed systems, purposive (teleological) systems following the Kantian tradition, adaptive systems, entropy and negentropy, progressive mechanization, segregation, centralization, individualization and differention, steady-states, and so on. Despite the plethora of new expressions, it was clear that the Systems Approach had become essential if we were to have any hope of coping with the complexity of modern life with its multi-national organizations, space modules, international monetary policies, high 4 speed transport systems, and educational systems. While "systems thinking has been utilized for a number of decades, surprisingly enough the definition of what "system" might mean has not been settled to the satisfaction of all concerned. This constitutes a third important problem within the domain of systems thinking. Considering the fact that since the 1950's a vast literature had been devoted to the subject-matter in various disciplines, and that attempts were made to build a General System 5 Philosophy as well, V. N. Sadovsky's complaint as late as 1972 has a great deal of significance: "If there is no rigorous definition of systems, we shall not understand each other". Even in 1975, the misuse and abuse of the "basic concept" of Systems Approach and Analysis threatens to invalidate the entire enterprise. The threat that this may be so and impending, gave us the impetus to focus on the "meaning of System" and restore to it what has been taken away through the initial triumphant phase of exaltation when "Systems Thinking" had finally become respectable and an acceptable academic tool of analysis, the sciences notwithstanding. 4

Ibi^., pp. 11-12.

Ludwig von Bertalanffy, "The Theory of Open Systems", in Science (January 13, 1950), pp. 23-29; K. E. Boulding, "General Systems Theory"...in Management Science (April 1, 1956), pp. 197-208; M. D. Mesarovic (ed.) View on "General Systems Theory (New York: Wiley & Sons, 1964); and Ervin Laszlo, Introduction to Systems Philosophy (New York: Gordon and Bresch, 1972). General Systems Theory: Its Tasks and Methods of Construction", in General Systems Yearbook, Vol. XVII (1972), p. 174.

Nyiri/The Problematic Character of System

67

Instead of calling for the displacement of the concept, our reasoned conviction is that the implications of "system" have not been fully realized as yet either in the social sciences or in the natural sciences. A theoretical examination of "System", illustrated by diagrams, will show that it was used somewhat mistakenly for what it was not. Our contention in this paper is that "System" is the method of creation, and not what we understand by Organizations or Organized Entities. As it is in the case of Human Reality, Concrete Reality appears to be the result of a design executed with systematic rigour. Therefore, in the study of these Realities, only the method used in the Process of Creation - System, backed by the solid disciplines of science: mathematics, logic, and epistemology - can throw light on the "truth" of how these Realities have come to be. We are at the beginning of the majestic discovery of how things and being have come to be, in the process of which the method of creation, that is, System, will serve us generously, perhaps more generously than we may expect. (1) The Basic Problem with the Systems Approach. The systems approach had been developed from General System Theory to understand and explain political, social and economic issues by way of systems attributes such as (a) inter-connectivities (ITC), (b) inter-dependencies (ITD), and (c) inter-activities (ITA) of elements rather than analyzing them either systematically or logically. In this sense systems analysis had been derived initially from General System Theory heavily oriented toward the analysis of system-consequences understood as attributes of systems. In part the, problem with the systems approach was that it concentrated on the,' technical consequences of systems, hence "system" per se was to be understood in mere technical consequences. The intent was clear G. Modelski in his article, "The Promise of Geocentric Politics, World Politics (July, 1970), p. 633, has pointed out that the Systems Approach had become irrelevant and dated because few people understood it, if at all - that made the approach accessible only to the initiated. In certain ways this is true but since the "theory of system" was only developing at this time, would it not be too premature to terminate the enterprise? After all new paradigms take time to be developed in full hence initially only a few people will be engaged in this process to open the field for others at the later date.

68 Unity in Diversity but the repercussions were most unfortunate because to understand "system" properly one must look to its antecedents rather than to its consequents. In other words, the "idea" behind system is a plan or a method of acting is crucial to the functional understanding of what system is. For this reason the following statements are offered as the point of departure: I. The systems approach is not a scientific pretention in the social sciences in order to copy the method of inquiry employed by the natural scientists, but a method of understanding things and beings as the consequents of the "idea" that all things and beings are the result of conscious design and planning hence understandable only in terms of a Process of Creation. II. "System" as such has been poorly defined due to inherent difficulties in all attempted definitions, therefore, system can be defined only by its ante-cendent conditions rather than by pointing to its technical consequences. III. System-theorists must focus on the important functional pre-requisites of system, namely, (1) the necessity of organizing collective efforts in order to realize objectives in mind, and (2) the necessity of imposing restrictions on selected elements to serve as components within an organized entity to ensure their performance of functions continually. The third statement contains the most important aspect of "system" as a method of creating restrictive organizations in which components produce intended objectives (ends, policies, goods and services, or values) for the benefit of society, animals, ecologies, planets or galaxies. In the Human Domain, as well as in the Universal Domain, the pre-systemic condition of existence is the freedom of elements that does not contribute toward anything nor is it productive. In the Human Domain men and women as ontological entities are initially free and subject to no compulsions excepting biological urges, therefore, they are not productive because they produce nothing that would require collective efforts and restrictions on human freedom. But as soon as men and women are organized into social organizations, economic organizations and political organizations, their respective freedoms are checked to produce socially beneficial ends. By partaking in such organizations, men and women become components, conditioned and controlled to produce intended ends

