# Thinking Systems: An Organic Language of Harmony for Human Survival Robin Asby Published by Triarchy Press: www.triarchypress.net # Preface This is a work about the explanatory power of Systems Thinking, which I hope will enable those interested in Systems Thinking to understand that power. It is the result of more than forty years of effort to understand intriguing puzzles and it follows a path of exploration that that I have travelled in that time. Exploration has always been a driving force for me in my life. The excitement of not knowing what is round the next corner, or over the next hill, has always held a fascination. There is always something new, but occasionally something really surprising. Coming across an unexpected vista is always a rewarding, and uplifting experience for me both in my physical world and in my intellectual world.
Early in the 1980s I set out on a project to better understand Systems Thinking, which had already interested me previously as a young physicist. The project started as a result of my first meeting with Stafford Beer, whom I had sought out because I was looking for answers to questions of government which were puzzling me at that time. In that first meeting, finding out that I was a physicist by training, he made the assertion that Quantum Mechanics was a branch of Systems Thinking. This intrigued me, and started me on the journey described in this book. My explorations over the years following led me to the conclusion that Beer’s approach to Systems Thinking was distinct, and of much greater power than generally realised. His approach was developed through spending time in India and studying Eastern philosophy during his Second World War army service. That understanding synthesised with his understanding of Western philosophy and later with the new science of cybernetics gave rise to his Viable System Model and his unique approach to Systems Thinking.
Arthur Koestler’s book The Act of Creation explores the way in which syntheses of two different perspectives are the root of new insights and steps forward in scientific understanding, as well as the root of humour and art. This explains for me why Beer’s approach was unique in the development of the ideas of Systems Thinking. What I didn’t expect was that pursuing my understanding of Beer’s approach would produce a model of learning that demonstrates this very process of how two different perspectives could produce new insights.
The second surprise was to find the connection to the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. I found that not only was there a connection, but Beer’s foundation was a much more usable approach to process understanding. The systemic techniques used in the development of the Viable System Model provide a basis for a much wider, process-based exploration of phenomena of great interest to science in any field where process analysis could be used to advantage. To use process-based analysis tools to explore phenomena which are processes seems common sense, but Western Science does not habitually do this.
Western thinking is doubly disabled: it insists on thinking in terms of static objects, and then categorising in terms of the attributes of these objects. Nature does not do categories and neither really does it do objects. The natural world is an evolutionary processual domain, in which for us as observers time is inherent, so static unchanging things are not the place to start. When we human beings model nature we must remember this. What I have tried to do in this book is to introduce a Western thinker to modelling in terms of process, using the foundation developed by Beer.
Thomas Kuhn writes that a young scientific enterprise starts out with many competing strands of thought, the proponents of each vying for the dominance that will make their approach the accepted way of thinking. Eventually one approach, being more successful in its explanatory power, becomes the dominant paradigm. In historical terms Systems Thinking is just such a young scientific enterprise. The first ideas appeared in Russia in the early 1900s and in the West in the 1930s. It developed quickly during the Second World War, through to the 1970s. Further development has taken place over the last twenty years, particularly in the realm of management understanding and ecology. There are now competing strands exactly in the way Kuhn describes, the proponents of each strand seeking to persuade us of the merits of their version. After nearly forty years of my own exploration, it seems to me that Beer’s approach has all the features to make it that dominant paradigm, within which the relationship to other approaches and between other approaches can be understood. I argue this because of my own experience in applying this approach, and also because of the successes I have had in my experience in teaching this approach and helping others to apply it to many different problem areas.
In Part 1, the first seven chapters of the book, I describe this journey, leaving out the blind valleys and the false starts, in a way that I hope can be understood by those interested in the potential of Systems Thinking as a powerful approach to understanding the natural world in which we live. In Part 2 I describe outlines of the results of applying the thinking to the two areas which got me involved in this project: governing, and Quantum Mechanics. These two areas are far apart in the academic world but in each case surprising insights result from this systemic approach.
It is clear from the state of the world that things are amiss in the arena of government. Fault lines have been highlighted by the events of 2007-2008, and those now of 2020. But for me discovering in 1969 the work of Rachel Carson and Jay Forrester, and later that of the Club of Rome and others on the probable evolution of our stewardship of planet earth, was an experience which changed my outlook. 50 years later the warnings contained in those works about our probable disastrous evolutionary path now looks highly likely to be correct, and time to change is short.
One real surprise is that I have yet to find in mainstream writing on government the word ‘cybernetics’ and yet the comparison to steering a ship, the Greek origin of the word, appears in the writing of Plato on governing, and the word itself in the writing of Andre Marie Ampère on governing. Norbert Wiener defined cybernetics to be the discipline of “control in the animal and machine”. Governing is a cybernetic study so perhaps if we take a look at governing through the lens of cybernetics the new thinking might help us to achieve change. This is the subject of Chapter 8.
The situation in the realm of Quantum Mechanics is also problematic. Quantum Mechanics began its development around the same time as Systems Thinking, in the late 1890s and early 1900s. Whilst there is now an accepted mathematical paradigm, there are many proposed interpretations of what those mathematical models actually mean. Again, there are a number of competing paradigms in exactly the way Kuhn describes. My own interest was sparked by the fact that the derivation of the equations governing the area of electrodynamics is a seriously flawed process, but one which gives rise to models that accord with experiment to a remarkable extent. As before, different paradigms have been proposed to interpret the results of these equations. But there has not been a systematic exploration of the systemic approach in the way that I have undertaken it and report in Chapter 9.
In both these cases this systemic approach shows promise and there seems much more to explore. But the journey described in this book ends, standing on a ridge waiting for the mists to clear to see what this new vista contains; maybe nothing, but perhaps more surprises.