The Web of Life
From Driscollwiki
Fritjof Capra
The Web of Life
Contents |
The Rise of System Thinking
- Basic tension between the parts and the whole
- Parts: mechanistic, reductionist, atomistic
- Whole: holistic, organismic, ecological
- Multidisciplinary rise in 1920s
- Biologists studing whole organisms
- Physiologists looked to organization instead of function
Systems thinking (p.18)
Systemic thinking: the understanding of a phenomenon within the context of a larger whole
- aka, contextual thinking (p. 42)
- Connectedness, relationships, context (p.29)
- Different levels of complexity with different laws operating at each level
- Essential properties are properties of the whole
- None of the parts have these properties
- Results of interactions, relationships among the parts
- Focus on basic principles of organization rather than basic building blocks
Emergent properties (p28): those properties that emerge at a certain level of complexity but do not exist at lower levels
Systems cannot be understood by analysis
- Contradicting Western Cartesian tradition
- Cannot reduce parts to smaller parts
- Can only be understood within the context of a larger whole
Systems Theories (p.36)
Key characteristics of systems thinking:
- Systems are integrated wholes that cannot be reduced to smaller parts
- Systemic properties are properties of the whole and not of the parts
- Systemic properties arise from organizing relationships
- Systemic properties are destroyed when a system is dissected into isolated elements
- One's attention can shift back and forth between systems levels
- Different systems levels represent levels of differing complexity
- At each level emergent properties exist that may not exist at lower levels
- Relationships are primary
- Parts are merely patterns in an inseparable web of relationships
- Networks are collections of relationships
- Lack of objects means epistemology (method of questioning) is critical aspect of scientific observation
- No matter how many connections we take into account, we will always have to leave some out (p. 41)
In 1940s, systemic thinking + cybernetics = development of systems theory (p.46)
Process Thinking
Process thinking: every structure is seen as the manifestation of underlying processes
- Further developed by cyberneticists in the 1940s
- Feedback loops and other dynamic patterns
- Flow diagrams
General Systems Theory
Attempting to resolve conflicts among biologists and physicists concerning evolution and entropy at l fin de siecle, Bertalanffy identified characteristics common to all systems as a general science of wholeness.
- Hoped that general systems theory could be a conceptual framework for unifying various disciplines (p.49)
The Logic of the Mind (p.51)
Cybernetics: control and communication in the animal and the machine.
- inspired by efforts to develop self-guiding and self-regulating machines, (proto-A.I.)
- Norbert Wiener coined the term from kybernetes, 'steersman' in Greek
- All major achievements came from comparisons between organisms and machines
- In engineering:
- Govenor a steam engine
- Thermostat
- In man-machine operations:
- Steersman
- Bicyclist
- In behavior:
- Goal-oriented activities
- Experimentation (e.g. child touching the stove)
Feedback
Feedback loop: a circular arrangement of causally connected elements in which an initial cause propagates around the links of the loop so that each element has an effect on the next until the last feeds back the effect into the first element.
- Input: the first link
- Output: the last link
- Self-regulation: the result of this cycle
Feedback: the conveying of information about the outcome of any process or activity to its source
- Wiener: "control of a machine on the basis of its actual performance rather than its expected performance."
- Self-balancing/ Positive feedback: increase in A, increase in B; decrease in A, decrease in B
- Positive loop if the number of negative links is even
- Positive loop produces "vicious circles" with overall amplification effects (e.g. microphone feedback)
- Self-reinforcing/ Negative feedback: increase in A, decrease in B; decrease in A, increase in B
- Negative loop if the number of negative links is odd
Importance of Pattern
Pattern of organization: a configuration of relationships characteristic of a particular system
- Primary focus of cybernetics
- Systemic properties are properties of a pattern
Self-organization:
- Implicit in 1940s cybernetics but not made explicit until 1970s
Synthesizing the study of substance (structure) and form (pattern) is the key to a comprehensive theory of living systems (p. 81)
Pattern of organization: in life, non-material, irreducible
- When the animal is dissected, its pattern is disrupted, its life ends
Networks, the Patterns of Life
Properties of networks:
- Non-linearity: it goes in all directions, relationships are non-linear relationships
- They may generate feedback loops
- Thus they may become self-regulating
- Self-organizing
- Feedback allows the network to correct its mistakes, regulate itself, and organize itself
Pattern of life: a network pattern capable of self-organization. (p. 83)
Emergence of Self-organization Concept (p.83)
Emerged from cyberneticists developing neural networks
- e.g., McCulloch-Pitts binary network models of a nervous system
Building such networks revealed certain emergent ordered patterns
- even when init state was randomized!
Self-organization: spontaneous emergence of order
- order from noise: does not just import order from its environment but takes input, integrates it into its own structure, and increases its internal order
- operating far from equilibrium: a constant flow of input through the system is necessary
- nonlinear interconnectedness of components resulting in feedback loops
Redundancy: the relative order of the system against the background of maximum disorder
- Defined mathematically by Claude Shannon in information theory
Self-organization is the spontaneous emergence of new structures and new forms of behaviour in open systems far from equilibrium, characterized by internal feedback loops and described mathematically by nonlinear equations. (p. 85)