Nyiri/The Problematic Character of System

69

continually in time and space. By virtue of being incorporated into an organizational framework, men and women are conditioned before incorporation to ensure willingness, or if this is not forthcoming, to provide incentives, impose deprivations, sanctions or punishment. The very intent behind the legal system, factory rules and constitutional restraints is to eliminate individual freedom in order to create an organized existence in which the human element is compelled to act according to the rules laid down by those who conceived organized existence. The intent can be good or malevolent but the fact remains that men being prone more toward organized existence, entails at once reduction on human freedom to produce socially useful benefits by collective efforts. The general assumption, therefore, follows from these empirical facts of ordinary human life to prove that prior to organized existence there is an antecedent condition that conditions men and matter to become part of an organized entity: General assumption: System -- is a method that issue in planned organized entities in which elements (parts or components) are organized and conditioned to realize a preselected objective through collective effort, hence system is not an organized entity but a method of effective realization of objectives by superimposing restraints and compulsions on ontological entities to do the will of those who conceive organized entities. In the light of this assumption it will be asserted that distinction be made between what constitutes "system" and organized entities to avoid general confusions in System Theory presently in use. Unfortunately these aspects of systems have not received sufficient attention nor was the question raised: "What are the reasons for systems?" In the absence of such an inquiry systems were studied in their technical aspects only as "mechanisms", consequently two important implications of "System" had been largely ignored: A. The functional significance of System as the means to an end (objective x); B. The consequences regarding the fate of components conditioned to perform functions within organized entities.

70 Unity in Diversity Before these points can be examined in some detail, let us concentrate on the crucial idea what "System Is" conceptually and in fact. By way of examining several definitions, the reader will recognize the difficulty of defining precisely an elusive concept that seemed to appear in a simple form. (2) The Definitions of "System" and Its Meaning. General Systems Theory (hereafter G.S.T.) has originated in a Q movement aimed at the unification of science and also at the promotion of scientific analysis as developed by Ludwig von Bertalanffy in the 1920's that he promoted strongly in the 1930's which grew into a large enterprise after World War II. In the 1950's a number g of professionals had begun to search for a body of concepts most capable of lending unity to various disciplines which led to the central notion of "system", to the organismic concept that entailed the following principles: 1. Living Systems are Open Systems forming a whole; 2. Dynamism as compared to machine-like statism; 3. Organism as the primary source of activity in contrast to primary reactivity. These principles were applied generally to all existing organisms to constitute General System Theory. Accordingly, system was defined in the following manner: Ludwig von Bertalanffy, General Systems Theory (New York: Braziller, 1969); and Ervin Laszlo, The Relevance of General Systems Theory (New York: Braziller, 1972). Note that "System" is used in the plural by the latter author whereas the former employs it as a singular form. This distinction will have great implication later on when "System" is considered to be "one" and and "Indivisible". L. von Bertalanffy, Robots, Man, and Minds (New York: Braziller, 1967), p. 13; and F. E. Egler, "Bertalanffy's", in Ecology (1953), pp. 34 and 143-145, for the contrary view. L. von Bertalanffy, Modern Theories of Development (MUnchen: 1928) that accounts for the development of those principles at an early stage. L. von Bertalanffy, General System Theory, Op. Cit., p. 38.

