Origins of Systems Theory, Practice and Applications

Origins of Systems Theory, Practice and Applications

First, practical systems theory is not philosophical systems theory.  I am much more interested in philosophical systems theory, which not entirely separable from practical systems theory, has a philosophical history stretching back into German Idealism and even further, into Kant, Leibniz (with his 1695 New System of Nature).  Key for me in this philosophical history of systems is the elaboration of system science put forward by Hegel. Hegel's importance in philosophical systems theory hangs on two accomplishments: 1) a development of presuppositionless philosophy emerging from a modernist critique of foundations and its subject-object epistemology and 2) a systemic methodology of immanent categorial deductions or individuations arising from presuppositionless philosophy. 

Philosophical systems theory is, at my best guess, able to rejuvenate itself if it consults the theoretical efforts of the so-called "General Systems Theory" in the 1920s-50s.  The theoretical efforts of the General Systems Theory emerged like any scientific theory: in part from observation and abstraction from empirical researches and in part from the success of a methodology.  In this brief post I want to mention what sorts of empirical researches and applications in/formed the practical component of the General Systems Theory in the development of its theory and concepts.  As progenitor of the General Systems Theory, Ludwig Bertalanffy supposed that the development of power engineering in the early 20th century was at the base of the origins of the theory.  Power engineering refers to the "release of large amounts of energy as in steam or electric machines--to control engineering" by "directing processes by low-power devices" which led to the development of computers and automation.  That is, technologies which enabled the invention of self-controlling machines through their possession of self-'directing' devices or technologies.  For instance, the thermostat and the servomechanistic or heat-seeking missiles first used in WW2.  

But what is it that such machines or systems control or self-direct?  Their own processes of production.  Why?  To reduce the complexity or noise in their environments and make possible dynamic properties and behaviors in response to this complexity.  How can dynamic properties result from operations of self-control and self-direction, from a reduction of complexity?  Are such systems geared toward stasis?  How do dynamic properties and behaviors result from systemic reductions of complexity? 

The next step in the theory of systems theory was to study dynamic systems, that is, cybernetic and living systems, such as cells (autopoietic theory of Maturana and Varela), societies (Sorokin, Luhmann), and brains (Piaget).  Dynamic systems are all characterized by boundaries (the ion transport membranes of living cells, for example), which boundaries are situated at the interface of a system and its environment.  A system maintains its own structure (which is not invariant) or organization by selecting that information from the environment (noise) that will enable it to reproduce its structure.  It is auto-poietic, creates a feedback loop, self-organizing.  In reducing the complexity in its environment by reproducing itself, it increases the complexity of its own dynamics.  Of course, given that thermodynamical laws predict that increases in complexity are always poised against entropic tendencies, a system must maintain its structure over time and against decay (a tendency toward stasis).  Thus, a system's internal increase in complexity means that it must always select information in the form of novelty or difference in order to reproduce itself as a dynamic system. 

I find much of use in Gilles Deleuze's philosophical development of system since his differenzphilosophie posits the identity of a system as first dynamic and self-organizational in that a system must select difference.  His own good scholarship admits his debt to Darwin.  Deleuze wrote: "Darwin's great novelty, perhaps, was that of inaugurating the thought of individual difference.  The leitmotif of The Origin of Species is: we do not know what individual difference is capable of.  We do not know how far it can go, assuming that we add it to natural selection."  Difference for Deleuze is not first given, but is that by which the given is given as diverse.  Difference is both internal to a system (of differences, a differential or dynamic system) and selected by difference.  Deleuze wrote of Darwin's thought, with its emphasis on processes of selection, "it is a question of knowing under what conditions small, unconnected or free-floating differences become appreciable, connected and fixed differences.  Natural selection indeed plays the role of a principle of reality, even of success, and shows how differences become connected and accumulate in a given direction [increase in internal systemic complexity], but also how they tend to diverge further and further in different or even opposed directions" [since these systems select their own information or difference they tend to develop autonomously, and increase their difference from the other's in their environment]  (DR, 248).  Emphasis in above quotation are mine.

After Darwin, we see that even in controlling or regulating themselves autopoietically, systems are not first identical with themselves, but are first self-differentiating or auto-poietic.  They do not maintain identity, they do self-organize. 

Thus, to yield its sweetest fruits a philosophical systems theory seems best served when developed alongside a history of practice and application of scientific research, whether that be studies of cybernetics, evolutionary biology, autopoietic theory, thermodynamics, or complexity theory.