Nyiri/The Problematic Character of System

71

Definition 1:

System -- is a set of elements (s(E,E?..,E )) standing in interaction (ITA). Formally, S = s(E1E2..,En).(ITA) This definition does not ask who and for what purposes has constituted a set of interacting elements: it simply leaves us with the tantalizing question whether these interacting elements constitute either a system or an organization, or worse, nothing. This pragmatic definition was a modest beginning destined to undergo several modifications in subsequent years. The establishment of The Society for General Systems in 1954 undertook to clarify the meaning of "System", and develop theoretical systems that may be applied to several disciplines of human epistemology. This endeavour entailed the discovery of the isomorphy (parallellism) of concepts, laws, principles and models in several fields, but the unification of the sciences had been reduced in importance to secondary consideration. 12 As a result, the second definition of "system" has appeared in 1956:13 Definition 2: System -- is a set of objectives (s(0,0p-••.())) with relationships (R,) between the objects (0^) and attributes (A.). Formally,

S^S^CV.^.R^.V

This is a very confusing definition and also disorderly, yet it can be put to use. First, an object should refer to an organized entity having attributes within its structure programmed to realize certain objectives. Second, the definition should intimate an objective-setting agency but it does not spell this out. By these two modifications the definition will obtain meaning as we move along in our analysis. At this point 12

Ibid., p. 15. 13 A. Hall and F. Fagen, "Definition of a System," in General_ Syjterns Yearbook, Vol. I (1956), p. 18. 14 J. W. Sutherland, A_Genera]_ Syjtejns__PJriJo_sophy_for the__Spcjal_ari_d_ Behavioural Sciences. (New York: Braziller, 1973), has noted in the 'Preface' that there was still a general confusion about what constituted systems theory, and what systems properties were supposed to be, because systems advocates have failed to develop a coherent statement about both.

72 Unity in Diversity however we must suggest that logically considered, a definition of any system ought to begin with the pre-systemic conditions by establishing first the reasons for "system", and only secondarily to spell out the reasons for interconnections, interdependences and interactivities among elements as components within a planned organized entity because whatever is ante-cendent to something X, is not equivalent to X. Therefore, the definition of "system" is a pre-systemic problem. 15 16 The third definition brings us closer to what "system" may imply. Definition 3: System -- is an integrated (I ) assembly of interacting (ITA) elements (E-jE^-.jE ) designed to carry out cooperatively (COP) a predetermined (P.) function (f). Formally, S = Ig(ElE2..,En): (ITA.COP)->Pd(f1f2..,fn) The definition defines an organized entity "designed" to carry out cooperatively a pre-determined function, hence it makes no effort at separating system from its consequents. Therefore, it only implies this difference indirectly. Yet the definition comes closer to what we have implied in our Third Statement and in The General Assumption. In this sense the third definition is an advance on the second, and definitely on the first one because it recognizes the necessity of cooperation, i.e., collective efforts to realize objectives within an organized entity, and the "designer" who is responsible for the integration of elements charged with the responsibility of performing functions in order to realize a given objective. Integration plays a significant role in the third definition that should be singled out later in our analysis to be connected to the Process of Creation and also to the method of creation understood as system composed of (a) knowledge, (b) conditioning of elements, and (c) logic of arrangements. 15

J.W. Sutherland, Op. Cit., p. 37.

R.E. Gibson, "The Recognition of Systems Engineering", in C.A. Flagle (ed.), Operations, Research and Systems (New York: Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1960), pp. 58-81.

Nyiri/The Problematic Character of System The fourth to an Organized does not depart tions:17 Definition

73

definition of system adds some interesting new features Entity rather than what "system" may well be, yet it significantly from the third and the second defini4: System -- is a Whole (W) composed of many parts (P,P2..,P ) and is an ensemble of attributes (EsC(A.t A t .. ,A.t ). Formally, ]

2

p

S = W(P P ,P ).E (A, A ..,A ) i L n s tj .L2 tn This definition hints that there is something called an Organized Entity -the Whole - with an internal assembly of attributes no one can tell what they are. Only by extending its meaning can one deduce from it the presence of a hierarchical order implying subordination of Parts, the superordination of the Whole,18 and restriction of freedom. Attributes (A t A t ..,A t ), however, must be spelled out in order 1

2

n

to avoid confusing attributes that may belong to an Organized Entity (Whole) that may not belong to System (Method) which is prior to Organized Entities. In this respect attributes of system are different from organizational attributes because system is the method, employed in building organized entities that provides organizational attributes in full knowledge of the necessity of this provision. L. von Bertalanffy in his writings identified attributes of Organized and Living Entities such as (a) competitiveness, (b) domination, (c) progressive mechanization, (d) hierarchization, (e) interconnectivity, interdependence, and interactivity of Parts, but he had not made it clear that Organization was different from System. As a result of this omission authors attempting to define "what System was", have never been able to dissociate organization from system. While continuously talked about organizations, these authors paid lip service to system and ignored generally the distinction. Consequently in practice they C. Cherry, On Human Communication, (New York: Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1961), p. 307. 18 E. Laszlo, The System View of the World (New York: Braziller, 1972) p. 4, pointed out that the system view must always treat systems as the integrated wholes of subsidiary components but never as mechanistic aggregates of parts in isolable casual relations. One may wonder if this view is not closer to what constitutes 'Organization 1 rather than what constitutes 'system1.

74 Unity in Diversity actually analyzed organizations while retaining the myth of identity between organization and system, yet clamoured for the definition of system because subconsciously they felt the difference hence the difficulty of applying system to concrete problems of organizations 19 could not be eliminated. One author, however, recognized the difference between "Whole" and "System" as follows: (1) the Whole designates the concrete organized object, whereas (2) System denotes the organization itself, the way of arranging parts,20 yet he also confuses the reader by using these terms synonymously. Now let us turn to the fifth definition for enlightenment to improve on the status of system and its ambivalence in the social science literature:21 Definition 5: System -- is a collection of interacting (IAC) diverse functional units (U,IL..,U ), biological, human or machine, integrated with an environment to achieve (A ) a common objective (0 ) by manipulation (M ) and control (Ct) of materials, information, energy, and life (i.e., recources (R)). Formally, S = IAC (U1U2..,Un).Mp(R1R2..,Rn) .Ct(RlR2..,Rn) =»AV(0X). Once again this definition defines in part an organized entity, and in part what system as a method does through manipulation and control of units directing the former to achieve an intended objective. Manipulation and control implies the exercise of influence on units to prevent acting contrary to the objective in mind, yet it is R. L. Ackoff, Choice, Communications, and Conflict (Report to the National Science Foundation, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 1967), especially section on "Towards a System of Systems Concepts"; G. M. Jenkins, "The Systems Approach" in J. Beishon and G. Peters (eds.), Op. Cit., pp. 56-78; also F. E. Kast and J. E. Rosenzweig, "The Modern View: A Systems Approach", Op. Cit., pp. 14-26; and W. Symore, "A Wattled Theory of Systems" in A. J. Kliv (ed.j, Trends in General Systems Theory (New York: Wiley-Interscience ..., 1972), pp. 270-293. 90A. Angyal, "Precedents to Systems Theory", in F. E. Emery, Op. Cit.. p. 28. f\ T

I.E.E.E. Newsletter, (Systems Science and Cybernetic Group), No. 7 (7 May, 1967), p. 6.

Nyiri/The Problematic Character of System 75 not clear here who does the manipulating and control to direct performers of roles (work) either before they are placed within the organized Whole, or after they were conditioned or manipulated. The general message however, is clear enough that can be summarized as follows: System implies restriction on the freedom of units in order to achieve "objective X" by exacting from them performance of roles they would not otherwise perform. In this sense system is an imposition of non-freedom on ontological entities (Things and Beings) to compel them to act as they are directed, ordered or forced within an Organized Entity where performance of roles are interconnected and interdependent. Next to manipulation and control it is important to concretize the consequences, units, parts or components experience within the Organized Whole, and specify what kind of tendencies will they display. Logically considered, any imposition of a non-free status will evoke its counter measure, namely, the assertion of local autonomies, hence the Second Law of Thermodynamics will tell us something about Nature's tendency toward disorder, called in system-language "entropy". If it is true that creation imposes non-free status on ontological entities, be they singular or compounds, it is obvious that reaction to disorder - called negentropy - will always be the exact opposite. Now to retain order and prevent disorderly conduct, dissolution or disintegration, an appropriate display of power or force will be necessary. It follows from this that the Agent of Creation will have to possess the power of compulsion he must utilize in the process of creation, we call conditioning of elements to act as obedient components within the planned Organized Entity destined to produce the desired "objective X". Since the object of creation is to produce "desired objectives in mind" that cannot be realized without collective efforts of selected components, these components must be compelled to act as they would not otherwise do. Consequently there shall always be tension between the forces of order and disorder compelling the Agent of Creation to maintain the presence of a force that will prevent disintegration of created entities. The diagram below illustrates this point that necessitates the utilization of a method (system) to reduce freedom:

76

Unity in Diversity

System 3eginnmg of Organized Entities Order (negentropy1 Forces of Local-Antonomy

Reduction of freedon Integration

Disintegration Assertion of freedom Disorder (entropy)

Simply put, the greater is the degree of freedom of ontological entities, the lower is the chance of achieving concrete objectives that require collective effort. In practice, factories, institutions, business organizations, governmental agencies, educational institutions, shops, military establishments, parties and trades unions, private associations, and so on, as organized entities do indeed restrict their members' freedom to roles. Entrance into these entities voluntarily or involuntarily - entails certain qualifications, pretrainings, education, and more often than not conditioning that will ensure compliance, dedication or uninterrupted service to produce the "desired end". System as a method of building organized entities ensures that almost to the point of brain-washing, selected components will receive the necessary conditioning before admittance to these organized entities. System also recognizes the "Idea" that freedom is non-productive hence its restriction is necessary to ensure performance of functions. In this respect system can be identified as the systematic reduction of freedom (-F) so that restricted ontological entities may do useful work in a collective manner. In metalanguage, On the other hand, system can be described as that conceptual entity which embodies the "Idea" of this unfreedom directly related to the Agent of Creation in whose mind no Organized Entity complete with components can persist through time and space if its constituting members are free. System methodically translates this idea into practice as the first major pre-condition of Organized Entities,

Nyiri/The Problematic Character of System hence System becomes the actual method (M,) of creation. language,

77

In meta-

In this sense system is an information-based activity regarding the nature of ontological entities - Things and Beings - and also a logical-mathematical enterprise that knows in advance of how to put into practice the "Idea". Now, let us illustrate this process, the translation process of the Idea into "Form":

A. IDEA

:>

ORGANIZATION ( F o rm )

SYSTEM (Method)

.

WORK

OBJECTIVE !Endl

that x could

finished

be if

product x

(a)

Intel-connectivities (ITC)

(b) Interdependences (ITO) (c) Interactivities (ITA)

feedback loop"

(3) The Nature of the System and Its Content It is clear from the skeletal illustration that "System" is a response to the Idea that "x could be" if "entities were unfree" in order to perform functions according to a pre-existing design. In this sense System translates the Idea of x into a concrete form (Organization) where two major principles stand out: (1) restrictions on the freedom of elements before they can become components, and (2) the compulsory performance of assigned or allotted functions to produce the desired objective x (End) through collective efforts. At

78 Unity in Diversity this point we note that both Idea and System are prior to Organization and Work, as are the latter to Objective Achievement. Idea and System are, therefore, the ante-cendent conditions (A) to the consequents B and C to constitute the Process of Creating Organized Entities to produce desired or expected objectives. In the Human and the Transcendental Domains this is the normal procedure our theory of creative action can assert with a high degree of intuitive certitude to which theories of system lend a great deal of empirical data. Secondly, we note deductively that if functional roles are assigned to components in advance, the choice of functions are independently done without prior consultation with functional components. This implies command, conditioning and imposition of control devices, and also a pre-designed status-position for each component within the organizational framework of interconnected, interdependent activities of components to ensure mechanical efficiency. Interconnectivity, interdependence and interactivity seem to denote in principle the logical arrangement of functional roles to avoid independent action. In this sense the time-honoured expression in System Theory, namely, interdependence, implies a built-in rule in Organized Entities they must follow to avoid disintegration and ensure continuity through time and space, where components exert pressure on each other to perform their assigned functions, hence Organized Entities are seen as self-maintaining and self-perpetuating mechanisms. Interdependence also implies the exchange of energy between components so that if one of the components fails to observe the inter-change of energy, the whole mechanical chain of inter-connections will come to a halt. Yet the expectation is that inter-dependence automatically ensures the Constant Transmission of Energy, excludes choice and local autonomy hence it is in principle and in fact the mechanical device to force components perform their functions continually through time and space. On top of interdependency, the hierarchical organized pattern is superimposed where the Leading Part (L ) commands and controls the work-performance of subordinate Parts (S .. ,S ) according to a set ] n of Rules (R). On diagram

Nyiri/The Problematic Character of System

>

79

Conceptual Level of Reality

Actual Level of Reality

Objective x

S

Figure 3

It is obvious from the diagram that a system, be it mechanical, human or transcendental, is a method of utilizing entities - Things and Beings - according to a preconceived design to realize a preselected objective X by collective effort where entities as components are not free to act contrary to assigned functions. It follows from this that system yields an organized entity (Organization) in which components are directed, commanded, forced or induced to carry out functions that yields "objective X". 22 In this process the Principle of Constant Transmission of Energy ties components together into a synchronized set of functions that must be performed under the direction of the Leading Part constantly exerting pressure on components to perform their functions according to a Set of Rules. At the Actual Level (A. ) then we are dealing with an organization that produces objective X, whereas at the Conceptual Level (C.) we have only the principles in the abstract how such an Organization ought to be. For these reasons, we identify "System" as the concept

22See for similar considerations R. L. Ackoff, Op. Cit., and K. B. de Greeve "Systems and Psychology" in J. Beishon and G. Peters (ed.), Op. Cit., p. 94 - where the authors recognize system as an evolving or improving process but go on interpreting system as if it were an organization as well.

80 Unity in Diversity of how a given objective might be realized, therefore, in the abstract the System is the "Idea" that lays down the abstract principles whereas the Organization that follows the Idea embodies the Idea in concrete form. Form in turn becomes a Concrete Entity, an Organized Whole to produce Objective X, or to fulfill the Mission and Destiny of Object X so intended. The following model illustrates this process: This diagram brings together systematically the major Components of the Process of Creation complete with the Method of Creation to realize the Idea in Form, and the Intent in the form of an End toward which the entire process of creation is directed. In this context the Method of Creation is the sub-process of the Creative Process that includes the necessary knowledge of freely existing entities' nature (essence) and the probable conditions of their combinations into organized entities. 23 The process therefore is a movement from unorganized existence of singular entities toward organized existence in combined forms understood as organized complexities. The Idea that object X can be realized, originates in the first category of "Intent" that Object X must exist before a "desired objective X" can be achieved. The second category, the Idea, itself is the actual design phase where the blueprint of Object X appears as well as the method of actualizing it. The third category of form in turn implies the completion of object X into an organized entity complete with an internal structure of parts functionally arranged so as to produce in a collective manner the "Intended End."24 The fourth category of "End" in this sense is the main objective whose realization necessitated the invention of the Process of Creation -- human or transcendental -- and its material components, including the Method of Creation understood as system to realize objectives through the medium of organized entities. It is very tempting to call these organized entities "systems" simply because whatever is built into Organized Entities is already

23See for detailed study of organizational structure F. E. Kast and J. E. Rosenzweig "Organization Structure", in J. Beishon and G. Peters (eds.) Op. Cit., pp. 247-267, where 'system' and 'organization' are treated synonymously and also differently. 24 See for the universal process in building structures L. Motz The Universe: Its Beginning and End (New York: Scrioner's Sons, 1975), pp. 5-9.

Nyiri/The Problematic Character of System 81

CREATIVE AGENT (CA)

Principles

Abstract Entity -,

and Laws

(P.L)

/

\

ENT

/

\,

X

/

Needs

/ / J \C2 /ACn/ ^___ y Knowledge

\c \ i/ /

Design Phase Moment 1

Ml.

v of

Design

F3rocess

Integration Phase

>eation

i

M 2.

of N3t-8ei

X

Component s'

^g

Nature

/

1

of

MOTent ln ea,at,oA

Nfoments

Conditioning

Method

^/

y- ,Dreatiori i/v\-/V 1 J\ 2/~(Cn of

C

(

C

^-c N.

i

^i

Phase

Logic

Being

W of X

Completion

of Arrangements

,'\

M3.

of Components to Perform Work

System

\ Moment 3

Completion

(C£2..Cn)

/

Ful fill Mission •< Destiny

\v N.

with Components

(ITC. ITD. ITA)

/LPI \

/

/\ R /\ N Sp2\./Spn

..... Y— -_k, /

/

/

/ Concrete Entity with Components

/

Fulfillment of

Mission* Dest iny

i

sID

\

\

\

>s

\

Rutes

\.

/

(R) 1. Control 2. Work 3. Obedience

(Lp^Sp^Spy,))

Figure 4

82 Unity in Diversity present in the method of creating them such as the principles of interconnect!vity, interdependence and interactivity of parts and wholes. We must realize, however, that these entities are present in the Idea as the image of the Thing or Being to be followed by design and blueprint. At this point, however, the concretizing process does not exist as a "Method", what exists exists only in the abstract. Every designer knows very well this particular point, and also the fact that "design" has its antecendent conditional as well in the form of a person(s) who commission them. Thirdly, the designer is not the executioner of designs, other professionals are called upon to perform this function. It follows from this understanding that the designexecutors must develop a technique and a method of implementing designs, It is at this point where the appearance of trained professionals becomes necessary equipped with knowledge of matter, with the processes of conditioning matter into desired shapes and combinations, and with the logico-mathematical techniques of arranging conditioned matter or beings as effectively as possible. This process, therefore, is called the system of creating concrete entities equipped with structures, functions and purposivity to be self-maintaining, self-operating and self-organizing, that is, logically consistent and also complete. These capabilities appear to be planned and programmed into organized entities to ensure their continuity through time and space. The identical tendencies throughout various levels indicate the selfpreservatory intent without external interferences, support or aid, especially evident in living organisms where preservation required building identical tendencies into them so that they may continue and multiply ad infinitum. The much debated issue of interdependence between parts and completed wholes, on which the System View of Reality seems to rest most heavily, does not lend itself easily to perfect solution unless we divorce system and organized entities. System theorists imply by this term a vast complex of hierarchies determining each other's behavoc iour. From the technical standpoint hierarchy and control go hand 25

See for details E. Laszlo, Introduction to Systems Philosophy, Op. Cit., pp. 19-29; and H. H. Pattee (ed.) Hierarchy Theory (New York: Braziller, 1973), devoted to the emphasis on the fundamental of hierarchical control in all living organizations to enhance survival.

Nyiri/The Problematic Character of System 83 ?fi in hand, but the idea of the "Final Objective" cannot be subjected to the static interpretation of control and hierarchization. Hierarchy does not imply only control but a division of functions and specialization to achieve efficiency and economy, and secondly, direction is necessary whenever complexities are built into organized entities to enhance continuity of these entities in order to produce the final objective in a continuous manner. In this sense we can easily envisage the Totality of Concrete Reality as an interlocked series of hierarchies from the top to the last minutie chain obeying the same laws and principles throughout. Thirdly, if interdependence and hierarchization are forces of control and direction of activities, they were programmed into organized entities highly dependent for activization, incitation and control from the outside. Newton's belief that the mere mechanical structure of the planetary system was not enough to make it move around, something else was at work, something he called electric spirit or elastic spirit. Indeed there is that something which radiates energy, incites motion, controls movements of particles, improves structures and enforces efficiency. This ultimate control force that appears and disappears in regular intervals, is the force that compels organized entities to perform their respective assigned functions at all levels of hierarchy and organization, therefore, interdependence and hierarchical structuralization are lifeless without the commanding control force.27 Secondly, if it is true that through conditioning all organized parts and wholes are deprived of their original freedoms, the entire world is composed of mechanical things and beings compelled to do their assigned functions hence freedom to act contrary to assigned ?fi See L. von Bertalanffy, General System Theory, Oj c i t . , pp. 77-79. ?7L. Motz, Op. Cit., pp. 9-27, lists four major forces in nature such as gravity, electromagnetism, nuclear force and weak-interaction that are utilized for conditioning and control purposes under various circumstances to preserve structures by binding particles into a unity via 'compulsion1 without which an entire ediface of creation would disintegrate.

84 Unity in Diversity functions is impossible.28 Tiien the notion of interdependence and hierarchization adds very little to our knowledge about concrete Reality because everything is determined by an external cause and by the Agent of Creation. In this respect the intent of the Agent of Creation determines "All There Is" whose power to exercise control over everything he has created is limitless. Our original notion of system, therefore, as a method of creation includes that power whose aim it is to subdue matters and do the will of the creative mind. In this process matter has no choice but obey hence system was equated with the absence of freedom (-F). In the human domain men also duplicate and employ the universal method of creation constantly building organized entities anew, destroying them if necessary when they become dysfunctional and inefficient. The main point here, however, is that man-made organizations are imperfect hence the necessity for the actual destruction of man-made organizations that do not correspond to "Man's Intent". Once again we are turned back on our previous model (Figure 4) where the primacy of Intent determines the course of action to which everything is subordinated. For this reason we must emphasize the different functional value of the categories while they are interrelated. -A.

INTENT first category

=

that something "should be" to realize a purpose or objective X;

B.

IDEA second category ! j |

=

that something called X is necessary before objective X can be realized that requires (a) the design of X as an organization, (b) a method of realizing object X, and (c) a control force to condition components;

>C.

FORM third category I END fourth category

=

that object X is a concrete entity capable of producing objective X;

=

intent is realized in the form of fulfilling mission and destiny.

-D.

See for details in L. Motz, Op. Cit., Ch. 9 for the structuralization of atoms and molecules, and Ch. 10 for the origin of life and its nature where 'conditioning1 is prime with 'structured consequents' as organized entities. See also 6. Gamow, The Creation of the Universe (New York: Viking Press, 1952); and L. H. Aller, Atoms, Stars and Nebulae (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), for greater details.

Nyiri/The Problematic Character of System 85 The following equations simplify the relationship between Abstract Reality and Concrete Reality based on the categories:

I

Agent of Creation i

(I)

A (Intent) ^ B (Idea)

=

Purposivity as Abstract Reality

(II)

C (Form) -j D (End)

=

Organizations as Concrete Reality

Process of Creation In General, the creative process includes four distinct steps and two major sub-divisions. (iii)

(A . B) ID (C . D)

=

Process of Creation

In this process the Creating Agency is the method (system) that mediates between Idea and Form, i.e., the method translates the Idea into concrete Form or organized entity hence system is the agency whereby Concrete Reality is brought into being. In this sense "System" does not include the phase of designing but the integration of necessary components into a complete whole, and the translation of abstract principles and laws into concrete rules to govern the behaviour of components within the whole. The truth of Concrete Reality therefore, must be sought in the knowledge of Forms and Ends (C and D), whereas the truth of abstract reality can be apprehended in the Intent and the Idea (A and B). In this sense there is a congruence between these truths because Abstract Reality governs the nature and structure of Concrete Reality be it human or transcendental. The place of "System" as the method of translating Abstract Reality into Concrete Reality is obvious: it is the mediating agency between the two realities, the actual process of constructing, integrating and completing the "Design" already present in the Idea. Therefore, System as a method is acting according to a work-plan that will actualize the design of an organized entity to concretize an objective in mind.

86 Unity in Diversity (4) The Place of System and Knowledge Human knowledge, following the distinction between Abstract and Concrete Realities, attempts to obtain information first about Concrete Reality and later, about Abstract Reality. Needless to say how complicated this search for knowledge is due to the fact that scientific means of decoding the truth behind Concrete Reality are not always easily available. True to human nature, the inquirer tends to abridge Concrete Reality in the absence of scientific means and speculate a priori about the abstract counterpart of Concrete Reality trying to reach its truth by speculative reasoning until science catches up with it proving some of its findings and deductions incorrect. This is the price paid for the difficulty of devising scientific instruments with which Concrete Reality can be analyzed. For the most part of human history speculative interpretation of Reality Abstract and Concrete - had prevailed hence human epistemology was slow in its evolution to give us certitude and reliable knowledge. System Theory in this century, particularly after the 1950's, was an ambitious undertaking seeing concrete Reality as Systems-upon-Systems and a network of hierarchies endowed with certain characteristics. Although science was at its base, the System View of Reality was not as scientific as it pretended to be because it seriously misread the meaning, and consequently the place of System in the Creative Process with the result that "System" was indistinguishable from Organization (Form). We think this was an error in judgment. The following diagram illustrates the point and the place of System within the Creative Process.

Abstiact Reality

Method of Actualization = System y

Concret e Reality

Figure 5

Nyiri/The Problematic Character of System

87

Secondly, when focus is on "Form" or on Organized Entity, Form is made to correspond to the Idea because it is the concretized reality emanating from the Idea as the abstracted image of the Form. In this sense members of the creative process are inter-related or logically follow each other to constitute a process in which "System" as a plan of action has an external role to realize or actualize an intended object X, from which an intended objective X is to follow. To illustrate the point:

1NTENT

OBJECTX

Figure 6

Organization, therefore, is prior to the objective as is the plan of action as the method 29 of actualizing the Idea and Intent simultaneously. System as the method brings together both object and objective, where the object is the "Means" of porducing objective X (End). In this sense "System" is a systematic and logical arrangement of components after conditioning to ensure the positive achievement of an objective in mind efficiently. In other words, system is a method 29 The idea that 'system' was not an organized entity but carefully formulated plan or procedure followed in doing a certain kind of work, or the way work is done, or a method denoting a process and a comprehensive plan in which all the parts are related to each other and to the Whole, is not entirely new. See J. C. Ferndal, Synonyms (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1947), pp. 412-413. Also D. D. Runes (ed.) Dictionary of Philosophy (Totuna, N.J.: Littlefield, Adams and Co., 1971), p. 221, identifies organization as the structured whole, a systematic unity of parts in a purposive whole.

88 Unity in Diversity or plan of effective realization of objectives through organized entities. The sixth definition of system then is: Definition 6: System -- is a method (M.) of effective (Ef) realization (R) of objectives (0 ) through the medium of Knowledge (K.) of components, Conditioning (C.) of components, and the Logical arrangement (La ) (of components as parts of an Organized Entity (Or) in which parts are unfree (-F), interconnected (ITC), interdependent (ITD), and interacting (ITA) to produce collectively Objective X in mind. Formally, S = Md (EfR(Ox)) where objective-realization is a process (R ) entailing Knowledge (K.) of components (C^C^.-.C ) in advance of their arrangements, conditioning (C^) of components before they are arranged as parts (P,Pp..,P ) in an Organized Entity (On), c. and Logical arrangements (L,) a that entail (1) Unfreedom of Parts (-F(P]P2..,Pn)), (2) Interconectivity of Parts (ITC), (3) Interdependence of Parts (ITD), and (3) Interactivity (ITA) denoting Collective Efforts (C£). Formally, (1) Rp = Kd • V La (C1C2"'Cn)-0E then (2) 0E = (( -F).(ITC, ITD, ITA))-> CE then (3) C E = 0 X The diagrammic representation of this formal description of the process of realizing "Objective X" in an organized manner, will be as follows:

Nyiri/The Problematic Character of System 89

Method

Md)

(a) Knowledge